The test is simple. Once a game had reached at least eight hours of joint play, one of us stopped playing entirely for fourteen days while the other continued at their own pace. Then the absent player returned and we recorded what the game did about it.
Nine of the nineteen games in the file were suitable. The rest either have no persistent progress to diverge, or require both players to be present for anything at all — which, as it turns out, is one of the three good answers.
The three outcomes
| Game | What diverged | Return experience | Verdict |
|---|---|---|---|
| Salvage Line | Nothing — campaign locked | Resumed exactly where left | Graceful |
| Signal Crew | Routes unlocked, no stats | Slightly behind on route knowledge | Graceful |
| Garden Hours | Farm grew | Pleasant surprise, nothing lost | Graceful |
| Second Shift | Regions unlocked | Skipped past unplayed content | Awkward |
| Smoke Order | Equipment tiers | Worse gear than partner | Awkward |
| Cold Store | Warehouse layout changed | Learned map now wrong | Awkward |
| Relay Station | Station upgrades | Unfamiliar systems, no recap | Awkward |
| Ridge Rescue | Technique progression | Now unable to lead the current route | Punishing |
| Quarry Deep | Depth tier and tools | Could not survive partner's depth | Punishing |
Why locking progress is the best answer
Salvage Line refuses to advance the campaign without both pilots. When one of us disappeared, the other could practise in free mode but could not progress, and the fortnight cost the pair exactly nothing.
The obvious objection is that this restricts the player who is available. It does, and in practice that mattered much less than we expected: the remaining player played something else for two weeks, which is what people do anyway. What they did not do is arrive back to find their partner nine hours ahead.
The punishing cases, in detail
Both punishing games share a mechanic: individual player progression that gates access to content. Ridge Rescue advances a climber's technique and stamina; Quarry Deep advances tools and depth tolerance. In both, the partner who kept playing moved into territory the returning player was no longer equipped for.
Quarry Deep is the worse of the two because the failure is immediate and physical. Our returning player descended to where the other was working and simply could not survive there — not through unfamiliarity, but because their character lacked a stat. The only remedies were to grind alone or to have the advanced player deliberately return to shallow depths they had finished with.
We chose the second, played for forty minutes, and stopped. That was the end of the game for us, and the review's six-hour survival figure reflects it.
Individual progression that gates content is the single most reliable way to end a co-operative partnership. It is also extremely common, and almost always presented as a reward.
The awkward middle
Four games did something less severe but still unhelpful: they let the remaining player unlock or change things without the other. Second Shift's regions became available, so the returning player skipped content; Cold Store's warehouse layout had been reorganised, so a learned map was worthless.
None of these ended a partnership. All of them cost an hour or two of confusion and a slightly deflating conversation that begins oh, you've already done that.
The cheapest fix nobody implements
A recap. Not a save-state rollback, not restricted progression — just a screen on return that says what changed while you were away, in the order it happened.
None of the nine games has one. Two show a generic change log for the game itself, which is not the same thing, and seven show nothing at all. In the four awkward cases a recap would have removed most of the problem, because the difficulty there was not divergence but surprise.
What we have not tested
Longer absences. Fourteen days was chosen because it is a realistic gap for working adults and because our own schedules produced it naturally, but the interesting failures probably happen at two months rather than two weeks.
We also cannot test what happens when the returning player is the more skilled one, because in our pair the same person was available more often throughout. That is a real limitation and it means the punishing cases above describe one direction of divergence only.
Current state of the log
Nine games, one player absent fourteen days. Three handled the return gracefully, all by limiting what the remaining player could advance alone. Four produced an hour or two of avoidable confusion that a change recap would have prevented. Two ended the partnership outright, both through individual progression that gates content. No game in the sample offers any form of return recap.