Split-screen and local multiplayer get lumped together, but they're not the same thing, and they're not the same night on the couch. Split-screen means two distinct views on one TV. No laptops, no second console, no shared camera making one player squint at the corner of the screen. I've played tons of split-screen, a lot of it on a PS5, some of it with my wife even, and the genuinely good ones are rarer than you'd think.
I scored every pick on split-screen quality, overall game quality, local multiplayer fun, accessibility, and performance depth. Split-screen quality carried the most weight, since that's the entire point of this list.
For the full picture on PS5 multiplayer, see our Best Multiplayer PS5 Games guide. This article focuses specifically on true split-screen play, not shared-screen party games or general local co-op.
Quick Picks
Best for two-player couples: Split Fiction
Best for racing rivalries: Dirt 5
Best for RPG fans: Baldur's Gate 3
Best for family game night: LEGO Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga
Best for a cozy evening: Stardew Valley
The Top 10 Best Split-Screen PS5 Games
These are the games where splitting the screen is a real reason to buy, not a checkbox buried in a settings menu.
“A 2025 co-op showcase designed entirely around split-screen.”
Split Fiction comes from the studio behind It Takes Two, and it takes that game's constant reinvention and points it directly at split-screen. Where It Takes Two occasionally lets the camera drift into a shared view, this one keeps the screen divided from the opening minute to the credits, because the whole design assumes two people occupying two distinct spaces. I played this with my wife over four evenings and the variety never let up: platforming one chapter, a shooting gallery the next, something closer to a racer after that. No downtime. Nobody waiting for the other to catch up. If you buy exactly one split-screen game this year, make it this one.
“Build, survive, and explore together in one of couch gaming's staples.”
Minecraft on PS5 runs through backward compatibility rather than a native build, and it shows a little in the UI, menus clearly designed for a controller from a decade ago. None of that matters once four players are split across the screen and someone's little brother has just set fire to the wheat field. My kids fight over who gets the top-left quadrant more than they fight over what to actually build. Survival mode works fine locally, but creative is where four-player split-screen earns its place here: no server to rent, no accounts to juggle, just four controllers and one console. It's not the prettiest split-screen on this list. It's one of the most dependable.
“A gigantic RPG that somehow feels complete in split-screen.”
I've played every Baldur's Gate solo, making every decision for the whole party myself. BG3 is the first one where I'd actually tell you to play it with someone else on the couch instead. The dynamic split-screen lets you wander into a different corner of the same dungeon, and the game keeps up: camera adjusting, dialogue running independently, no waiting on someone else's tooltip. Pair a Cleric with a Rogue and fights click in a way solo play never quite manages. The catch hasn't changed. This is a hundred-plus-hour campaign, and split-screen only pays off with a genuinely committed second player. Casual drop-in guests need not apply.
“One of PS5's best true four-player split-screen racers.”
I've put plenty of hours into Gran Turismo 7, and that game will show up further down this list for a reason: its split-screen feels bolted on next to what Dirt 5 does. This is a racing game built around four-player split-screen from the ground up, not a sim mode with a second camera added as an afterthought. Split the screen four ways and the game barely blinks, framerate holds, the readability stays intact even with four tiny viewports stacked on a 55-inch panel. Arcade handling means nobody needs to have driven a real car to be competitive within a lap or two. It's short on realism. It's long on actual couch-night mayhem.
“Chaotic couch co-op looting with the newest Borderlands firepower.”
My regular LAN sessions run on laptops, one machine per person, so split-screen rarely enters the picture for that group. Borderlands 4 is the reminder of why it still matters for two people sharing one TV and one console. Drop in with a second controller and the screen divides cleanly into two vertical halves, loot notifications popping in both sides without slowing anything down. The chaos that makes Borderlands work, guns raining out of every enemy, skill trees nobody quite agrees on, survives the move to a single screen better than I expected. It's not as clean as Split Fiction. Menus get cramped once loot starts stacking up in both halves at once. Stick to two players and it holds together fine.
“The all-ages split-screen adventure that rarely misses.”
My son picked the Skywalker Saga off the PS Store himself, mostly because he recognized the Millennium Falcon on the cover, and that's basically the whole pitch for this game. Split-screen is dynamic here: stick close to your partner and you share one view, wander off toward a different objective and the screen divides itself automatically without either of you touching a menu. Nine movies' worth of content means neither of you runs out of things to smash, and the humor lands regardless of whether the other player has actually seen Star Wars. Combat is simple button-mashing dressed up in lightsabers, which is exactly the point for a five-year-old on the other controller. It's not deep. It doesn't need to be.
“A cozy split-screen farm that can absorb entire weekends.”
Cozy games have crept up on me lately, and Stardew Valley in split-screen is the clearest example of why. My wife and I have run a farm together for maybe an hour at a time, tending crops on opposite sides of the screen, and it's the kind of low-stakes evening I actually look forward to after the kids are asleep. It runs through PS4 backward compatibility rather than a native PS5 build, and it shows in small ways, load times mostly, nothing that ruins the experience. The split-screen itself is nothing fancy, just two clean halves, but that's the right call for a game this unhurried. It won't grab you if you want tension or stakes. That's not what it's for.
If two-player co-op specifically is what you're after, whether or not it's split-screen, check out our Best 2-Player PS5 Multiplayer Games guide.
“One of the all-time great co-op RPGs still shines in split-screen.”
If Baldur's Gate 3 hooked you and your co-op partner and you've already finished it, Divinity: Original Sin 2 is the obvious next stop, same studio, same tactical DNA. I went back to it after wrapping BG3 with a friend, mostly out of curiosity, and the turn-based combat scratched an itch real-time-with-pause never quite reaches. This runs on PS4 backward compatibility rather than a native build, and the UI reminds you constantly, small text, a lot of menus before a fight makes sense. Split-screen is dynamic, same as BG3, splitting when you separate and merging back when you're together. It's a heavier lift than most of this list. Worth it, if you've got the patience.
“Loot, builds, and demon-slaying make couch co-op dangerously bingeable.”
I started Diablo IV solo and didn't finish it. The campaign alone never quite pulled me back for a second sitting. Split-screen with a second player changed that completely: the camera shares one view while you're close together and splits into two distinct feeds the moment you wander apart, chasing separate loot drops on separate parts of the map. It requires a constant online connection even for local play, which is a strange requirement for two people sitting on the same couch, but once you're in, the build-crafting and loot chase are exactly as addictive as everyone says. It's more grind than Baldur's Gate 3's story-first pace, and that's by design. Worth it, especially if it's already sitting unfinished in your library.
“Physics chaos that turns every puzzle into slapstick co-op.”
Human: Fall Flat is the game on this list I'd actually bring to family game night rather than my regular LAN group, mostly because my LAN crowd would break it in embarrassing ways within minutes. Two players share a proper split-screen through every puzzle stage, and the physics are deliberately unreliable: characters flop, ragdoll, and fail at basic tasks like climbing a ladder. That failure is the whole joke, and it lands better with people who aren't trying to be good at games. The puzzle logic gets genuinely obscure without a hint. Nobody minds. The point was never solving the puzzle. It was watching your partner fall off a crane for the fourth time.
Honorable Mentions
These narrowly missed the cut, usually because the split-screen mode is a little narrower or a little less polished than what's above.
My competitive multiplayer phase mostly happened over Call of Duty and FIFA, but Rocket League is the game that keeps pulling former competitive players back in. Five minutes a match, gone before you notice. Split-screen supports up to four players locally, and the short matches mean even a losing round doesn't sting for long. The physics take real practice. That first aerial attempt usually ends with your car upside down against a wall, but the learning curve is part of the appeal rather than a barrier. It didn't crack the top ten mainly because the split-screen experience feels a little tighter with four players crammed onto one screen than the online mode most people actually buy it for.
This is the racer I'd actually hand to my kids before Dirt 5, because the toy-car presentation and the impossible loop-the-loop tracks make crashing into a wall feel like part of the show rather than a failure. Two-player split-screen races load fast and the arcade handling means a seven-year-old can be competitive against an adult within a couple of laps. It's smaller than Dirt 5. Fewer events, a shorter career mode, and the tracks start repeating their gimmicks eventually. But as a five-minute pickup for two people who just want a quick race before dinner, it does exactly what it needs to.
13. Fortnite
80%Warzone has been more my speed than Fortnite over the years, but I still boot up Duos with a nephew now and then, mostly for the split-screen novelty. Two players can share one console and one screen in Duos or Squads, though the split only works in those specific modes, not across the whole game. Performance takes a visible hit once the screen divides: textures soften, frame pacing gets noticeably less smooth than solo play. It's free. There's no real cost to trying it with a sibling or a partner for an evening, but the split-screen feels like a mode that survived rather than one the game was actually built around.
Gran Turismo 7 is one of the racing games I actually own and play regularly, and it's the one I'd reach for if a friend wanted a serious head-to-head race rather than arcade chaos. Split-screen here is a simple two-player horizontal split for local versus races, no career mode support, no four-player option, just you and one other person on the same track. The handling model rewards actual racing lines and braking points in a way Dirt 5 never tries to. That precision is also the catch: local split-screen loses some of the visual fidelity that makes GT7 worth owning. Great for one specific kind of couch rivalry. Not the game to reach for with four people in the room.
Goat Simulator 3 is the game I'd throw on at the end of a LAN night when everyone's brains are fried from three hours of Left 4 Dead 2 and nobody wants to think anymore. Four players split the screen and just cause deliberate, physics-broken chaos across an open world built for exactly that. There's no real objective. That's either the appeal or the problem, depending on your mood that evening. The humor is juvenile on purpose, goats headbutting cars, ragdolling off cliffs, and it works precisely because nobody's trying to be clever about it. It missed the top ten because the actual gameplay underneath the jokes is thin once the novelty wears off, usually around hour two.
Frequently Asked Questions
A few questions that come up constantly when people search specifically for split-screen rather than local multiplayer in general.
What makes a game true split-screen instead of just local multiplayer?
True split-screen means each player gets their own dedicated portion of the screen while playing on the same console and TV. A lot of local multiplayer games only offer shared-screen play, where everyone looks at one camera, or pass-and-play, where you take turns. This list only includes games where the screen is actually divided during real gameplay.
Do any of these games support more than two players in split-screen?
Yes. Minecraft, Dirt 5, and Stardew Valley all support up to four players split across the screen at once. Most of the rest, including Split Fiction, Baldur's Gate 3, and Borderlands 4, are built around exactly two players and don't scale beyond that.
Does split-screen hurt performance on PS5?
A little, depending on the game. Dirt 5 holds up well even with four viewports active, but heavier games like Diablo IV and Borderlands 4 show softer textures and busier menus once the screen splits. None of the games on this list become unplayable in split-screen, but a couple are visibly less polished than their solo or online modes.
Can I play these split-screen games without an internet connection?
Most of them, yes. Split Fiction, Baldur's Gate 3, Dirt 5, Minecraft, and the RPGs on this list all run local split-screen with no online requirement. Diablo IV is the exception. It needs a live connection even when both players are sitting on the same couch.
What's the best split-screen pick for younger kids?
LEGO Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga and Hot Wheels Unleashed 2: Turbocharged are the easiest entries for younger players, since both use simple controls and forgiving difficulty. Minecraft works too, especially in creative mode, once a kid can handle a controller well enough to move a camera independently.
Conclusion
Split-screen isn't dead on PS5. It's just concentrated in a smaller pool of games that build for it rather than bolt it on. Split Fiction and Dirt 5 sit at opposite ends of that pool, one built entirely around two people sharing a screen, the other proving racing games still know how to do four-player split right.
Want co-op without the split-screen requirement? Our Best Co-Op PS5 Games guide covers more ground, and our Best PS5 Party Games list is worth a look for bigger groups.
