Stage Fright is the other new couch co-op game at The Game Awards 2024

13 Dec

Stage Fright is the other new couch co-op game at The Game Awards 2024

Stage Fright split screen with two children staring out at a town where the left side is tinted blue and the right side is tinted red — Are local co-op games back in vogue? (Hello Games)

The team behind chaotic co-op title Overcooked announced their next project during The Game Awards, and it seems to take a few cues from Hazelight’s work.

Were you aware that two split-screen co-op adventure games, designed specifically for two players, were announced at The Game Awards 2024 last night?

The one with the most buzz was obviously Split Fiction, the latest project from It Takes Two creator Josef Fares and his team at Hazelight. Its name and release date had already leaked beforehand, but its reveal trailer promises a fun premise and unique mechanics for every level.

But Ghost Town Games, the team behind chaotic co-op title Overcooked and its sequel, have been working on something relatively similar, albeit with more cartoonish, Luigi’s Mansion inspired presentation and British voice acting.

Titled Stage Fright, it’s hard not to draw comparisons with Hazelight’s work, as Ghost Town Games describes their next project as ‘an all new co-operative experience for two players’ that can be enjoyed locally or online.

Publisher Hello Games (the same company behind No Man’s Sky) even namedrops It Takes Two when describing how there’s a clear market for such co-op centric games: ‘Overcooked started a little resurgence, but there aren’t enough games you can play with friends. The huge success of Overcooked and It Takes Two shows that folks really crave them.’

We assume they’re referring to games you can play with friends locally. There are countless multiplayer games out there, but couch co-op has certainly become something of a lost art.

If the trailer is anything to go by, Stage Fright will also make use of split-screen, as its child protagonists find themselves separated across two parallel worlds, where actions in one can impact the other.

Although you are limited to just two players, Stage Fright promises ‘Overcooked-style chaotic moments’ as players make their way through escape room-esque challenges.

When is Stage Fright being released?

Currently, Stage Fright lacks any sort of release window, and it’s also only scheduled to launch on PC via Steam.

If it’s anything like Overcooked, though, it’s bound to make the jump to consoles as well. It may even be in the works for the Nintendo Switch 2, since that’s meant to be arriving in 2025, but time will tell if that’s indeed the case.