Update: In a tweet, Devolver Digital confirmed that this Steam sale is being held in conjunction with charitable speedrunning organization Games Done Quick. Devolver says they'll donate 10 percent of the sale's revenue to GDQ.

GDQ recently kicked off Awesome Games Done Quick 2018, a week-long speedrun marathon dedicated to breaking videogames every way possible and raising money for the Prevent Cancer Foundation. 

Original story:

Publisher Devolver Digital is running a quick Steam sale to ring in the new year. A handful of good indies are on sale through Monday, January 15, including gratuitous violence simulator Hotline Miami and contemplative puzzler The Talos Principle. Here's the full list: 

•  Titan Souls - $4 at 75 percent off 
•  Broforce - $4 at 75 percent off 
•  Serious Sam 3: BFE - $8 at 80 percent off 
•  Serious Sam: The Random Encounter - $1 at 80 percent off 
•  High Hell - $5 at 50 percent off  
•  Omnibus - $3 at 75 percent off 
•  Hotline Miami - $3 at 75 percent off 
•  Hotline Miami 2: Wrong Number - $4 at 75 percent off 
•  The Talos Principle - $8 at 80 percent off (the DLC-filled Gold Edition is $11 at 85 percent off) 

You'll also find some good discounts in GOG's New Year's Resolution sale, which started earlier today and runs through January 15. The first day's 'resolutions' (read: recommendations) are mostly meaty RPGs like Divinity: Original Sin 2 and The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, and there's a good indie presence thanks to other games like Torchlight and Legend of Grimrock. 

Although modest compared to last week's mammoth sale, the latest weekly Steam sale is still plenty big at over 300 games. Among them are three great indies, which are marked down by up to 80 percent through Monday, November 20. 

The cheapest is Downwell, a 2D action game about collecting items and bouncing on bad guys while falling down a well. At 66 percent off, it's just $1. Which, as Tom will tell you, is a steal for the absorbing hidden depth that this reverse-shmup offers.

Crypt of the Necrodancer boasts the biggest discount of the three at 80 percent off. The base game is $3, and as we said in our review, is both an excellent roguelike and a great rhythm action game. 

Necrodancer enthusiasts will also find a selection of add-ons on the cheap, chief among them the Amplified prequel DLC, which introduces a new playable character and a fresh dungeon to explore. The slightly discounted Necrodancer Amplified Pack is available for $7, while the DLC itself is under $5 at 33 percent off. A medley of soundtracks and extras are also available for $1 to $3 each, with the $21 Necrodancer Ultimate Pack offering the best deal on the lot. 

Finally, there's BroForce, a raucous, raunchy riff on action movies. It's a tongue-in-cheek 2D action game that Joe found to be both funny and fun despite its predictability. At 75 percent off, it's just under $4. Bizarrely, however, the BroForce four-pack still costs $45 according to its Steam listing. 

While local multiplayer was once mostly limited to consoles or LAN parties, PC gamers looking for a dose of that old-school same-screen nostalgia now have more options than ever, and by streaming games to the TV you can play on the couch even while your PC is in another room.

Some local multiplayer PC games focus on fierce competition, parroting the arena brawling of games like Super Smash Bros. Others can be every bit as frantic, but pit you and your friends against the game instead of each other.

However it is you like to play, these are the best local multiplayer games on PC.

Cooperative games

Overcooked

If Iron Chef has taught me anything, it's that there is no truer arena than the kitchen. This is a sentiment Overcooked takes to heart, simulating the chaos and commotion of a multi-station restaurant kitchen. Two to four players zip frantically around increasingly complex kitchen arenas to prep and deliver orders as they come in. Some are simple: for tomato soup, for example, drop three chopped tomatoes in a pot, let it cook for a moment, plate the dish and send it on its way. But most are much more complex, requiring a delicate dance of chopping ingredients, cooking others, and assembling dishes according to the various incoming orders.

Success requires a combination of coordination, communication, delegation of duties, and fine-motor skills in order to meet the demands of the dinner rush. It's chaotic fun—just try not to burn the kitchen down.

Rocket League

This brilliant game of car soccer has captured us completely. At first glance this may appear to be a purely slapstick game about rocket-powered cars bumping giant floaty balls into goals, apparently at random, but go deeper and you’ll find a fiercely competitive game of carball that almost drove editor Samuel Roberts mad.

Rocket League is an excellent couch game because it suits quick pick-up-and play sessions and is easily played when fully reclined—we tested. Once you start to get a feel for the controls a world of trickshots and bold upside-down car-kicks reveals itself, and a moreish stream of cosmetic unlocks gives the game even more colourful personality. It’s worth experimenting with 1v1 and 2v2 if the default six-player matches seem too chaotic.

Divinity: Original Sin 2

Divinity: Original Sin 2 was our 2017 Game of the Year and is one of the finest RPGs of all time. It's also excellent for local co-op play with adaptive splitscreen and full controller support. You and your buddy can create characters together, but if they're a little late to the party they can just jump in and begin controlling one of the existing NPC companions.

Death Squared

Death Squared is the type of puzzle game that can single-handedly tear friendships apart. For either two or four players, you control colorful cube robots trying to make it to specific spots on each map, but as each player moves the level shifts around them—usually with highly lethal results for your teammates. It’s a phenomenally clever and challenging puzzle game, but one of the most successful parts of it is just how much coordination it takes. It’s difficult for one player to “quarterback” the solutions to every level, which makes it more fun for everyone.

Another great two-player puzzle game to look at is Kalimba. It’s much faster-paced than Death Squared, but it similarly rewards cooperation. 

Castle Crashers

There’s a special joy in getting together with three friends and beating the crap out of everything. Castle Crashers revels in that joy—it practically bathes in it. Each player controls their own knight in a seriously warped fantasy kingdom, running to the right and slaughtering countless enemies through forests, towns, castles, dungeons, and more. Each kill gets you experience for stronger sword swings or better magical attacks. There are tons of weapons, animal companions, and secret heroes to find and fight over, too. Sure, you can play it solo (or online), but we love playing with friends right on the couch—coordinating the “cat-fish” fight is way more insane when your companions are right beside you.

Local co-op is really the bread and butter of developer The Behemoth, and they have more games worth checking out. Battleblock Theater is a great two-player platformer with full Steam Workshop support for custom levels, and the more recent Pit People is a more casual, controller-driven take on a turn-based strategy game.

Streets of Rogue

A roguelike mashed up with an immersive sim, Streets of Rogue is both procedurally generated and heavily systems-driven. You and up to three friends can take on random missions that can be solved any way you like, similar to other games like Dishonored or Deux Ex but top-down and pixelated. The game provides a shocking amount of variety and freedom for how simple it looks, making it an easy one to pass up. While it’s not strictly a co-op game, I think it’s fair to say nearly any systems-driven game can become a lot more fun (read: absolutely chaotic) when a group of people are tackling it at the same time. 

Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes

The brilliantly named Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes simulates that action movie scene where the plucky hero has to disarm a bomb by describing what it looks like to a bomb defusal expert over the phone. In the game, only one player can see or interact with the ticking time bomb and its myriad switches, wires, and buttons, while the rest of the players have access to a bomb defusal manual. The game was built for (and plays best in) VR, but even without an expensive headset it aptly simulates the tense conversation of trying to solve a puzzle where you can't see the pieces. Just remember: keep talking and nobody explodes.

Enter the Gungeon

Another game that’s not strictly co-op, but Enter the Gungeon is a lot more fun with a friend sitting next to you. It’s a bullet-hell roguelike where you shoot bullets at bullets who are shooting other bullets at you. Do keep in mind, Enter the Gungeon is hard, and you will likely die a lot, ally at your side or not. But its co-op is integrated extremely well, and the punishing difficulty doesn’t feel as harsh with a friend to help. It’s a great combination of genres in a lovely pixel art wrapper, and one of the few games on this list that likely won’t make you extremely angry at your ally.

Broforce

This 2D shooter is a pastiche of both ‘80s movies and side-scrolling arcade games—it’s a very fun combination. You and up to three friends play as ‘parody’ versions of characters like Rambo (here called ‘Rambro’), the Terminator (‘Brominator’) and even more contemporary choices like Will Smith from Men In Black, or Neo from The Matrix. The fun comes in how these characters’ weapons all differ, as well as Broforce’s physics-driven level design, where every single block of the environment can pretty much be destroyed. While there’s not a lot to it, the variation in enemy types and environments mean this is a perfect couch game for a 30-minute burst of fun.

Lovers in a Dangerous Spacetime

Lovers in a Dangerous Spacetime is a bit like if FTL was multiplayer and everything happened in real time. You and up to three friends each control an avatar on a lovely colorful spaceship careening through space. There are various stations to man, such as weapons systems, engine, shield, and map, and players have to run their little avatar from one to another as threats present themselves. It’s a hard game because you almost always need to be in more places than you can manage, constantly running from station to station while bumping into your shipmates. But a well-oiled crew can make piloting the clumsy ship incredibly satisfying, especially during Lovers in a Dangerous Spacetime’s huge boss fights.

Hive Jump

Hive Jump is a procedurally generated ode to Super Metroid for up to four players. The levels are randomized each time you play, but with hand-designed rooms and challenges scattered throughout. You get new guns and upgrade your troops as your team descends further into the alien hive, and Hive Jump features a pretty cool respawn system that’s sort of like permadeath-lite. You can respawn on death, but only if you manage to keep a transponder on your back safe from enemies, which incentivizes players sticking together and helping each other out.

If you want another retro roguelike co-op option, 20XX takes the jump-n-shooting of Mega Man and puts it into procedurally generated maps for up to two players. 

On the next page: competitive games and arena brawlers like Nidhogg, Towerfall Ascension, and Videoball.

Competitive games

Jackbox Party Packs

There are now four Jackbox Party Packs, each jammed with great party games (and their sequels) like You Don't Know Jack, Fibbage, Drawful, Quiplash, and others (plus a few not-great ones like Word Spud and Lie Swatter). You don't need to worry if you've got a crowd and are short a few controllers: you can connect to the game server on a browser with your smartphones. If you're looking for fun trivia challenges, quiz shows, drawing games, bluffing games, and other assorted party games, pretty much any pack you pick will give you something great. While the series has been tilting more toward streaming games for an audience, they're still great to play at home.

Oh My Godheads

There are five different modes you can play in Oh My Godheads, each with their own unique twists. ‘Capture the Head’ is like capture the flag—if the flag was a head that occasionally fights back while you're carrying it. King of the Head challenges you to hold onto a struggling, angry Godhead longer than anyone else. Meanwhile, you battle other players using swords and exploding pies, plus collectible power-ups that allow you to freeze players or squash them with a giant foot. It's a fast-paced and fun twist on capture the flag, because the flag doesn't want to be captured.

Crawl

A competitive dungeon crawler with a top notch retro styling. Crawl is a four player asymmetrical hack-n-slash where one player is a hero fighting through a dungeon, while the others inhabit the monsters and traps scattered throughout. Whoever gets the last hit on the hero takes their place, and the game ends when either the hero manages to defeat the dungeon’s boss (also player controlled) or the party loses to the boss for a third time. You get new items and improve your hero while also leveling up and improving the monsters you can control, so you’re growing stronger no matter which side of the struggle you are on.

Another great (and free!) little co-op game from developer Powerhoof is Regular Human Basketball, which is exactly what the name implies. 

Worms W.M.D.

The Worms series has always been a gem of competitive local multiplayer, but I was less than thrilled with many of the recent 2.5D entries. Worms W.M.D. gets back to good ol’ fashioned 2D animation, and it’s absolutely lovely. It’s one of the best Worms games in a very long time, with all the physics-based skillshots and tricky ninja ropes you may remember alongside some cool new tricks. The series has also struck a great balance between randomization and skill, making it great to either just have some fun with or settle hard-bitten scores. 

Brawlhalla

Wish you could play Super Smash Bros. on PC? Well so do I, but I’ve learned to live with the crushing disappointment that that's literally never going to happen. Luckily, Brawlhalla is here to ease the pain a bit. It’s a fighting game that shares Smash Bros.’s percentage-damage system and screen-launching deaths, but it’s also based around picking up different weapons that each have a unique moveset. It doesn’t have the recognizable characters of Smash Bros., but it’s still got some nice character design that does a good job of letting Brawlhalla stand on its own two feet. Brawlhalla is also free-to-play, making it easy to hop into with some friends if you want to give it a shot.

Another good Super Smash Bros. stand-in is Rivals of Aether, which has been in Early Access for less time, but has more of a focus on unique characters with special abilities than weapons. 

TowerFall Ascension

A lot of single-screen deathmatch games are content to offer a single way to play, offering a lean, lightweight experience by doing one thing very well. TowerFall Ascension is a much more comprehensive offering than most. In its basic form, up to four players jump around 2D levels pinging lethal arrows at one another. A finite quantity of ammo makes it important to snatch arrows from the bodies of fallen foes—or grab them out of the air, if you're quick enough—and powerups, environmental hazards and shifting maps keep this process interesting. But there's much more to the game than that. In two-player co-op you take on a series of survival challenges against increasingly varied and interesting enemies. A page full of special rules and mutators allows you to create new game modes on the fly, from giving everybody bouncing arrows to creating a single invisible super-player who the others have to hunt.

Often mentioned in the same conversation as TowerFall is Samurai Gunn, which keeps the one-hit-kills but trades bows-and-arrows for, you guessed it, samurai swords and guns. Matches are a bit quicker and more frantic, but every bit as fun.  

Duck Game

In the future—1984, in this case—pixelated ducks compete in a violent, ever-changing bloodsport. Join your friends in team deathmatch and blast each other with shotguns, lasers, grenades, and tons of other weapons. The matches are quick, with a single shot taking you out, and the map changes after each round which never lets you get comfortable or bored. Plus, there are mini-games that serve as intermission from the carnage, and a button dedicated solely to quacking. It's a fun, silly, and frenetic game that's hard to stop playing.

Gang Beasts

It's still—still—in Early Access, but Gang Beasts is already a hoot of a party game, featuring a series of deadly arenas in which to awkwardly punch, kick, drag, pick up, and throw your friends around. Struggle to control unwieldy balloon characters as you and your friends fight to the death in levels containing meat grinders, moving trucks, Ferris wheels, and speeding subway trains. The difficulty of steering your character is part of the appeal, and making things harder is the fact that you'll be laughing uncontrollably as you fight to climb back up the side of the ledge you've been thrown off, or struggle to free yourself from the clingy grip of another player.

Nidhogg

Nidhogg is one of the best one-on-one competitive games on PC. As a fighter, it’s a Bushido Blade-like struggle for one killing blow as two pixel fencers advance, parry, lunge, dive kick, and disarm each other with staccato bursts of button presses. It’s beautiful (you really have to see the sprites in motion), weird, and takes great skill to master. It’s also a lot of fun to watch, especially thanks to the tug-of-war competition format. Rather than a best-of-three series of short bouts, the players are competing to advance across a stage. Kill your opponent, and you get the right-of-way to dash toward your side of the level. When they respawn, they have to return the favor to gain the right-of-way and take back territory. On top of the drama of each duel—which usually ends suddenly—each match is an easy-to-read struggle for progress, with lots of opportunities for comebacks and upsets. When the winning player makes it past the final room, a crowd cheers, and the titular dragon gobbles him up. Congratulations!

A sequel, featuring multiple weapons and a grotesque claymation art style, is expected later this year. 

Ultimate Chicken Horse

Isn’t the name clear enough? It’s a platformer combination of Horse and Chicken. You take turns placing platforms, obstacles, and traps around a Super Meat Boy style level, trying to make it too hard for your opponents to complete but not so hard that you can’t complete it either. As the map fills up with ways to die, you can eventually remove blocks or rearrange them, so it sort of balances itself through the course of a game. It’s not the easiest game to just jump into with friends as platforming skill will seriously come into play here, but it’s easy enough to pick up for people unfamiliar with the genre. And frankly, it’s an awesomely unique concept that you won’t really find anywhere else.

Invisigun Heroes

A newer take on the one-hit-kill same-screen deathmatch that was pioneered by the likes of TowerFall Ascension and Samurai Gunn, Invisigun Heroes mixes things up by making everyone invisible, appearing only when they shoot. Matches are tense, as it's as much about tracking your enemies' locations as it is keeping a bead on your own. Certain terrain types help with that, showing footprints or splashes of water when you walk, and bumping into a crate lights it up in the color of whoever made contact. There's also a variety of class types, each with it's own unique abilities—an exploding recon sensor and a complex doppelganger power are two highlights alongside more standard fare like a terrain jump, bullet-reflecting sword, and boring-but-effective dash attack. Various game modes also help keep things interesting, ranging from territory-control to a somewhat weird coin-collecting scheme—but nothing beats the standard deathmatch.

Sportsfriends

A compilation of quirky competition. Sportsfriends envisions four ridiculous new sports—although one, Johann Sebastian Joust, is only compatible with Mac and Linux. That's a shame, but not disastrous, as the remaining package is still great. The best of the bunch is Super Pole Riders, created by QWOP's own Bennett Foddy. It's entertainingly chaotic, as two teams of pole vaulters attempt to move an overhead ball towards their goal. Primary tactics include performing a proper pole vault, or using the pole to guide the ball along its rope. You can also play defence, using the pole as a barricade to smack an opponent away, or jumping on their head to force a respawn.

Also included is Hokra, a four player game about filling in blocks of colour; and BaraBariBall, a Smash Bros.-like arena game but with goals to score and almost infinite jumping. As a whole collection, Sportsfriends is intense, entertaining, and varied. 

For a bit of a lewder take on Sportsfriends' minigame collection, the more recent Genital Jousting offers similar goofy gameplay but paired with silly, floppy, cartoon penises.

Videoball

Sport distilled down into its essence: this is the pure videogame version of soccer, with a ludicrous range of options. Colors, scoring rules, arenas—there's a lot here to tweak to your own liking. The joy of Videoball comes in tuning into the timing of shooting and blocking. You are an Asteroids-like triangle, and the tap of a button (the game uses only one) fires a stream of small triangles out of your ship. These are good for dribbling the ball forward. Hold the button, and you power up the shot for a slam dunk—but if an opponent hits the ball with their own slam, it reverses direction while retaining all its momentum. And if you hold the button too long, your powered up shot converts into a defensive block. The pieces are incredibly basic, but there's insane headroom room for endless competition, as in any great sport.

Broforce has received two new heroes inspired by the life and times of Christopher Lambert. Broden (Raiden) and Brolander (Connor MacLeod aka the Highlander) are now playable. Both use lightning powers and the inimitable charisma of Lambert to blow up enemies.

Speaking of blowing up enemies, you can do that in sillier ways with new "All-American Supply Drops" which look like big gun robots. There are also new "performance enhancing drugs" and alien pheremones that make xenomorphs cluster together in a big group hug.

There's more: "Expert Broforce players can also test their battle-hardened skills in the all-new Covert Ops levels for each bro, designed around each unique character and their special attacks."

Broforce is jolly good fun. We enjoyed the destructible levels and the screen-shaking explosions, even if the bro-ness grew exhausting after a while. Find out more in our Broforce review.

Get mission -> kill bad guys -> rescue good guys -> kill big bad guy -> ride helicopter into sunset. This is the action movie archetype, the reason we sit in cinemas summer after summer—a plotline now so mechanical, that Free Lives went ahead and turned it into a mechanic.

It s how every single level of Broforce s technically endless campaign plays out (a level editor and custom playlists back up the sizeable main game). Like any action movie, the details might alter. Sometimes you re taking one of those massive, diagonally-moving lifts you only ever see in evil labs rather than grabbing a chopper-lifted ladder, but the effect is the same

In fact, this is Broforce s entire design outlook. It pilfers from action movies, and uses their familiarity to build an immediately readable take on the accepted run n gun genre—all pixels, enemy screams and one-shot-one-death twitchery.

The playable "bros" are Broforce's most obvious references. You play as a line-up of real action stars disguised behind increased muscle mass and names with Bro clumsily wedged into them. John Rambro, Mr. Anderbro, Broheart. Every one of the game s tens of characters is pacey, can climb any surface infinitely, and comes with primary, secondary and melee weapons. But they can play totally differently—the brilliance here being that, if you re au fait with the action film canon, you ll have a handle on how they ll work, even before you ve used them.

When you see Indiana Jones secondary weapon ammo is a neat row of bullets, you ll understand that they ll kill enemies in a single shot. Robocop s special move, which superimposes an Apple-1 green targeting matrix across the screen, would be a bit obtuse if we hadn t all watched Alex Murphy paint his enemies and precision-blast them.

There s no choice in who you play as—you re randomly assigned a Bro at the beginning of a stage, and rescuing a caged POW (which offers an extra life) randomises you again. It s a lovely system—making you weigh up the benefits of a good character against staying alive longer but getting a crap one. Everyone wants to be Leon, who can have tiny Natalie Portman snipe swathes of enemies, but no one bar no one wants to be McGyver, who weedily throws big turkeys with TNT stuffing. To add weight to the latter scale, however, the more POWs you rescue, the more Bros you re able to turn into.

It makes Broforce s characters 1-ups, unlockables, and trivia questions (I was very smug when I unlocked Planet Terror s Cherry Darling and immediately realised I could use her rifle-leg as a sort violent jetpack) all in one—they re a delightful centrepiece to the game. A shame, then, that the levels don t receive quite the same amount of knowing attention.

Vietnam-style greenery is reused over and over again, with brief pit stops in far more interesting urban environments and some subterranean tunnel systems. Enemies are reused constantly too—although they at least interact in interesting ways, as when definitely-not-Facehuggers kill AI mooks to become definitely-not-Xenomorphs. It s neat enough, but fatigue sets in quickly. In a game built on repetition, it could certainly use more superficial change-ups than it has.

Presumably, Free Lives didn t concentrate too much on level design because, most of the time, half of the stage is gone before you ve stepped on it. Even Indiana Jones whip can destroy terrain, meaning you re more often carving your way under footpaths than using them. Judging by how rarely I got myself fully stuck by just destroying everything, the levels are surprisingly well-designed under the surface, but that can t stop this system causing trouble in co-op.

Co-op is certainly a spectacle—with the right four characters, the entire screen can disappear within seconds of starting a level—but actually playing the game becomes a sterner test. It s easy to lose track of your character, meaning you won t notice that you re collapsing a bridge on all your friends heads, ruining the game for everyone. There are so many opportunities to kill your buddies, even without friendly fire, that it often becomes an active struggle not to. Playing alone often makes things more of a satisfying puzzle, but can also make certain boss fights close to impossible, when you repeatedly draw characters who can t make a dent.

But perfection is perhaps not the point. It's a joyful, giggling parody, a love letter to action fantasies, wasted youths and making the noise of a machine gun with your lips. Hell, if we re happy to watch those endlessly repetitive action movies for so long, why should this be any different?

It was over a year ago that we rustled up an Early Access review of Broforce, the machismo-soaked side-scrolling massacre simulator from the star-spangled stand up guys at Free Lives and Devolver Digital. There have been a couple of fairly significant updates since then, one bringing us an Alien Infestation and the other, simple, glorious Freedom. Somehow, it's remained in Early Access through all that—a situation which is about to change. And to celebrate the magic moment, Devolver has released what may be the most 'merican promotional video of all time: The Ballad of Rambro.

The full release of Broforce will include a new set of campaign missions pitting the bro-team against Satan. Yes, that Satan. Anyone who purchases the game during the Early Access period will also get the ultra-patriotic Freedom EP, which contains five tracks including the Broforce theme song and the full version of The Ballad of Rambro.

Broforce will come out of Early Access on October 15. Enjoy the music, bro.

Broforce developer Free Lives is celebrating the July 4 weekend with freedom! That is, the Freedom Update, an ultra-patriotic patch that adds a pair of new Bros, new melee attacks, and "combat flexing."

First on the ticket is The Brocketeer, a "Golden Age" bro who wears a jetpack and launches devastating dive bomb attacks in his fight for liberty. Joining him in the battle against tyranny is Broheart, a Scottish-American hero of legend whose cry of "Freedom!" scatters all who stand in his path. Both characters, and the rest of the Broforce, can deliver roundhouse kicks and "organ punches," and even dish out that most American form of justice: A chainsaw to the face! Wicked sick, bro!

And of course, we can't forget the flexing. "No assault on terror would be complete without an impressive display of the bros' raw power, so we've introduced a new 'flexing' feature," the studio wrote. "Now you and your bros can cease-fire, flex your biceps in the face of evil, and exercise your right to bear arms so thick your shirts tear in half."

The update incorporates a number of bug fixes as well, to enemies, environments, bosses, and Bros, including Ripbro, Browilliams, Bro Dredd, Mr. Anderbro, and Rambro. A "second installment" to the update, expected to live in the new few days, will also add on some new levels. Full details are up on Steam.

As if it wasn't enough to completely eradicate terrorism, now the Broforce have to deal with a new extraterrestrial threat. Still, they'll rise to the occasion—if only to protect the world for freedom and eagles and, er, whatever it is '80s pastiches want to protect.

Broforce has just been given its latest early access update. The Alien Infestation Update brings all manner of xenomorphic beasties to the game via a new campaign chapter.

Broforce is a 2D action platformer about explosions and level deformation. It's already a lot of fun—one of the few early access games I'd unconditionally recommend, especially for those with a co-op partner or three. In fact, the Alien Infestation update adds extra co-op considerations: players attacked by facehuggers must be taken down by their friends before bursting into something much more dangerous. Neat!

The Alien Infestation Update is out now. For more details, head over to the Broforce Steam page.

As much as I understand the general weariness towards early access, occasionally a game blasts through the caution barrier and becomes worthy of an instant and un-caveat laden recommendation. Broforce is one of those games. It's a remarkably silly side-scrolling shooter—made even more remarkable and even more silly when played in co-op. And today it becomes even bigger, with new bros, new maps and Steam Workshop support.

The Workshop page doesn't appear to be live just yet, but when it is, it'll act as a repository for user-made levels. Given that the base game's missions are hardly what you'd call restrained, I'm not sure how the community plans to one-up the Broforce devs. Either way, more levels is good news.

In addition, the game has been bolstered with new campaign missions set in Eastern Europe. To help tackle them, two new bros arrive. There's the Brode—aka, the Bride from Kill Bill—and Bro Max. Because if you can't think of a pun, just replace the word "Mad" with "Bro".

The update is now live, and being deployed automatically through Steam.