Like "walking simulator" before it, "friendslop" seems to be another derogatory genre moniker now being reclaimed by its enthusiasts and developers. The devs behind Fall Guys are reuniting after the layoffs at Epic Games with a new studio called Panic Stations, with plans to offer a buffet of goofball co-op games in the vein of REPO and Peak every year.
"We are… Panic Stations!" as the YouTube description for the video announcing the studio exclaims. "A brand new games studio run entirely by pigeons! We'll be making fun, fresh, physics-based co-op games with a sense of humour. You could call them friendslop if you like, or not if you don't like lol."
The announcement trailer really sets the tone for the studio, opening with the assertion from design director Joe Walsh that "games should be funnier and they should be stupider." Walsh, alongside engineering director Stephen Taylor, social and community manager Oliver Hindle, and art and music director Dan Hoang, are all seen hanging out in a virtual space in their best digital pigeon cosplay. Panic Stations bills itself as a fully remote studio, and the video has the vibe of a bunch of friends hanging out in a proximity chat lobby.
All of those folks are veterans of Mediatonic, the studio which was acquired by Epic in 2021 and suffered massive layoffs in 2023. Founded in 2005, Mediatonic got its start making Flash games for the web, but would eventually create titles like the pigeon dating sim Hatoful Boyfriend, the Phoenix Wright-meets-Picross visual novel, and the platformer game show battle royale Fall Guys. Clearly, this is a dev team that knows how to get silly.
One of Mediatonic's original co-founders, Paul Croft, has now founded Skeleton Crew, "a group of independent game companies supported by a central team." Panic Stations is one of the studios under the Skeleton Crew banner, alongside Kaiju Clean Up dev Brightrock Games, indie publishing label Mythwright, and TerraTech maker Payload Studios.
Perhaps the most curious thing about Panic Stations is that, according to a press release, they plan to release "a few" of these co-op games "every year." With titles like Peak racking up millions of sales for just a few months of dev work, it probably shouldn't be a surprise to see a studio dedicate itself to pursuing the genre. A sandbox that lets players make their own fun is, after all, as valid a game as any other – even if the friendslop detractors don't see it that way.
"We want to make games as fun to watch as they are to play," Hindle adds in the announcement trailer, speaking in pigeon form from under an orange traffic cone, "and we're getting ready to serve up some tasty friendslop."
"Let's not call it that," Taylor mumbles in response.
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