Best games like Helldivers 2 (and which are solo-viable)

By WillyB · tactical PvE + open-world since 2012 · 23 June 2026

If you play alone and want it offline, go to Deep Rock Galactic first, then Earth Defense Force 6 and Remnant 2, because those three actually respect a solo session, while Helldivers 2 itself lets you drop in alone, and I do, though it is always-online and it is not balanced for one body. I have laughed at my own orbital, which is the highest compliment this game gets from me, and I have also held a four-body objective with one body and failed the patience exam, and then I queued again, which is the loop the marketing calls a war and I call a habit. Search this list and you get the same scroll every time, Deep Rock Galactic, Darktide, Starship Troopers, GTFO, lined up and ranked on how chaotic the four-player friendly-fire mayhem gets, and every list assumes you have three mates on comms. None of them answer the question I actually get asked, which is the only one that matters if your squad is just you, and that question is whether you can play this on your own, and whether you even need to be online to do it.

What the lists are ranking, and what I am ranking

Bug-blasting horde fantasy is the easy part, and every game here delivers that, while what separates them is whether they respect a player who logs in alone. I have checked each one’s current status as of mid-2026, because a few of these have shifted since launch, and the internet ranks chaos while I am ranking whether a single human can carry the loop, and whether the game still wants a live connection while you do it. Helldivers 2 itself lets you deploy solo, so you can run any mission alone, and it is an always-online game, which means there is no offline campaign to fall back on when the connection is the thing that has failed. The reach of it is bigger than ever, with PS5, PC via Steam, and Xbox Series X|S since 26 August 2025, full crossplay across all three, and no cross-progression, so your unlocks stay on the platform you bought.

I wrote up that whole resurgence in the Helldivers 2 comeback piece if you want the context, and the camera version on this page is me having no idea what is going on, which is not a complaint, because that is the texture. I would rather you buy the box you intend to keep than grind the same warbond twice and call it a feature.

The ones that actually let you unplug

Deep Rock Galactic is the king here, because you play alone with Bosco, a drone who revives you, mines, and lights the dark, and the whole thing runs offline, while only Deep Dives and weekly assignments need a connection. Gamepur has the offline notes if you want them nailed down, and I would start a solo player here before I started them on Super Earth, because Bosco is a teammate the game actually designed, not a gap you paper over with stealth. Earth Defense Force 6 is the other one I lean on, with solo play, two-player local split-screen, and up to four online, all of it playable offline on PC, PS4, and PS5.

Crossplay there is partial, because Steam and Epic talk to each other, PS4 and PS5 talk to each other, and PC and console stay apart, and it is louder and dafter than Helldivers, which is a compliment. Remnant 2 rounds out the tier, since you can set the session to offline and solo the entire campaign, it added PC, PS5, and Xbox crossplay back in early 2024, and it is the most proper game of the lot rather than a pure horde grinder. Aliens: Fireteam Elite hands you two AI teammates, Alpha and Beta, and you can run the campaign solo and offline, though the bots get thick on higher difficulties, so temper your expectations, and it is a fourth offline option if you can carry weaker squadmates, though I would still rather have Bosco.

The ones that look solo and still want a connection

Starship Troopers: Extermination is the trap on most lists, because since the 1.0 launch on 11 October 2024 it does have a single-player S.O.G. campaign with Casper Van Dien doing Rico, but it is online-only even solo, and the main horde mode still wants a real team. Siliconera is clear on the connection requirement, and it scratches the Helldivers itch closest of anything here, just not unplugged, which is the caveat I would put on the box if the box were mine. Warhammer 40K: Darktide is brilliant co-op and a miserable solo proposition, and as of mid-2026 there is still no official offline solo mode, while bots only backfill for players who quit, and the PC mods that fake it sit outside normal progression.

GTFO is the harshest of all, because it is online-only by design, it syncs to a backend even alone, and it does not scale to party size, so soloing four-player horror with bots means four times the work, and it is a co-op masterpiece you should not attempt on your own. The room will tell you both of those are the real ones because they hurt, and pain is not the same as respect for a solo evening, which is the distinction I came here to make rather than another ranking of which friendly fire looks funniest in a clip. If you play alone and want it offline, Deep Rock Galactic, then Earth Defense Force 6 and Remnant 2, with Aliens: Fireteam Elite as a fourth if you can carry the weaker AI, and if you want bot-backed horde combat closest to the Helldivers feel, Starship Troopers: Extermination nails it while staying always-online even solo.

Leave Darktide and GTFO for the nights you have a full squad, and if extraction-flavoured PvE is more your thing, I broke that down in the best solo PvE extraction shooters, while you can sanity-check any of these against current state on the Live Game Tracker before you spend a tenner. More tactical and co-op breakdowns live over in the intel index, and I keep dropping into Helldivers anyway, because dying for Super Earth is still a better joke than most of these manage when they are trying, and I just will not sell you the list as if you brought three mates.

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