How many players is Worst Lifeguards?
Last checked:
Four. Worst Lifeguards is a four-player online co-op game. There is no solo mode, no split screen, and no plan to raise the number.
We are the developer, so this is not a guess from a store listing. Four is the design, not a cap we ran into.
Why four and not six or eight
The station has four jobs and each one is a different pair of hands. The Tower sees the whole beach and can do nothing about any of it. The Swimmer is the only one who can get to a drowning tourist, and tires while doing it. The Jetski covers ground fast and flattens whatever is in the way. The Medic fixes people, provided the right canister is within reach.
Add a fifth player and one of those jobs becomes a spectator role. Subtract one and the beach stops being survivable in a way that is funny rather than tedious. Eight-player lobbies are a different genre — we are not making that one.
What happens if you are only three
Three people cover four jobs. There is no bot, no AI partner and no crew member the game hands you to make up the numbers. We would rather you feel the missing person than not notice they left.
The Single-player tag we removed
It was our form-filling error, and it is gone. The Steam listing carried a Single-player category until 24 September 2026. It never described the game: there is no solo mode and no plan for one. The listing now reads Multi-player, Co-op and Online Co-op, which is what the game actually is.
The facts, as they stand today
| Players | 4, online |
|---|---|
| Minimum | Designed for 4. No solo mode. |
| Split screen / local co-op | No |
| Bots or AI crew | No |
| Shift length | About eight minutes |
| Platform | PC (Windows), Steam |
| Release | 2027, no month — the date page explains |
| Steam page | store.steampowered.com/app/5176090 |
What we have not said yet
How lobbies get formed — invite-only through Steam, public matchmaking, or both — is not published. There is no build in anyone's hands yet, so anything we told you about it now would be a plan rather than a fact. When it is decided and shipped, it goes on this page with the date it changed.