DuneCrawl’s Crustacean Combat Makes It The First Great Co-Op Game Of 2026
Giant friendly crabs.
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.
DuneCrawl is a clever co-op sandbox that’s a joy to play with friends.
You’ll split your time in DuneCrawl between piloting your Dune Crawler and hopping off to explore cities, outposts, and caves on foot. There’s a huge variety of both melee and ranged weapons to equip your character with, and combat quickly gets chaotic once the bombs and bullets start flying. The desert is also full of Polloi-sized beetles to ride, which can serve as combat mounts that move with a satisfying sense of weight and make it easy to flank your enemies.
DuneCrawl is playable solo, but the real joy comes from its co-op mode. Bringing a friend along makes combat easier and exploration more fun, and teamwork is even more crucial in the best part of the adventure — the Dune Crawler. Each player takes on a different task aboard your mobile base; one needs to steer the ship, and another can fire the cannons when you’re assaulting an enemy fortification. You can also have someone heal the Crawler, reload the guns, or boost your ship’s speed.
It’s the way DuneCrawl demands teamwork that makes it such a great multiplayer experience. Since each player can only do one task at a time aboard the Crawler, good communication is essential, and pulling it off well is extremely satisfying. You might find yourself steering around enemy attacks and stomping foes on the ground while maneuvering to let your gunners get the perfect shot, then retreating to make space for crewmates making repairs. Or you could climb into a cannon and blast yourself onto an enemy ship to take out its weapons and keep the rest of your team safe. You can also summon a ghostly NPC to help in both solo and co-op, but the more actual players you have on your side, the more rewarding it is.
There’s a lot more to DuneCrawl than its walking fortresses, but its crab versus crab combat is a high point.
DuneCrawl’s unique form of teamwork is what makes it great, but it’s full of other surprises, too. The ability to load yourself into a cannon is something my co-pilot discovered organically as we played, and we delightedly tested it out by hurling ourselves at the first enemies we found. We also discovered bombs that launch bees to clear out hostile bases, friendly spiders that help repel boarders, and maybe our favorite part of the game, a horn you can play to make wildlife follow you around like the Pied Piper.
While your ultimate goal is to defeat the forces invading your desert, there are plenty of sidequests to take on and outposts to raid, all dotted around the map for you to discover. DuneCrawl is pretty straightforward if you’re just going after the main quest, but like all great multiplayer games, it’s much better when you take your time and focus on exploring with your friends. A week into 2026, DuneCrawl’s fresh approach to co-op is the year’s first big surprise.
