Brotato co-op guide — how 2–4 player runs work

Brotato's co-op supports two to four players. Everyone fights in the same arena, picks their own character, and shops in parallel between waves. The twist is that the economy is shared, so team composition is mostly about whose passives help everyone.

Setting it up

Local: tick Co-op above character select, then each extra player holds a button on their controller to join. Keyboard and mouse go to player one; the others need controllers.
Online on PC: there is no native online mode. Use Steam Remote Play Together: the host starts a co-op game, opens the Steam overlay and invites friends; they stream the host's game and only the host needs to own it. Remote players must use a controller.
Switch: up to four players locally on the Switch 2 edition.

What is shared

Materials and XP. Whoever picks it up, everyone benefits. One player on a pure economy character accelerates all four shops.
Enemies, map size and curse are team-wide modifiers. A character that spawns more enemies or shrinks the map changes the run for everyone — which is either a synergy or a liability.
Revives. A downed player can be revived by a teammate. Glass-cannon characters become much more playable with a tank nearby.

Not shared: health, items, weapons, stat lines. Your potato is yours.

The three kinds of synergy

Economy multipliers. Harvesting, Luck and material drops are pooled. Pair an economy character (Entrepreneur, Lucky, Cryptid) with a damage character who would normally struggle to afford late shops.

Shared modifiers that one partner exploits. Loud spawns more enemies; a Jack or a crit build wants more targets. Creature curses enemies; Sailor deals bonus damage to cursed enemies. Mage sets things on fire; Chef punishes burning enemies. These pairs are where co-op gets silly.

Role coverage. A team that is all damage dies to chip damage at wave 15. A team that is all economy has nothing to spend on. A rough target for four players: two damage, one economy, one tank-or-support — the support slot is where structure characters (Engineer, Builder) and healers shine because structures and auras help everyone.

Anti-synergies to avoid

Two "+% enemies" characters together: the spawn rate overwhelms the team's damage before the economy pays off.
Two map-shrinkers: there is nowhere to kite.
Two characters who both need to stand still to work.
Stacking the same scarce weapon class across the team — the shop's weighted offers get split four ways, and nobody completes a set.

Team builder

The team builder lets you pick two to four characters, scores the team on damage, survivability and economy, flags synergies and anti-synergies, and gives you a shareable link. Curated two-, three- and four-player comps are listed on the same page.