A friend can join you for a climb up the corporate ladder in a shared-screen physics brawl. Stick It to the Stickman is a side-scrolling roguelite where you punch, kick, and weaponize your way through an office full of coworkers and rival executives. Local co-op puts both of you in the same run; Steam Remote Play Together lets a host stream that local session to a friend over the internet. The fun comes from sharing one run and the same unruly screen rather than joining separate characters through native online matchmaking.
The goal is as blunt as the company’s management style: reach the top, take out the CEO, and claim the corner office. Then the board sends you right back to intern status and the climb starts again. Your progress comes from new employees, moves, and game modes to unlock, while each run builds its own attack sequence. The joke is that even becoming the boss does not get you out of the entry-level job for long.
A shared climb through an awful workplace
The main climb starts at the bottom of a corporate tower. You move through office floors and hostile work sites, knocking red stick-figure employees out of the way as you work toward the next boss. The climb can move through warehouses with rogue forklifts, descend into a doomsday bunker, and end with a clash against the Founder. You are not clearing a set of co-op missions from a separate hub; the shared climb is the campaign-shaped through line.
Local co-op gives you and your friend separate stick figures in the same action. The screen can split, but you are still dealing with the same crowded rooms, moving hazards, and enemy waves. A punch can send somebody flying; a kick can carry its target into a desk, wall, or other threat. The ragdoll physics make collisions part of the show, so a tidy line of enemies can become a pile-up as soon as several bodies start bouncing around the office.
That physical chaos also shapes how teamwork feels. There are no support classes or fixed jobs to assign. Each player fights with their own attacks, and the company keeps throwing new opponents into the same space. When a large executive or boss appears, both players can attack it, but incoming hits and knockbacks still leave each stickman responsible for staying in the fight. The co-op value is being in the same absurd mess and pushing the same climb forward, not managing an elaborate party setup.
The run has short pauses between fights where you choose what to add to your combat chain. Those choices change what your attacks do once the next room begins. The climb keeps a straightforward objective in view, but the details of a run shift as you choose different moves, collect upgrades, and meet new enemy combinations. That makes the campaign readable even when the animations are anything but orderly.
Your attack chain becomes your build
Instead of mapping every move to a different button, the game builds an ordered string of attacks. Pressing the attack input walks through that sequence: if your chain contains a punch, two kicks, and another punch, the same repeated input produces that order. Your current move loadout therefore matters more than button gymnastics. Add a new attack and it changes the routine you bring into every fight; improve a move and it can become a more exaggerated version of itself.
The available moves range from ordinary slaps and kicks to paper planes, tasers, knives, shotguns, parcel bombs, and over-the-top powers such as a Hadouken or a dragon kick. The corporate setting makes office objects feel like a plausible arsenal: staplers and mugs fit right beside weapons that clearly belong in a less regulated workplace. Each move has its own reach, timing, and knockback, so your choices affect how a combo plays out when several enemies crowd the screen.
A run mixes those attacks with upgrades and hazards. Some improvements strengthen a move, while others change what happens when an opponent hits part of the environment. An IT-themed unlock, for example, can make a server electrocute an enemy you knock into it. Other rooms bring forklifts or different hazards into the route. The result is a brawler where the room itself can extend an attack, and where an accidental launch across the floor can be as useful as a carefully ordered combo.
You and your friend do not need matching builds for the game to make sense. The same shared run can hold different attack chains, and the moves you find make each player’s fighter look and act a little different. One stickman might lean on quick close-range hits; another can build around heavier attacks or unusual powers. The game does not turn that into a class system with mandatory roles, though. Both of you are still there to hit the same employees and move up the same tower.
Run choices also leave room for preference. A slower, heavier move may create a big opening but leave its user exposed while it comes out. A quick strike or a ranged attack can reach across a crowded screen without relying on the same setup. A move that looks funny in isolation may be hard to place inside the chain you have assembled. The changing combinations are the roguelite part: your attack order and upgrades develop as the attempt continues, then the CEO reset sends you back toward another climb with more unlocks available.
The office is only one flavor of chaos
The wider game has more to do than its central ascent. Package-delivery sections turn the workday into a platforming challenge, a fight-club mode lets executives settle disputes through an auto-battler, and Neurolink changes the rhythm into a Survivors-like run built around powers and incoming threats. The world map and unlocks help these diversions sit inside the same joke about a company that treats every problem as an opportunity to improve shareholder value.
Those modes broaden the overall game, but the shared climb is the clearest co-op fit. Each diversion has its own structure, so the climb is the straightforward choice for a pair looking for a co-op run. The level builder is a separate keyboard-and-mouse activity; custom levels sit outside the standard climb, and their co-op support should not be assumed.
The game’s sense of humor does a lot of the atmosphere work. Stick figures make the violence look like a doodle that escaped a notebook, while the setting turns office towers, warehouses, and corporate rituals into battlegrounds. A serious executive can be a boss with an overdone attack; a warehouse can add forklifts to the threat list; a brain-chip implant can send telekinetic artillery into a room. The cheerful, minimalist look sits next to deliberately ridiculous violence and a story that keeps reducing promotion to another excuse to clock in.
What kind of co-op setup fits
For local play, you share one computer and one session. Full controller support is available, and a gamepad is recommended. The co-op can use shared-screen or split-screen presentation. Native versions are listed for Windows and macOS; the macOS minimum requires an Apple M1 Max. No native Linux version is listed.
For playing from different homes, Remote Play Together streams the local multiplayer session from the host’s computer. One person runs the game, then invites a friend to take part in the same local slot; it is a streamed couch session, not native online matchmaking with a remote server or separate campaign state. Remote Play can help when only one of you owns the game, but the host’s connection and setup carry the stream. You still need to be comfortable sharing the same run and screen layout rather than expecting independent online views.
A friend is a natural fit for this kind of shared run: you enter the same rooms, face the same enemies, and build attack chains side by side. The experience centers on a common climb rather than separate online characters joining a matchmaking lobby.
A compact campaign loop, with a sharp edge
The climb is easy to explain to a friend who has not seen the game: enter a floor, fight the workers and executives in the way, improve your chain, and push toward the next promotion. New moves make the attack rhythm change as a run goes on, while unlocks and side modes give you reasons to revisit the wider game after a CEO run ends. You do not need to learn a long list of class interactions before a friend can join the office brawl.
The flip side is that the main action remains a sequence of fights. If your group wants a story campaign with branching choices, a stable online party system, or a wide roster of objectives inside every co-op session, this is a narrower fit. The game adds package runs, auto-battler bouts, and Neurolink to its overall menu, but its best-supported duo premise is still the physics-heavy climb. The combat can look messy, and some moves stand out more than others; the fun of the build comes from chaining a move set together, not from every upgrade changing your role.
The game can feel repetitive over a longer stretch because the main objective stays close to “fight through the next room.” Some moves also stand out as less useful than others, so unlocking another attack does not guarantee a new way to play. Its variety comes from the full roster of moves, hazards, enemies, and side modes rather than a deep set of co-op objectives.
Stick It to the Stickman fits two friends looking for an unruly shared-screen brawler with a clear objective and attack chains that change from run to run. You climb the company together, knock coworkers into hazards, and watch the board turn the CEO title into another unpaid internship. Remote Play Together can carry that same local session across the internet; groups looking for native online matchmaking should choose a different office.