R.E.P.O. Split Screen: Is There Local Couch Co-Op?
The short answer is no — but there is a supported way to play with friends in the same room, and one unofficial workaround for a single PC. Here is exactly what works.
Quick Answer
R.E.P.O. does not have split screen, local co-op or couch co-op. It is an online co-op game for up to six players, and every player needs their own PC and their own copy on Steam. Groups in the same room simply join the same online lobby on separate machines, with headsets so the proximity voice chat does not echo. The only way to run two players on one PC is the unofficial LocalMultiplayer mod combined with Nucleus Co-Op, which is not supported by the developers.
R.E.P.O. Split Screen and Local Co-Op Options at a Glance
Every way people try to play together on one screen, and whether it actually works:
Why R.E.P.O. Has No Split Screen
Four design reasons the game was never going to ship a shared-screen mode:
It Was Built as an Online Game
R.E.P.O. is listed on Steam as an online co-op game for up to six players. Every lobby is a network session — even when everybody is sitting in the same room, each player connects as a separate client. There is no shared-screen mode hidden in the options menu.
Proximity Voice Chat Assumes One Mic Per Player
A huge part of the game is proximity voice chat: you hear teammates get quieter as they walk away, and monsters react to noise. That design only works when every player has their own microphone and their own audio output, which a single shared console-style screen cannot provide.
Six Independent Cameras Is Expensive
Split screen means rendering the level once per viewport. With lobbies of up to six players and a physics system simulating every object you grab, throw and drop, running several views on one machine would multiply both the rendering and the physics cost.
PC Only, So Couch Co-Op Was Never the Target
R.E.P.O. is currently a PC release on Steam, with no console version. Split screen is overwhelmingly a console and living-room feature, so a Steam-only Early Access title had little reason to build it. That could change if a console port ever happens, but nothing has been announced.
How to Play Together Without Split Screen
The supported route, including the bits that matter when your whole group is in one room:
Everyone needs their own copy and their own PC
Because there is no shared-screen mode, each player buys R.E.P.O. on their own Steam account and runs it on their own machine. Two people cannot share one purchase on one computer through any officially supported route.
One player hosts the lobby
From the main menu, one person starts a game and becomes the host. The host machine matters: if the host disconnects or has a poor connection, the whole run is affected, so give the job to the player with the most stable setup.
Invite friends through Steam
Friends join through the Steam overlay invite or by joining your game from the friends list. Set the lobby to private if you only want your own group, or public if you are happy to fill empty slots with strangers.
Use in-game proximity chat, not Discord
The built-in proximity voice chat is part of the gameplay — distance, walls and panic all matter. If everyone sits in a Discord call instead, you lose most of the tension the game is built around. Check your mic and push-to-talk settings before the first run.
Playing in the same room? Use headsets
If your group really is on the couch together with separate laptops, headsets are essential. Open speakers will feed each other back through the proximity mics and turn the audio into an echo chamber.
The Unofficial Split Screen Workaround
If you genuinely need two players on one machine, this is the community route. It is third-party software and the developers do not support it:
What the workaround actually is
A community mod called LocalMultiplayer, by ZehsTeam, lets two R.E.P.O. instances connect to the same session from one Steam account. Paired with Nucleus Co-Op — a tool that launches and arranges multiple instances of a PC game on one screen — that is as close to split screen as R.E.P.O. gets.
You must supply your own Photon app IDs
The mod does not use the official servers. Its setup instructions ask you to create a free Photon account and make two cloud applications — one using the PUN SDK and one using the Voice SDK — then paste each App ID into the mod configuration. Registration is free, but it is a real setup step, not a toggle.
Set windowed mode, then launch twice
The documented flow is: switch the game to windowed mode, host a game, launch R.E.P.O. a second time so two instances are open, and press join on the second one. Nucleus Co-Op is what makes the two windows behave like a usable split-screen layout instead of two overlapping windows.
Know the trade-offs before you try it
This is unofficial software. Running two instances doubles the load on one PC, modded builds can break after any game update, and mods generally require everyone in the lobby to be on a compatible setup. Nothing here is supported by Semiwork, so treat it as an experiment rather than a feature.
Related R.E.P.O. Guides
Frequently Asked Questions
Does R.E.P.O. have split screen?
No. R.E.P.O. has no split-screen mode. It is an online co-op game for up to six players, and every player needs their own PC and their own copy of the game. There is no option in the settings menu to divide the screen, and no shared-screen mode is planned in anything the developers have published. The only way to get two views on one machine is an unofficial community mod, which is not supported by Semiwork.
Can you play R.E.P.O. couch co-op on one PC?
Not officially. There is no local or couch co-op mode, so one PC means one player. Groups who want to sit in the same room usually bring separate laptops and join the same online lobby — which works fine, provided everybody wears headphones so the proximity mics do not feed back into each other. The unofficial LocalMultiplayer mod plus Nucleus Co-Op is the only route to two players on a single machine, and it takes real setup work.
Can two people play R.E.P.O. with one copy of the game?
Not through any supported method. Because the game is online-only, each player needs a copy on their own Steam account. Steam Family Sharing does not solve this either — shared libraries generally cannot be played by two people at the same time. If you want to play with a friend, you both need to own R.E.P.O.
How many players can play R.E.P.O. together?
Up to six. The Steam description frames it as you plus five friends venturing into the level together to extract valuables. You can also play solo, though the physics-based grabbing and the heavier valuables are clearly designed with several pairs of hands in mind. Anything above six players requires mods and is not part of the base game.
Will R.E.P.O. add split screen later?
Nothing has been announced. R.E.P.O. is still in Early Access and the roadmap so far has focused on new levels, enemies and balance rather than new play modes. Players do request split screen on the Steam forums, but the developers have not committed to it. Given that proximity voice chat needs one microphone per player, a shared-screen mode would require rethinking a core system, so treat it as unlikely rather than imminent.
Does R.E.P.O. work with Steam Remote Play Together?
Remote Play Together is not listed among the game's Steam features, and the feature would not help much anyway. Remote Play Together exists to take a local couch co-op game and stream it to remote friends — it needs a local multiplayer mode as its starting point. R.E.P.O. does not have one. Since the game already supports online co-op natively, simply joining the same lobby is both simpler and better quality.
Is there split screen on PS5 or Xbox?
There is no PS5 or Xbox version of R.E.P.O. at all, so the question does not apply yet. The game is a PC title sold on Steam. If a console port is ever released, split screen would be a separate decision on top of that port — and neither has been announced.
Is the LocalMultiplayer split-screen mod safe to use?
It is a well-known community mod distributed through Thunderstore with public source on GitHub, but it is still third-party software that the developers do not support. Practical risks are the usual ones for modded games: it can break after an update, running two instances stresses one PC, and modded clients can cause compatibility problems with unmodded lobbies. Install it through a mod manager, keep a clean profile for normal play, and back up your save first.