Games Like It Takes Two

Summary: Split Fiction is the closest thing to It Takes Two, because it is made by the same studio to the same rules. Beyond that, the field splits into puzzle platformers built for two, asymmetric games where each player sees something different, and chaotic kitchen-table co-op. The one feature to look for is a Friend's Pass, which means only one of you has to buy it.

Hazelight has made three co-op-only games and all three carry a Friend's Pass, so a single copy covers both players.
Split Fiction and It Takes Two are always split-screen, even online, which is unusual and a big part of why they work.
Nothing else throws a mechanic away after one level the way these do, so expect substitutes to repeat themselves more.
Match the pick to your partner. Cuphead and Overcooked test a relationship in ways It Takes Two never does.

The reason this question gets asked so often is that It Takes Two spoils you. It has no single-player mode, no filler, and a new idea roughly every fifteen minutes, which is an absurd amount of design work for a game most people finish in twelve hours. Very little else is built that way, so the honest answer involves several games rather than one.

What Makes a Game Like It Takes Two

Four things, and most co-op games have only two of them.

It is co-op only, so the design never has to work for one person. It is asymmetric, meaning the two players usually hold different abilities and have to talk. It is constantly disposable, introducing a mechanic, using it for one sequence and never returning to it. And it assumes a shared screen, so you can see what your partner is failing to do.

That last point rules out a lot of what gets recommended. A game where two people do the same thing in the same space is a co-op game, not a game like this one. If you want the broader category rather than this specific shape, the multiplayer roundup sorts by group size instead.

Split Fiction: The Closest Thing There Is

If you liked It Takes Two, play Split Fiction. It is the same studio, the same director and the same design philosophy, released on 6 March 2025 for PC, PS5 and Xbox Series, with a Switch 2 version alongside that console's launch.

You play two writers, Mio and Zoe, trapped inside their own stories, which lets the game alternate between science fiction and fantasy levels and justify throwing out its own rules every twenty minutes. It sold a million copies in two days and passed four million within two months, which for a co-op-only game with no single-player mode is remarkable. Hazelight's own page confirms it ships with the Friend's Pass, the same as It Takes Two did.

The studio's earlier game, A Way Out from 2018, is the third piece. It is rougher and shorter, a prison-break story told in permanent split-screen, and it is the cheapest way to see whether this style suits you before committing to a full-price release.

Other Games Like It Takes Two

Once Hazelight's three are done, the field spreads out. These are the ones that get closest on at least two of the four criteria.

Portal 2's co-op campaign. The ancestor of the whole idea. A separate campaign built only for two, with puzzles that cannot be solved alone. Fifteen years old and still the sharpest writing in co-op.
Unravel Two. A puzzle platformer where two yarn characters are physically tethered. Gentler than It Takes Two and the best pick if one of you is not confident with a controller.
We Were Here series. Fully asymmetric: you are in separate rooms, each seeing half the puzzle, communicating by radio. The first game is free, which makes it the lowest-risk thing on this list.
Operation Tango. One player is a spy in the field, the other a hacker who never sees the same screen. Short, clever, and impossible to play without talking constantly.
Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons Remake. Josef Fares directed the original before founding Hazelight, and the remake finally added a two-player mode to a game that was famously about controlling both siblings yourself.

Games Like It Takes Two on PS5

Everything above runs on PS5, and the platform adds one genuine advantage: Share Play lets a friend without the game join your session remotely for an hour at a time, which is a workable trial for anything that does not offer a Friend's Pass.

For local play specifically, Overcooked: All You Can Eat, Cuphead and Moving Out are the reliable picks, all of them chaotic rather than tender. Helldivers 2 goes bigger if two is a floor rather than a limit for you. The broader PS5 catalogue covers what else is worth owning, and a PlayStation gift card handles the purchase.

Games Like It Takes Two on Xbox

Xbox has the stronger argument, because Game Pass has carried It Takes Two itself along with a rotating set of co-op titles. For a genre you finish in twelve hours and rarely revisit, a subscription is usually better value than buying, and two people in the same house only need one library between them.

Beyond the obvious picks, Grounded and Sea of Thieves are the long-form Xbox co-op options, though neither has the tight authored structure that makes It Takes Two what it is. An Xbox gift card covers either the subscription or a one-off purchase, which is the flexible option if you are not sure which way you will go.

Free and Low-Cost Two-Player Co-op

The Friend's Pass is the real saving and it is worth saying plainly: for It Takes Two, Split Fiction and A Way Out, one purchase covers both players. Two people are not buying two copies. That alone makes them cheaper per person than most of what gets recommended as a budget alternative.

Below that, We Were Here is free outright, Pico Park costs less than a coffee and produces more shouting per pound than anything else in the genre, and Portal 2 has been heavily discounted for over a decade. Stardew Valley is the long-haul option if you would rather share a farm for six months than a puzzle for six hours.

On console there is a further option worth knowing, which is that these games are almost never replayed. A rental service like GameFly suits a twelve-hour co-op campaign better than it suits almost anything else, since you are finished with it inside the first billing period.

Couch Co-op and Online Are Not the Same Experience

It Takes Two and Split Fiction both keep the split screen whether you are on one sofa or two continents, which is deliberate. Seeing your partner fail is half the comedy, and a game that hides their screen from you loses something no voice chat replaces.

If you are playing online across different machines, check the crossplay situation first, because it varies per title rather than per platform and the store pages are not always clear. How crossplay works covers what to verify before both of you buy anything.

For local play the constraint is duller and more common: you need a second controller, and consoles ship with one. Any of the large marketplaces such as AliExpress will sell you a third-party pad for a fraction of the official price, which is fine for a game where the second player is holding it once a month.

What None of Them Replace

Be honest about the gap. What It Takes Two does that almost nothing else attempts is spend real development money on ideas it then discards. A level introduces a mechanic, builds one perfect sequence around it, and never uses it again. That is enormously expensive and commercially irrational, which is why two studios in the world do it and one of them is Hazelight.

Everything else on this list reuses its systems, because that is how games are normally made. Going in expecting the same density will make good games feel thin. Going in expecting a different pleasure will not.

Match the Game to the Person Holding the Other Controller

This is the rare genre where the right answer depends more on your partner than on you. Someone who does not play games wants Unravel Two, not Cuphead. Someone who does will be bored by the gentle option. A long-distance partner needs the asymmetric ones, where being in separate rooms is the design rather than a compromise.

Start with Split Fiction if you both enjoyed It Takes Two, because it is the same thing done again with more money behind it. Only one of you needs to buy it, and gaming gift cards cover whichever platform you are both on.