Can AI make multiplayer games? 187 say yes

Yes. As of October 1, 2026, 187 of the 492 games we list have online multiplayer, from arena shooters to a shared sheep farm. Their creators built them with AI coding tools, most often Claude Code, Cursor and Codex.

One caveat first. 183 of the 187 are Vibe Jam 2026 entries, and that jam said it preferred multiplayer games (jam page). Outside the jam, 4 of the 89 games we list play online. So this is mostly a portrait of one very sociable jam, plus a few strays.

• EyrieClaude · Action
• Floppy BrawlerClaude · Action
• StrileckaClaude · Action
• WenWareGPT · Puzzle

Coding agents build them, chat apps rarely do

The sharpest split in the data is the tool the creator worked in. Games made with the big coding tools go online about as often as not. Games made in a chat app almost never do.

Tool the creator names	Games we list	Online	Share online
Cursor	101	50	50%
Codex	88	38	43%
Claude Code	199	82	41%
A chat app: the Claude app, ChatGPT, the Gemini app or the Grok app	48	4	8%

Even the online chat-app games had help: 3 of those 4 also name Claude Code, Cursor or Codex. The jam doesn’t explain the gap away. Counting Vibe Jam 2026 entries only, 18% of chat-app games are online, against 49% for the big three.

The likely reason is plumbing. A chat app hands you code, or a page to play. An online game also needs networking, most often a server that every player connects to. An agent working in your editor or terminal can write that server, start it and test it with two browser windows open.

Which server? Colyseus, a multiplayer framework, says 48 Vibe Jam 2026 games used it, about one in seven of the jam’s online entries by its count (Colyseus blog). Two of the games it names are on our list: Hollowlands and AGI of Mythology. Our multiplayer guide compares the options to ask your agent for.

Five kinds of multiplayer AI has already made

“Multiplayer” covers very different games. Sorted by what the players share, five kinds keep coming up in the list.

Kind	What players share	Games to try
Real-time competition	One arena, in real time	Floppy Brawler, Strilecka, Kurve Royale
Co-op against the game	One fight or one climb	Eyrie, Blind Ascent
Separate runs, shared progress	A score or a saved team	Containment, Hired Swords
Shared worlds	A world, a farm or a canvas	Hollowlands, little flock, floom
Phones as controllers	A session everyone joins by phone	SimDrive, superskyler

Real-time competition

The familiar shape: drop into an arena and take on everyone else. Shooters alone make up 53 of the online games. Floppy Brawler did it with ragdoll fighters who flail under physics, and placed 13th of 945.

Strilecka adds one step first: you draw a plane, then dogfight other players in it. Its creator made it with their 6-year-old son, who loves drawing planes, and it placed 15th.

Kurve Royale moves the old trail game into 3D. Every craft leaves a trail, the dome shrinks, and the last pilot flying wins.

Co-op against the game

Eyrie is drop-in co-op: catch spirits, feed a shrine and fight off the obelisk, and other players can join a run in progress. It placed sixth and won the jam’s Most Atmospheric award.

Some co-op games are built for strangers. In one two-player climb, you and someone you’ve never met are blobs tied together by a string, and the string must not break. In Blind Ascent, the tower is pitch dark and only a scream lights up the nearby ledges for a moment. Friends share the climb and read the flashes together.

Separate runs, shared progress

These games share a number or a saved team instead of every player’s position, many times a second. In Containment, everyone fights the same boss in their own separate instance. Every hit counts against one shared health bar, with no lobby, party or voice chat.

Hired Swords is an autobattler where your team fights other players’ saved teams, so nobody needs to be online at the same moment.

Shared worlds

Hollowlands is an endless world you explore, survive in and build on, next to whoever else is out there. little flock shares a whole sheep farm: everyone who joins with the invitation code uses the same coins, buildings and sheep.

The quietest one is floom: you drift across a shared canvas planting seeds, and when your seeds meet a stranger’s, flowers and sound appear. In O Vos Omnes, players sing a Renaissance motet together as one choir. And in one Everest game, a single climber heads for the summit while everyone connected picks a side: help, or troll.

Phones as controllers

SimDrive runs on a TV or computer, and every player scans a QR code to turn their phone into a steering wheel. Tilt to steer, touch the screen to brake or accelerate. superskyler also turns phones into controllers, for a session of short party mini-games. Everyone in the room already owns the controller.

Where online play paid off at the jam

Vibe Jam 2026 ranked its entries, so we can compare online games with the rest of the same genre. The table counts the entries we list, each with its final placement. A lower median placement is better.

Genre	Online	Median, online	Median, not online
Shooter	52	#153	#380
Action	92	#175	#350
Strategy	38	#271	#323
Racing	16	#286	#340
Simulation	28	#387	#232
RPG	11	#274	#134

Shooters show the widest gap: online shooters placed far better than the ones without online play. Simulations and RPGs went the other way, and their entries without online play placed better. Some groups are small, and placement reflects much more than netcode, so treat it as a hint.

In our catalog, some genres are almost all online: 11 of 12 party games and 7 of 7 fighting games. Horror is the opposite, with 0 online games out of 11 horror games. A scare lands harder when nobody else is there to laugh it off.

1. Action9551%
2. Shooter5328%
3. Strategy3820%
4. Simulation3016%
5. Arcade1910%
6. Racing169%
7. Adventure158%
8. Party116%

Out of 187 games; a game can count in several bars.

Phones and friends go together

Online games are more often phone-ready. Among Vibe Jam 2026 entries, 73% of the online ones list phones, against 62% of the rest.

Online and phone-ready together placed better, too. Online entries that play on a phone have a median placement of #220. Online entries with no phone support listed sit at #307. Browse every phone-ready game on the mobile list.

Outside the jam, online is rare

Away from Vibe Jam’s nudge, online play is the exception: 4 of 89 games. One of them is JellyBlob, where you grow a jelly and trap rivals with your trail in a shared pond. Its creator describes how it was made:

AI wrote all of the code, with hundreds of iterations from my input and instructions. Initially made with GPT-6 Astra in Codex, then remade with Claude Opus 5.5 in Claude Code.

How to find someone to play with

We record whether a game is online, not how many people are playing it right now, so pick by design:

1. Bringing a friend? Look for room codes or invite links. Napless, a toddler brawl over the TV remote, lets you set a private room code and copy an invite.
2. Playing alone at 3 a.m.? Pick a game that doesn’t need anyone else online at the same moment, like Containment or Hired Swords, or one with bots. Splashpop Arena lets you shoot paint at bots or at up to eight friends.
3. A room full of people? Try the games where phones are the controllers, like SimDrive.

All 187 are on the online multiplayer list, ranked by player votes with jam placement as the starting point. Play one with a friend, then rate it: your stars move the rankings. Building your own? Start with how to make a multiplayer game with AI.