Local co-op in a roguelike means two or more players on the same screen or the same PC, not a shared online lobby — and in 2026 that distinction is easy to miss, because several games frequently listed as “co-op roguelikes” have no native local mode at all. Gunfire Reborn, for instance, supports online co-op for up to four players but has never shipped local or split-screen support despite years of player requests. Risk of Rain 2 is similar: online co-op for up to four, with local split-screen possible only through a console-command workaround or unofficial PC mods.
Among games that do ship genuine local co-op and are live and buyable on Steam as of July 31, 2026, there is no single best pick. Enter the Gungeon is the overall leader, pairing same-screen 2-player local co-op with a decade of refinement and 95% positive reviews across roughly 39,000 ratings. Lumencraft ranks second and is the only game in this set that fuses that local co-op with base building, turret defense and fully destructible, physically simulated terrain — a different kind of co-op session than pure bullet-hell or beat-‘em-up combat. Below, we rank seven titles on real, verified local co-op support, then flag two games that get lumped into this category but don’t actually belong.
Same-screen, split-screen and same-PC are not the same thing
“Local co-op” hides three different technical approaches, and which one a game uses changes how it plays. Same-screen co-op, which Enter the Gungeon and Children of Morta use, keeps both players in one shared camera view that pans and zooms to keep everyone visible — it avoids the classic split-screen problem of a player wandering off the edge of their half. Split-screen co-op, which Lumencraft and Absolum support, divides the screen into separate viewports per player, giving each person their own camera at the cost of visible screen real estate. Same-PC couch co-op, which Vampire Survivors and Nuclear Throne use, is closer to the split-screen family but built for simpler games where camera framing matters less. None of these require an internet connection or a second copy of the game for the guest player, which is the actual point of “local” — the exception is Lumencraft’s Steam Remote Play Together option, which extends that same local session over the internet to a friend without their own copy.
The player-count ceiling is lower than it looks
Six of the seven games ranked here cap native local co-op at exactly 2 players; only Vampire Survivors goes to 4. That ceiling is a real design constraint, not an oversight: same-screen framing gets exponentially harder to manage as player count rises, and split-screen eats screen space fast on anything but a large monitor. Unofficial mods exist to push past the cap — Nuclear Throne Together adds 4-player local co-op to Nuclear Throne, and a community mod does the same for Children of Morta — but neither is supported by its developer, and the Children of Morta mod breaks story mode outright. If you specifically need more than two people on one screen without relying on a mod, Vampire Survivors is currently the only native option in this set.
What each game is actually for
If you want the single best-rounded local co-op roguelike, Enter the Gungeon remains the standard: same-screen framing, deep item variety, and a decade of patches behind it. If your group wants to build and defend something together rather than just fight through it, Lumencraft is the only game here that turns local co-op into base building, turret placement and terrain you can destroy as a team. For the cheapest, lowest-commitment session with the most people, Vampire Survivors at $4.99 and 4 local players wins outright. Children of Morta is the pick if you want a story alongside the co-op, Wizard of Legend if you want fast spell-combo dueling, Absolum if you specifically want beat-‘em-up brawling in the genre’s newest entry, and Nuclear Throne if you want the cheapest, most twitch-precise classic gunplay.
Not native local co-op
Two games come up constantly in “co-op roguelike” searches but don’t belong in a local co-op ranking.
Gunfire Reborn. A well-regarded looter-shooter roguelite with online co-op for up to four players, but it has no local or split-screen mode; Steam community requests for one have gone unanswered for years.
Risk of Rain 2. Online co-op supports up to four players, but local split-screen isn’t shipped natively — getting it running on PC currently requires either a console-command workaround or an unofficial mod, and console versions vary in their own support.