The term friendslop has proven divisive, particularly among people who make friendslop games, but the developer who's arguably wearing the genre crown has no issue at all referring to his work that way.
"Consider friendslop. Let's defend - why are we hating on friendslop? Why is it slop? I love this term, I say it all the time," Peak co-creator Nick Kaman says during a GDC panel attended by GamesRadar+. "But what's so bad about hanging out with your friends and playing games like this?"
I definitely think there's a minimizing quality to the term friendslop that isn't always justified, especially when it refers to genuinely inventive games like Peak, Content Warning, or Lethal Company. The developers behind Big Walk, the new Peak-like indie game from Untitled Goose Game studio House House, have said they have "complicated feelings" about the term, which makes sense, and to be fair, even Kaman seems to disagree with the "slop" part.
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"I think there's a lot of beauty in them, and they have a lot of core game design in them. They're not slop, they're not poorly made," he says, jokingly advising other devs, to "make your game eight bucks."
Peak is the result of a collaboration between Another Crab's Treasure studio Aggro Crab and Content Warning publisher Landfall, the conceit of which came about following a bet between co-lead developers Kaman and Wilhelm Nylund to see whose game would sell more. (Content Warning won.) Ironically, friendslop or not, the game ended up selling more than both Another Crab's Treasure and Content Warning combined, becoming the hottest co-op indie game of 2025 and enduring into 2026 with strong player numbers.
Peak devs originally borrowed from Zelda Breath of the Wild's climbing, but "everything changed" 1 week into development: "At this point, the game kind of made itself"
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