Stuck Together: Two-player co-op rage game that’s guaranteed to test your patience and friendships

A couple of weeks ago, during my playthrough of Baby Steps, I uttered something that now seems like it may have been a bad omen. I wondered aloud about a possible two-player rage game in which each person controls two feet of a horse to navigate the world around them. Then, as though the universe had heard me, an email arrived in my inbox about Stuck Together. 

Stuck Together is a two-player co-op rage game meets precision platformer by Hugecalf Studios that sees you and a friend each controlling two arms of a toy that looks like it’s been through the wringer in the bedroom of Sid from Toy Story. 

Melted together in the middle but still each possessing their own upper body strength, this combination duck-horse abomination needs to travel upwards, and it’s far harder than you might think. 

Bonding through rage

I’ll be honest, the person you pick to play Stuck Together with will be the biggest deciding factor in how far you manage to get without force-closing the game and then possibly not talking to each other for a week. You need communication skills bordering on telepathy to navigate the upwards trajectory of our symbiotic playthings, and it’s difficult even with the people you’re the closest to in life. 

Of course, as I always do when there’s a two-player experience to be had, I dragged my fiancé along for the ride that is Stuck Together. We’re 3,000 miles apart, our level of communication is a shining example of everything that should be necessary to get through the demo level in record time, and even we ended up yelling at each other (with smiles on our faces), asking what the hell the other person was trying to achieve by flinging us off an oversized, floating Tetris block. 

Timing is everything

You need to talk every step of the way in this journey towards the top. Not only do you need clear, concise instructions (and someone who won’t take your snappy orders to heart), but you also need to do it very quickly, because you only have a certain amount of grip in each of the two hands you control. Once you run out of grip, you let go of whatever you’re holding onto. 

It’s a good idea to try and conserve energy in each hand, alternating which one you use to cling on for dear life to whatever object happens to be within reach. But it’s also not that simple, because Stuck Together is capable of inciting pure panic at a moment’s notice and then your own hands tighten on any button of the controller that might possibly help, so you end up using all of your grip in both hands and falling right back down to the start all over again.

On the plus side, if you can nail down a rhythm between the two of you, things start to feel almost meditative and satisfying. That is, however, a double-edged sword, because complacency can all too easily set in, allowing you to get a bit too sure of yourselves. Once you get cocky, one mistake is all it takes to remind you that your progress isn’t saved. 

And that’s when the rage kicks in

It doesn’t matter how well you manage to communicate, how successfully you can manage to find that rhythm, or if you regularly have the patience of a saint; there are only so many times you can face re-climbing the same section of floating objects. Falling from any height back to the beginning of the course is always going to be an infuriating moment, but by the time you’ve done it three, four, or more times… That’s when the rage really starts to kick in. 

Remember when I said that you need to choose your co-player carefully when diving in and playing Stuck Together? This is the main reason for that. In a single-player rage game, you only have yourself to get mad at and blame for the monumentally stupid mistakes you make along the way. Having someone else with you means that they end up being raged at, while you also end up being raged at by them. 

However, the flip side of that is that you have someone to laugh with when things go horribly wrong, because if you don’t laugh, you might cry. Plus, getting it right, even for a brief moment, really does feel like a moment of bonding, however short-lived that moment might be. 

Stuck Together is still in development and doesn’t have a release date just yet, but there is a two-player demo available to download through Steam that’s absolutely worth playing with your chosen co-player. Just don’t take things too seriously, and you might walk away still being friends.