Is it possible to make a Multiplayer (1v1) game WITHOUT hosting servers?

I’m working on a turn-based multiplayer (1v1) game, and am curious if there is a way to allow both players into the same game (read: the same scene, idk if it makes a difference) without having to pay for servers or anything. I’ve never done anything multiplayer so I honestly don’t even know where to begin… Is it possible for Player 1 to “host” and Player 2 “join” on one of their networks, is there at least a way to TEST playing against myself in two separate instances of the application (LAN), etc?

Thanks for any and all help

One player would be the server and the other would be the client. So you don’t need a specific hosting machine to do so, Unity’s built-in networking works pretty much that way.

If you every want to have dedicated servers later on, you just need to run the server code on a dedicated machine. Until then, one will be host and the other will be client

One of the players just has to run the server software which can be part of the game.
Or make it splitscreen.

Sure it is.

LAN games existed long before online games. On a LAN you can use simple multicast for game discovery.

BIut this does require you actually understand network programming.