Co-op

Noobs Are Coming

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The Game

Noobs Are Coming is a synergy roguelike developed and published by Overboy, and it flips the usual fantasy RPG on its head – you are the final boss of an MMORPG, and the “noobs” of the title are the adventurers (complete with silly usernames and chat messages) who keep turning up to kill you. It entered Early Access on Steam on 15 July 2025 and reached version 1.0 on 27 November 2025. If you have played Brotato the format will feel familiar – the developer lists it and The Binding of Isaac as the main inspirations – but the boss theme gives it a personality of its own.

You pick a boss from a roster of 45 playable characters, each with its own effect, and survive wave after wave of heroes in a small arena. Between waves you spend souls in the shop on attacks (70+ of them, including boss patterns, minions, plants you can water and physics attacks such as chained spikeballs that you can kick around) and items (150+) to build a ridiculous, synergy-fuelled monster. There are 138 unlockables, five difficulty levels plus an Endless mode, a Character Merge feature that combines the effects of other characters, and runs that take under 30 minutes.

It can be played solo or with up to four players in local co-op, and online through Steam Remote Play Together. There is also a Twitch streamer mode which pulls usernames and messages from your chat to name the noobs. The screenshots below show the title screen, the character select, a few boss builds and the four-player co-op mode.

Noobs Are Coming title screen with the red logo above a group of boss characters on a stone arena, facing a row of small adventurer heroes below.
Noobs Are Coming gameplay screenshot of the pink screaming boss character Mom swinging spiked chains at a crowd of tiny adventurers on wave 7 of 20, with the speech bubble YOU ARE NOT PREPARED.
Noobs Are Coming character selection screen showing the Mom boss description, difficulty and endless wave records, a Co-op toggle and a grid of more than 40 boss characters.
Noobs Are Coming four-player co-op screenshot with a health and level bar in each corner of the screen, four boss characters fighting a swarm of adventurers on wave 10 of 20 amid lightning and fire effects.
Noobs Are Coming screenshot of a purple crowned snake boss fighting a hero party named Trinity_Tank, Trinity_DPS and Trinity_Healer on wave 15 of 20, with chat-style taunts and floating damage numbers.
Noobs Are Coming screenshot of a green spiky plant boss surrounded by angry carrot, tomato and cactus minions fighting adventurers in a graveyard arena on wave 6 of 20.
Noobs Are Coming screenshot of a skull-headed bone worm character surrounded by pink worm minions with open mouths attacking adventurers on wave 5 of 20.
Noobs Are Coming screenshot of a skull-faced armoured boss in a green arena surrounded by hordes of adventurers, frogs and fairies, with lightning, red warning circles and glowing purple souls everywhere.
Noobs Are Coming pre-wave intro card showing a sad red potion boss on the left and a gold-helmeted knight named FriendlyFire on the right shouting LEEROOOY JENKINS.
Noobs Are Coming versus screen with a winged vampire boss named Nosferastik on the left facing a tank, a rogue and a healer named Trinity_Tank, Trinity_DPS and Trinity_Healer on the right.

Worth it?

Noobs Are Coming costs £6.69 on Steam in the UK (price checked on 25 October 2026). The lowest UK price recorded on SteamDB is £4.01 (40% off), which was the Early Access launch discount in July 2025, so a sale price in that region is the one to wait for if you are not in a hurry. It is available on PC (Windows only) and is Steam Deck Verified. A demo is available on itch.io if you want a taste first.

The best things about it are the sheer variety – the characters really do change how you play – and the jokey presentation, with the noobs shouting things like “Leeroy Jenkins” and trading insults. Runs are short, so it is easy to fit in a few at a time. What really makes it shine is the ability to make things go truly crazy with stacking weapons and synergies. Overall Steam reviews sit at around 81% positive from roughly 1,600 reviews, but the most recent reviews were Mixed (47% positive over the last 30 days when I checked), so it is worth skimming those before buying – the developer has been rebalancing the game frequently, so how it plays can shift from patch to patch.

Overall, if you enjoy Brotato-style games and want something with more personality and co-op, it is a fun, cheap pick, and one to buy on sale if you are on the fence. I have sunk over 40 hours into it quite easily and I still haven’t unlocked all the characters – the frequent updates also give it good revisit value.

Tips

  • Skull is a good balanced character to start with before you move on to the stranger bosses
  • Buy survivability first – HP, armour, dodge and regeneration – and only then start stacking damage
  • Turn down the attack opacity in the settings (there is a transparent attacks option) so you can see enemies and projectiles through the chaos
  • Do not grab everything – build around one or two core interactions and attacks that share synergy tags so they boost each other
  • Heroic Noob boss fights appear in the later waves – the developer’s patch notes mention waves 15, 20 and 25 – so have your defences ready before wave 15
  • Character Merge unlocks once you have unlocked 15 characters (it used to be 25), and it lets you combine the effects of other characters
  • Physics-based attacks like spikeballs and wrecking balls can be kicked around, so position yourself to hit enemies with them
  • Difficulty 5 needs only one win on each earlier difficulty to unlock, so you can reach it faster than before
  • In co-op you can set shared souls, shared chests and shared XP, so decide the rules before you start a run
  • Online co-op uses Steam Remote Play Together – only the host needs to own the game
  • Mods: I could not find any Steam Workshop or official mod support for this game, so there are no mods to recommend

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