One of 2025's surprise hits was Peak, a co-op climbing game that was created in a mere four months by studios Aggro Crab and Landfall. It caught fire on Twitch and in every friend group hooked on so-called "friendslop" since 2023's Lethal Company.
Even though there has been a strong trend of co-op games in the past few years, Aggro Crab and Landfall weren't expecting Peak to explode in popularity.
"When we flew to Sweden to release the game with the Landfall team, we were ready to hit the launch button and go into vacation mode," Aggro Crab studio head Nick Kaman told GamesRadar. "That quickly became a pipe dream."
Everyone immediately fell in love with the game about elastic little guys waddling up mountains together and the developers quickly pivoted to supporting it with bug fixes, new items, and new maps. And now, six months later, the game is still thriving. Earlier this month, Peak had an in-game concert by rapper bbno$ like it was Fortnite.
It's all mighty impressive for a game that has still maintained its charming game jam-like quality—something Kaman said was important to maintain as the studios updated it. Wobbly character models and opportunities for goofy pratfalls are why these games catch on so quickly.
Peak is a comedy game at its heart and I'm glad to see the developers talking openly about that, especially when there are people out there not using the term "friendslop" ironically. I'll admit: I don't love the term myself, but that's mostly because I think words matter and we really should've come up with anything else to describe the budding genre. But it stuck and here we are.
But no silly terms can take away the joy Peak brought to me and my friends this year and the millions of others who enjoyed it too. Kaman doesn't say how much longer Peak will be updated regularly, but he did say the team has a goal to finish everything they're excited about and will then move on to the next thing.
