Competitive shooters still make up the majority of the most popular multiplayer games, but in 2025, co-op games as varied as Peak and Elden Ring: Nightreign also found huge audiences. 2026 already has its share of co-op games on the way, and the year starts with an inventive multiplayer game I’m hooked on. In DuneCrawl, you work with up to three other players to command a mobile battle station together, one that happens to be built on the back of a giant, armored crab.
More specifically, you play as members of the Polloi, a desert-spanning society that worships a crustacean deity and rides through the sands on gargantuan crabs known as Dune Crawlers that are festooned with cannons. As the game starts, you free one of these Dune Crawlers from a group of technologically advanced invaders from the north and set out to stop the assault.
