R.E.P.O Is An Entirely Different Game With Just Two Players

In case you’ve missed the most recent indie co-op game to blow up in popularity on TikTok, Instagram, and theatres near you, Repo follows in the footsteps of Phasmophobia, Lethal Company, Content Warning, and many others as it puts you and your friends in absurd yet horrifying situations.

Up to six friends can group together as Muppet-esque robots, delving into locations occupied by horrors, gnomes, ducks, babies, and perhaps even a big goopy boy. I don’t have better words to describe that one, I’m sorry. The objective: travel to increasingly difficult locations to find, collect, and extract valuables to meet your quota, before making it back to the ship. If you fail, it’s over, and you’ll have to start again.

It’s a fantastic game, and has somehow become my favourite turn-based game despite boasting no turn-based elements. Let me explain.

Just The Two Of Us

My first time playing the game was with one friend, and so far, that’s been my whole experience. Just the two of us, setting out into the unknown, attempting to reach our quota and avoid the unimaginable horrors that await us.

We did pretty well, all things considered; on our first run, we managed to reach level five, with numerous upgrades and gadgets, and somehow escape a whole party of monsters room by room. Eventually, our luck ran out, and the abominations became more… abomination-y, so we were forced to start over.

But it didn’t take long for me to realise a pattern in the way that we were playing. So often, one of us would die, forced to silently spectate the other until the next stage of the mission for revival; then, in the next stage, the other would probably die, entering a cycle of delightful repetition.

It became turn-based. I would die at the hands (or cleavers) of a large frog because I was singing All-Star while hiding on a shelf, going on to watch my friend press on to the next stage, be revived, rejoice, and then watch that same friend roll down some stairs into a pit. Onwards we go, alone.

We Can Make It If We Try

This wasn’t the intention, of course. It was a by-product of our inexperience, our low group numbers, our excited stupidity, and our actually-this-is-quite-scary-so-let’s-pretend-it-isn’t mentality. We would go on to be shot because of a duck, caught in our own traps, chomped by a giant head after too many snarky remarks (that was me, oops), or… falling into a pit again. Those pits are rough.

While I haven’t yet played the game in a larger group, and I’m excited to do so, I can’t help but love this ridiculous way of playing the game. At first, it was tense, trying to keep it together – and don’t get me wrong, it’s still tense when you or the other has to make a gruelling ten-minute attempt at soloing the mission objective – but we now find it hilarious, eager to try stupid things knowing that we’ll probably die anyway, before watching the other embark on a terrifying journey alone.

Might as well go out with a bang. Or a pit. Probably a pit.

R.E.P.O.

Systems

Released

February 26, 2025

Developer(s)

semiwork

Publisher(s)

semiwork

Engine

Unity