How to Fish and Gamble With Your Friends: 2026's $8 Co-op Gold Rush

Two of the biggest indie surprises of 2026 have a lot in common. Both cost $7.99. Both are built for small groups of friends. Both start with a simple, slightly ridiculous problem: you are stuck, broke and need to work your way out. And according to industry tracker GameDiscoverCo, both have sold in the millions.

Gamble With Your Friends, from TEAM GWYF and publisher TENSTACK, launched on Steam on 1 May 2026. How to Fish, from Dazed Games, followed on 20 August 2026. GameDiscoverCo estimated that Gamble With Your Friends sold just over 2 million copies in May, and that How to Fish passed 8.5 million copies and $38 million in gross revenue by the end of September. Those are estimates rather than official totals, but the Steam reviews tell the same story: How to Fish sits at 95% positive across almost 30,000 English reviews.

How to Fish: crash, cast, repeat

How to Fish is a physics-based fishing game for 1 to 4 players. The setup is pure comedy: you are out boating, you crash into a small island, and the only way home is to learn to fish.

You start with nothing, sell your catch, buy better gear and work your way up. There are quests, bosses that unlock new islands with nastier creatures, rare fish variants to collect and trick shots that earn bonus cash. Because it runs on physics, a perfect cast and a ridiculous accident are often one button press apart, which is exactly what makes it fun with friends.

How to Fish is also sold in a bundle with PEAK, the 2025 co-op climbing hit, and GameDiscoverCo noted that the game had backing from PEAK's co-developer Landfall. That connection helped put it in front of exactly the right audience.

Gamble With Your Friends: beat the loan shark

Gamble With Your Friends is an online co-op casino game for 1 to 6 players. You and your friends share one bank account and one enormous debt, and every in-game day a loan shark wants his quota.

Each day you get five minutes inside a casino tower to make as much money as you can. The tower has four themed floors and 17 games of chance, shuffled every time you enter. Hit your quota or complete challenges and you earn tickets, which you spend on more than 15 items that bend the odds, or on cosmetics.

Why cheap co-op keeps winning

Both games belong to the genre that the internet half-jokingly calls "friendslop": low-cost games whose fun comes mostly from the people you play with. The pattern has repeated since Lethal Company in 2023, and 2026 has been its biggest year yet, led by Meccha Chameleon, the two-person hide-and-seek game that sold 15 million copies (our Meccha Chameleon feature).

Three things make the formula work:

• Low price, group purchase. At $7.99, one friend can convince the rest of the group to buy in the same evening.
• Simple setup, endless stories. A crashed boat or a loan-shark quota needs no tutorial, and every session produces new disasters to laugh about.
• Made for streams. Short, chaotic moments are perfect clips, and clips sell games.

By the numbers

• $7.99: base price of each game on Steam
• 1 May 2026: Gamble With Your Friends launches
• 20 August 2026: How to Fish launches
• Just over 2 million: estimated Gamble With Your Friends sales in May 2026 (GameDiscoverCo)
• 8.5 million+: estimated How to Fish copies by end of September 2026 (GameDiscoverCo)
• 95%: How to Fish's positive Steam review share
• 88%: Gamble With Your Friends' positive Steam review share

What to watch

The challenge for every friendslop hit is staying power. These games explode when a friend group discovers them, and fade when the group moves on. Watch for content updates, new islands and casino floors, and whether either team can turn a viral moment into a lasting series.

WGC's take: The $8 co-op game is now one of Steam's most reliable paths to a breakout. Neither of these games reinvents the wheel, but both understand that the best feature in a co-op game is your friends. For a slower, gentler take on playing together, read our feature on Big Walk (Big Walk).