Best Split-Screen Games on PC

PC is the hardest platform to play split-screen on, and it is not your fault

Consoles were built around the idea that two people might sit in front of one machine. PC never was. Every part of the stack assumes one person, one screen, one set of inputs - which is why you can own a thousand games on Steam and still struggle to find one that lets a friend pick up a second controller and join you on the sofa.

The good news is that the games that do support it are some of the best co-op games ever made, and the setup is a five-minute job once you know what to check. This page is the shortlist plus the setup, in that order.

Three things people mean by "split-screen", and only one is really it

Most confusion on PC comes from three different features sharing one word, so it is worth separating them before you spend money.

True split-screen divides the window into two viewports, each following its own character. It Takes Two, Split Fiction and A Way Out all do this, and they do it for the entire game rather than in a bonus mode.

Shared-screen local co-op keeps one camera and asks both players to stay in frame. Overcooked! All You Can Eat, Rayman Legends and Human: Fall Flat work this way, which is why they scale to four or more people on one machine while the split-screen story games stop at two. It is not a lesser format - for a party it is the better one - but it is a different thing.

Streaming a local game to a remote friendis Steam's Remote Play Together. The host runs the game, the guest receives video and sends back controller input, and only the host needs to own it. It turns almost any of the games below into something you can play with someone in another city, and it is covered in full on our one copy, two players guide.

The setup, before you buy anything

One controller per player, and let player one use the keyboard. Most PC local co-op expects the second player on a gamepad. A single controller plus keyboard and mouse is the cheapest working setup and often the most comfortable. If you need to buy that pad, our second controller guide covers which one works on which machine and why Windows games assume an Xbox layout.

Plug the controllers in before you launch. A surprising number of games only scan for gamepads at startup, so a pad connected halfway through a level simply will not appear. Connect everything, then start the game.

Check Steam Input is not fighting you. If a second pad is detected by Windows but ignored by the game, the usual cause is a per-game Steam Input override. Turning it off, or on, for that specific title fixes it more often than any other single change.

Read the store page, not the marketing.Storefronts list local co-op and shared-screen support as explicit features. If a game's PC page does not claim local co-op, no amount of settings will produce it - and that check takes ten seconds. Our methodology page explains what we verify from those listings and what we do not.

Which pick suits which pair

It Takes Twois the answer for most people and it is not close. Every puzzle is built for two players who can see each other's half of the screen, the campaign runs a dozen or so hours, and the Friend's Pass means the second player never has to buy it. If you want one recommendation from this page, take this one - our full reviewcovers what the Friend's Pass does and does not include.

Split Fictionis the same team's newer game and the one to pick if you might later want to play with someone on a console instead, because it adds crossplay that It Takes Two never had. Same split-screen-throughout design, same one-copy deal.

A Way Out is the outlier: a prison-break story told in split-screen even when you play online, so the two halves of the frame are the point rather than a concession. It is also strictly one playthrough - see the review for why we are careful about recommending it to a pair who want value per pound.

Borderlands 3 is the four-player option, and the one to verify before buying. Split-screen is a headline feature of the console versions; on PC, check the store page and the current patch notes rather than assuming parity. When it works, it is the most game-for-your-money on this list, and the review covers the Ultimate Edition question.

LEGO Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga is the family pick - drop-in, drop-out two-player co-op across nine films, hard to get stuck on, and forgiving of wildly different skill levels. Local only, so both of you need to be in the room.

Overcooked! All You Can Eat, Human: Fall Flat and Rayman Legends are the shared-screen trio, and between them they cover almost every group shape a single PC can host. Overcooked is the loudest, Human: Fall Flat is the cheapest and scales furthest, and Rayman is the one that never leaves a weaker player behind for long.

If your PC is the limiting factor

Two people on one machine means one machine doing double the rendering work, and on a modest PC that is where a split-screen evening falls apart. Dropping the resolution helps more than any other setting, and most of the games on this page are deliberately undemanding to begin with. If the hardware is genuinely marginal, our low-end PC guide is built around exactly that problem, and the cheap games guide overlaps heavily with this list.

Split-screen on the other platforms

If part of your group is on a console, the same games are usually a smoother experience there, because split-screen is a first-class feature rather than a port consideration. We keep separate lists for split-screen on PS5 and split-screen on Xbox- the Xbox list is the longest of the three, largely because Minecraft's four-player split-screen is a console-only feature that the PC edition has never had.

And if the second player is not actually in the room, the format you want may not be split-screen at all. Our split-screen and online page covers the games that keep the split when you play apart, and the two-player page is the wider list for a pair on any setup.

If you are weighing platforms rather than games, the Switch handles local play very differently - more games you can play together, fewer that are truly split-screen - and that comparison is laid out on our best split-screen games on Switch page. And if you are wondering why a feature this popular became this rare, the rendering and business reasons are in why games stopped having split-screen.

Three per-game questions come up constantly on PC and each has its own answer. Minecraft's split-screen is a console feature that Java Edition has never had - that is covered at is Minecraft split-screen. Fortnite's local mode is PlayStation and Xbox only, explained at Fortnite split-screen. And if you need four players rather than two, almost none of it happens on a PC - four-player split-screen games is the console-weighted list.

If the second player is not in the room at all, PC has one more answer that no console matches: Steam can stream a local co-op game to a friend and register their pad as player two, so a game with no online mode becomes a two-city game. How to play local co-op games online covers that setup and the titles worth using it with.