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Co-op Indie Games to Watch: Rafts, Comics and Survival Dogs

One shared raft, one ink budget, one household survival run — three very different co-op designs from the indie library we track, plus the split-screen PvP outlier.

By the ESPORT4YOU editorial desk Published Sep 16, 2026 Updated Sep 16, 2026 846 words

Co-op is not a checkbox in this library; it is the spine of three of the five games we track. Tidewrack puts a shared raft under a crew, INKBORN hands a sketchbook to up to four players, and By My Side runs full survival in Online Co-op and LAN Co-op alike. This piece lays out what each one does differently — and why PARRYGON, which is PvP through and through, still belongs in a conversation about playing together. All three co-op premises are testable in the same way: every game in this library has a free Steam demo, including the two that have not launched yet.

All five games in the ESPORT4YOU library happen to be by OverLKD Studio, a one-person studio from Germany. We cover them like any studio's games — on their own merits.

Tidewrack: one raft, one crew, one growing town

Tidewrack, out since August 31, 2026, builds its co-op into the premise. You and your friends — invited straight from Steam, per the game's own page — pull driftwood from the sea and build it into a raft that grows into a floating town. The threats suit a crew: raiders come at night, sharks circle, and somewhere out there a leviathan is waiting, with the ocean floor open to anyone willing to leave the surface. The co-op pitch is a single shared project — one raft that everyone's driftwood feeds, defended by everyone standing on it. Single-player is on the category list too, so the same build works for solo evenings, and Steam Achievements round out the listing. There is a free demo on Steam, and the OverLKD Store sells it directly.

Tidewrack screenshot showing a crew raft under construction on the open sea
Tidewrack's raft is one shared build: driftwood pulled by any player becomes part of the same floating town.

By My Side: Online Co-op, plus the rare LAN option

By My Side, the studio's first release (July 17, 2026), is the survival entry. You wash up with nothing but your hands, then chop wood, build a home and expand the base against harsh seasons, wolf packs and a wilderness that fights back. The companion is the name: a stray dog joins you if you choose to take him in, loyal to the end. What separates its multiplayer is on the category list — Online Co-op and LAN Co-op. LAN play has become unusual on Steam, and it makes By My Side a natural fit for offline setups: LAN parties, cabin weekends, households with unreliable internet. Steam Achievements are listed as well, along with a Camera Comfort flag for motion-sensitive players. A free demo is live if you want to test the survival loop before assembling a group.

INKBORN: four players, one ink budget

"You wake up in a comic nobody finished, and an eraser is eating the world from the edge of the page."

That is INKBORN's setup, and its multiplayer follows from it. The sketchbook is the weapon system — trace an axe and you are holding an axe — and everything costs ink. That single rule is what makes the co-op interesting: ink spent on one player's drawn weapon is ink not spent coloring the page back in, and the eraser keeps eating regardless. The Steam description caps the group at four players, and the categories list Multi-player, Co-op and LAN Co-op, plus Save Anytime and Playable without Timed Input — pressure-free pacing for a group that wants to deliberate over its ink. INKBORN is still Coming soon, but the free demo is playable now — the cheapest way to see how a group negotiates a shared ink budget — and the Steam page takes wishlists.

INKBORN screenshot showing sketchbook weapons being traced in an unfinished comic world
Up to four players share INKBORN's page, and every weapon they trace costs ink.

PARRYGON: not co-op, but definitely together

PARRYGON has no co-op mode — its categories are Single-player, Multi-player, PvP and Shared/Split Screen PvP. It earns a place here because it is the library's couch game. You hold one run of a closed polygon's wall; every other side belongs to somebody else. Parry inside a tight window to charge the orb, and when a wall is lost the arena drops that side for good and rebuilds smaller, closing in on whoever is left. Angles win; panic loses. Full controller support is listed, so the living-room setup works out of the box. The game is Coming soon with a playable demo, so the couch argument can be settled in advance.

Matching the game to the group

  • A crew on one build: Tidewrack — solo or Online Co-op with Steam invites.
  • Two to four players, one page: INKBORN — up to four sharing a single ink budget.
  • Survival for the household: By My Side — Online or LAN Co-op, dog included.
  • Rivals on one screen: PARRYGON — Shared/Split Screen PvP.

We track release dates and demo updates for all of these on the games index, and co-op news runs first through the news feed. The same studio also ships Android apps — walk-with-a-pet and offline utilities among them — and our apps section follows those separately from the games.