Resident Evil 2 Remake Co-Op Mod Adds Local Split-Screen Multiplayer on PC

The 2019 remake of Resident Evil 2 just became a two-player survival horror on one PC. A fan-made mod called "Local Couch Co-Op" (formerly "HUNK'y Friend") adds local co-op to Resident Evil 2 Remake, per GameSpew and DSOGaming. It launched on Nexus Mods on October 4 and was recently updated to v1.4, which added vertical split-screen. The mod is free and requires the Steam PC version only.

How the co-op mod works

Player 2 can join as HUNK or one of around a dozen other characters including Ada, Sherry, and Tofu, with separate inventories, item sharing, and a revive mechanic. You can play with two controllers, or keyboard and mouse plus one controller. Installing it needs REFramework, by placing dinput8.dll alongside re2.exe; the mod does not modify re2.exe or the engine itself.

Who made it — and the catch

Modder Shopcreeper01 explains his motivation simply: he built it so his wife could play a game she was too scared to play alone. That heartwarming pitch comes with honest caveats: it's fan-made and can be buggy, and one community tip is to turn off ray tracing to hold 60 fps, a single-user report, not a tested benchmark. It's also PC-only, so console players are out of luck. Philippine outlet GamingPH covered the release, so local players hunting for a couch co-op scare session know it's real.

For now, local co-op is the only way to play RE2 Remake with a friend. An online, two-instance co-op variant is reportedly in development, but it has no public release yet, don't hunt for download links just yet.