Royal Vermin, a physics-driven local multiplayer fighter from independent studio Tobafeu Studio, is now available on Steam and Nintendo Switch. The base game is free to play, with optional DLC expanding the level count and cosmetic options.
Humans are gone. The world has become a massive junkyard, and the vermin have inherited what's left. Rats, seagulls and other pests now wage war across heaps of garbage for the only prize that matters: a golden throne. Royal Vermin is a 2 to 4 player local platform fighter built around ranged combat, where players scavenge projectiles from the environment, charge their shots and try to knock rivals off collapsing arenas. The arenas themselves are unstable, breaking apart mid-match and shifting the ground beneath everyone's feet. Nothing stays reliable for long, which means no one gets comfortable.
The game is designed around a specific problem that plagues couch multiplayer: skill gaps. When one player is clearly better than everyone else, the night stops being fun for the rest of the room. Royal Vermin attacks this from multiple angles. The arenas are deliberately unbalanced, built so that no position offers a lasting advantage. Difficulty settings can be adjusted at any time during a match, not just before it starts. And when a player gets eliminated, they aren't done. A revenge mode lets knocked-out players team up against whoever is in the lead, creating opportunities for spectacular comebacks that keep eliminated players invested rather than reaching for their phones.
The combat revolves around grabbing garbage from the environment and hurling it at opponents. Projectiles can be charged for harder hits, turning scraps of junk into genuine threats. Because the arenas are physics-driven and constantly deteriorating, the same level never plays the same way twice. A platform that was safe ten seconds ago might crumble underfoot, and a throw that would have missed on a stable surface might connect when the ground shifts at the wrong moment. The game also regularly interrupts standard matches with mini-games that change the objectives entirely, breaking up the rhythm and piling on unpredictability.
The chaos is the point. Royal Vermin isn't trying to reward the most skilled player in the room. It's trying to make sure every round stays tight until the very end, where the worst player at the table still has a real shot at claiming the throne. The controls are simple and accessible enough for newcomers to pick up quickly, but the physics and collapsing environments ensure that even experienced players can't fully control what happens next. Matches run fast, and the combination of dynamic levels and shifting objectives is built to trigger that "one more round" impulse.
The tone leans into absurdity. This is a world where pests fight over garbage for the right to call themselves royalty, and the game doesn't take any of it seriously. The monarchy is ridiculous, the arenas are literal trash, and the whole thing is designed to generate laughter rather than tension. It's couch multiplayer pitched at the messy, loud end of the spectrum, where the funniest moments come from physics gone wrong and last-second comebacks from players who were supposed to be eliminated.
Online play is not officially supported, though Steam Remote Play Together offers a workaround. At least two players are required. The free base game covers the core junkyard arenas, while the DLC expands beyond the trash heap with additional levels and cosmetics. Every match in Royal Vermin is a fight over a throne that nobody really deserves, played out on ground that won't stop falling apart underneath you.