Content Warning is a recent entry in the popular genre of co-op horror games. This title didn’t take long to gather a significant audience, thanks to its aggressive initial marketing: the studio gave the game away entirely for free in the first 24 hours. Even now, the game’s full price is a meager $7.99.

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Content Warning was made by a group of developers primarily known for their joke simulators, like Totally Accurate Battle Simulator and Totally Accurate Battlegrounds, and other silly, fun physics-based games. As expected from this studio, the game has quite a strong comedy streak, which not every co-op horror game offers.

1 Inside the Backrooms

Puzzle-Focused Backroom Experience

Inside the Backrooms is one of two very popular cooperative horror games based on the backrooms, endless places with no clear function that seems to exist beyond space itself. In those games, players wander through similar environments, avoiding enemies while looking for an exit.

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Even if the backrooms are a relatively new setting, many developers have seen fit to dedicate their games explicitly to them, with countless others being clearly inspired. These inspirations can be found in games such as the co-op megahit Lethal Company. Inside the Backrooms managed to rise to the very top among a sea of backroom games, and is worth checking out for fans of Content Warning.

2 Escape The Backrooms

The Most Popular Backroom Game

Escape the Backrooms is the most popular backroom game on Steam, and it's still in Early Access. For one, it looks quite beautiful, with varied environments that go far beyond the classic backroom, the yellow-wallpapered endless office. It also incorporates important features in the co-op horror genre, such as proximity voice chat, a popular mechanic that still can’t be taken for granted.

Escape the Backrooms is mostly an exploration game. There are no complex puzzles to solve and no loot to amass. Instead, players traverse the many layers of the game in an attempt to get ever deeper into its secrets. While there isn’t a real story to speak of, there is a sense of progression in moving from one environment to another and trying to make sense of the place.

3 Labyrinthine

Replayable Story-Driven Horror

• Platforms: PC
• Released: October 28, 2020
• Developer: Valko Game Studios
• Genre: Horror

Labyrinthine is a co-op survival horror game for one to four players about avoiding dangers and enemies while trying to complete puzzles. The game includes two modes, one story-based and with dedicated levels and another featuring procedurally generated maps for enhanced replayability.

Unsurprisingly given its name, Labyrinthine is about navigating and getting lost in complex environments. Teamwork is an important part of the game, too, and the game comes complete with proximity voice chat, which lowers and eventually mutes the sound of players too far away. While Labyrinthine has a story and a campaign with a definite end, it’s important to note that its procedurally generated maps are also based on different cases of increasing difficulty, each with its own different feel.

4 Phasmophobia

Paranormal Investigation With Friends

Phasmophobia promises a true multiplayer horror experience, although whether it can deliver on its premise might rest more on the players than the game. In this co-op horror game, players take the role of paranormal investigators intent on gathering evidence of supernatural events and leaving the haunted premises before it’s too late.

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Just like in Content Warning, players must work together to reach the end of a run unscathed. Cooperation is key to success, as is proper preparation. Before running headfirst into danger, players will equip their ghost-hunting team with the necessary gadgets, from night vision cameras to EVP detectors.

5 The Outlast Trials

Fleeing Enemies & Solving Puzzles

The Outlast Trials is a sequel to the Outlast series of games. Just like in those titles, the players are completely unable to fight against the enemies that attack them and can, at most, stun them for a few seconds. Players must use stealth, the environment, and their own experience with the game to solve puzzles while dealing with those enemies.

Just like in Content Warning, the bulk of the game is spent either hoping not to run into enemies or running from them. But unlike that game, The Outlast Trials has detailed character creation, proper progression, missions, and even a story. It is also not a comedy game, although it is often funny in unexpected ways, just like any multiplayer co-op game.

6 Lethal Company

The Obvious Choice For Fans Of Content Warning

Lethal Company is Content Warning’s most obvious inspiration, and for good reason. It might just be the most popular co-op multiplayer game about collecting loot in a hostile environment and then fleeing the scene. Even outside its niche, it’s an extremely popular game, full stop.

The premise of Lethal Company might sound very similar to Content Warning: an expendable crew of astronauts is sent to various planets to collect valuables. The planets are inhabited by monsters that can be avoided with a bit of experience, but the road there is paved with silly and hilarious failures.

Content Warning

Platform(s)

PC

Released

April 1, 2024

Genre(s)

Horror

Developer

Skog, Zorro, Wilnyl, Philip, thePetHen