Co-Op
Forest Survival multiplayer is free browser co-op for up to 8 players — one host plus 7 guests — connected peer-to-peer over WebRTC with no game server and nothing to install. Two modes ship: Co-op Survival and Last Man Standing.
Forest Survival's multiplayer drops up to eight people into the same map against the same waves of hostile robots. One player hosts a lobby, shares its ID, and everyone else joins from their own browser tab — no client, no patch, no matchmaking queue. The host picks the mode, difficulty, time of day and one of the eight biome maps, then starts. Multiplayer is the only mode that needs a free account.
Getting a Forest Survival co-op match running takes about a minute from a cold tab. Only the host does any setup — guests need the lobby ID and nothing else.
Forest Survival ships two multiplayer modes, and the host chooses between them in the lobby. Both put every player on the same map against the same shared wave of robots; what changes is when the match is allowed to end.
Co-op Survival keeps the match alive as long as anyone on the roster is still standing. Downed teammates do not end the run, so a bad wave becomes a comeback attempt rather than an instant reset. Spread your classes and cover different approach lanes: let the Medic and Heavy anchor a position while the Ranger and Scout peel.
Last Man Standing ends the match the moment only one player is left alive. Everyone still shoots the same robots, but the pressure inverts: watching your friends fall is now the clock running out, not a rescue window. In both modes the winner on the final scoreboard is whoever has the most kills, with score as the tiebreaker — so hanging back to survive does not by itself win the match.
Last Man Standing is not a deathmatch. Despite the name, Forest Survival has no player-versus-player damage: you cannot shoot another player, and there is no friendly fire. Both multiplayer modes are entirely player-versus-robot — the only thing that can kill you is the swarm, the hazards or an explosive barrel. Last Man Standing only changes the win condition, not who you are shooting at.
Forest Survival supports up to 8 players in one match — the host plus 7 guests — and the lobby stops accepting connections there. A full eight-player lobby is where class exclusivity pays off: the entire roster gets fielded at once, one of each ability on the same map.
Forest Survival's multiplayer is genuine peer-to-peer over WebRTC, using PeerJS for the handshake. There is no game server in the loop — your browser talks directly to the other players' browsers, which is why a lobby spins up instantly and costs nothing to run. Enemy simulation is host-authoritative: the host's machine owns robot health, positions and wave progression, and every guest mirrors that stream instead of running its own copy. Guests report their hits, and the host is the only peer that decides whether a robot dies.
Host authority has two practical consequences worth knowing before you organise a session. First, the host's connection and hardware matter more than anyone else's, because the host runs the full robot simulation and relays it to seven other people — hand hosting to your most stable friend, not whoever asked first. Second, if the host leaves, the match ends for everybody: authority walks out with them, and there is no host migration and no server holding the game open.
The ARK-07 relay network does work in multiplayer. The host rolls the spire placements and the network events and guests mirror them, so the whole squad cooks in the same radiation field and eats the same Overdrive Surge together.
Forest Survival's multiplayer is deliberately narrower than Solo, and it is worth being explicit about what you give up. Everything below is solo-only — none of it appears in a co-op or Last Man Standing match, whatever map or difficulty the host picks.
| Solo-only system | What you lose in multiplayer |
|---|---|
| The 4 tactical archetypes — Bulwark, Leaper, Howler, Splitter | The robots that force flanking, reaction, priority targeting and spacing never spawn in a co-op match. |
| The Revenant | The rare gold apex trickster that shields, blinks, shoots and self-heals is solo only. |
| Mystery Box wave perks | All 34 blind between-wave perks are solo only, so there is no roguelike build stacking in co-op. |
| Run modifiers | No optional run-shaping modifiers in a multiplayer match. |
| Achievements and daily challenges | The 31 achievements and the daily challenge do not progress from multiplayer play. |
| The Tactical Director | The swarm-wide adaptive brain that reads your playstyle and issues one shared directive is solo only; multiplayer robots run their individual behaviour without it. |
| Rapier ragdolls | Physics death ragdolls are solo only. |
| Critical-health bullet-time | The low-health slow-motion window does not trigger in multiplayer. |
What you keep is the core shooter: all 8 weapons on the same unlock curve, all 8 classes and abilities, all 8 maps, the four difficulties, the weather and hazards, the boss waves, and endless waves with no win condition. Co-op is the same fight with a squad in it.
Yes — multiplayer is the only part of Forest Survival that requires signing in. Your account supplies the username on your nameplate, your avatar and your rank badge, all broadcast to the other players, so an anonymous session has nothing to show them. Solo and the Tutorial need no account: open the site, hit play, and come back for an account when you want to bring friends. If you are new, run the 9-step Tutorial first — it locks each control until it has taught you the one before it, which beats learning to reload in front of seven people.
Forest Survival multiplayer is free, like the rest of the game: MIT-licensed, with no ads, no in-app purchases and no monetization code anywhere in it. Peer-to-peer with no game server means there is nothing to charge for.
Yes — Forest Survival runs on phones and tablets with a full on-screen control set: virtual joystick, fire, jump, crouch, reload, weapon selector and ability buttons, plus a drag-to-arrange HUD layout editor. Play in landscape; a rotate prompt appears in portrait. Mobile players carry a device indicator on their nameplate and scoreboard row, so the squad can see who is on touch.
A guest dropping out does not end a Forest Survival match — only the host leaving does that, since the host owns the enemy simulation. Everyone else keeps fighting the same wave. In Last Man Standing, note that the match still ends as soon as one player is left alive, so a run of disconnections can close it out early.
Forest Survival's weapon unlocks work in multiplayer exactly as they do solo: each weapon unlocks against a base score multiplied by the host's chosen difficulty, so on Medium every weapon costs 2.5× its base requirement. Achievements and daily challenges are solo only and will not tick up from co-op — chase those in Solo. The FAQ covers progression and accounts in more detail.
The wiki covers the netcode and lobby flow in more depth than this page. It is maintained separately from this site and kept in step with the code.
Forest Survival is free, runs in the browser, and needs no account for Solo or Tutorial — sign in only when you want to host a lobby for friends.