My younger cousin comes over today (like every few months) and we will be playing some couch coop games over the weekend.
So far we tried a lot of games and found some great ones along the way. Sidescrollers work sometimes, but third person and isometric is better. And I won’t touch another twin stick shooter haha. Do y’all have any suggestions, it’s always so much work to find a good new game (as opposed to just going after steam review, buying, and returning within 30min of playtime because it sucked).
Honorable mentions:
- Swords of Ditto (literally no one plays this, but it’s a pretty neat co-op zelda-like
- Darksiders Genesis (hack n slash)
- It takes Two (co-op puzzle)
- Children of Morta (great roguelite)
I also bought Secret of Mana, maybe we’ll play this.
- Moving Out
- Lovers in a dangerous Spacetime
- A way out (sensible topics though, violence/jail)
A way out is brilliant! Definitely for a mature audience
Phogs - simple puzzle platformer where you play an end of a 2 headed snake dog.
Lovers in a dangerous space time - share control of your spaceship to rescue cute animals. Take turns driving, manning the weapons or shields. Top down camera
Overcooked 1 and 2 - flammable chaotic cooking adventures. Top down camera.
Trine 1-4 are all pretty decent for some side scrolling puzzle action platforming.
Diablo 3 (on console as pc doesn’t have local for some stupid reason) is a great action RPG.
Untitled Goose Game — Surprised it wasn’t mentioned.
What’s more chaotic than a goose? Two goose!
Geeses
Goosi?
Gice
because the actual gameplay is kinda nonexistent
Plateup! - Overcooked but a bit different in a way my wife and I find more enjoyable.
Crawl - Dungeon crawler type game with a twist
Death Road to Canada
Lovers in a Dangerous Spacetime
Battleblock Theater
Divinity Original Sin 1/2
Speed runners
For the King 1/2
Ship of Fools
Moving Out
Octodad
Pico park 1/2
Portal 2
Project Zomboid
Pummel Party - More of a party game tho
Sackboy A Big Adventure
Streets of Rogue
Struggling
Tools Up!
Trash Patrol
Ultimate chicken horse
Unrailed
PlateUp is incredible, I love this game
Ha my wife and I are on vacation, and we brought our laptop and controllers just so we could play plateup still at the end of the day :P
Great list, thanks!
Heck yeah, my wife and I are always on the hunt for more :)
Smash Brothers
It takes Two
Portal 2
Mario kart
TMNT: Shredder’s Revenge
I’ll second Portal 2, and other’s mentions of Lovers in a Dangerous Spacetime.
It Takes Two is fun, but if you’re paying attention to the story I found it to be a bit preachy about what the writer thinks a good relationship should be.
Smash Bros and Mario Kart are both competitive not co-op.
I play smash with my 7 year old on the same team. We cooperate as teammates to defeat the other team. I’d call that co-op. The same can be done with Mario Kart, but whatever.
Do all couch game names have a slight sexual innuendo?
You want to come over tonight and couch co-op?
Mariokart is competitive, not coöp
Not when we’re on the same team
Alright, conceded.
- Castle Crashers
- Party Animals
- Overcooked (be ready to hate everyone you are playing with)
On god we played through the campaign on the first or second one and it was so stressful
I don’t know how young the cousin is, but I played Castle Crashers with my kids. It is incredibly fun. Still our favorite co-op of all time.
+1 for a tentative Overcooked suggestion but only if you think you and your cousin won’t strangle each other in a high stress scenario. I can’t play the game with my wife because she’s too goofy and I’m too serious.
Bread and Fred looks like a lot of fun but I haven’t actually played it yet.
Diablo 3 was fun playing couch co-op and reminded me more than a little bit of playing Gauntlet in the good old days.
Bread and Fred looks great but my wife and I turned it off after half hour. The mechanics are proper hardcore physics sim with very little room for error or hand holding. It honestly just wasn’t fun for us. I think there’s a demo available so maybe try that before you spend money on it.
Honestly overcooked was stressful but manageable. The only time I wanted to strangle a friend (through my monitor) was in one of the “we were here” games because it was impossible to solve anything with him.
Edit: Oh I saw bread and fred on a stream a while ago (Jerma), forgot about that one. I think chained together was very much inspired by it.
My family loves:
-
Spelunky (sidescroller Indiana-Jones-themed platformer action-roguelite)
-
Pikmin 3 (3D silly minion-bossing treasure hunting)
-
River City Girls (sidescrolling beat-em-up with amazing soundtrack)
-
Moving Out (3D “goofy physics” furniture-moving obstacle course)
-
Kirby and the Lost World (3D action adventure)
-
Stardew Valley (isometric farm sim)
All of these are fully coöp from the beginning.
-
Have you tried Broforce? It seems like a run and gun, but the key is thinking how to get out of situations.
Broforce is a very good one, fun and nervous, but it may be a bit gore sometimes, so it may not fit all players
9 Parchments - Surprising gem with some depth and a lot of replay value. Reminds me a lot of the Harry Potter universe. We fire this up almost every weekend. I recommend setting friendly fire to ‘self’ instead, as it encourages actual cooperative play.
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Shredder’s Revenge - this is just a hack n slash quarter eater, but it’s mindless fun.
A friend and I had a little fun with Ultimate Chicken Horse. It’s a goofy little Mario Maker type of game where you create levels and challenge each other to complete them but I think you can also run through them cooperatively.
Ultimate Chicken Horse ftw!
Beyond all the other great suggestions, you can use the games browser on co-optimus to help narrow things down.
WRT Secret of Mana - maybe play the first little bit yourself until you unlock a second character, then save and you two can start from there. Trust me.
Also, I know it’s a side scroller, but Castle Crashers is great fun if you haven’t tried it yet.
Pretty much any of the SNES era arcade ports: TMNT, Knights of the Round, Sunset Riders… Though maybe not all of them in one sitting.
That’s all I’ve got off the top of my head. Happy gaming!
The Sprite with a spear was my jam!
It takes Two (co-op puzzle)
Unravel 2 is a bit similar co-op puzzle game.
Most of my suggestions that I’ve been playing with my brother are already posted, so I’ll just add 3 more I haven’t seen yet:
- Human Fall Flat
- Enter the gungeon
- Vampire survivors
I’m going to second human fall flat, it’s a lot of fun. I’ll also add any of the Lego games to the list but the star wars one are definitely the best.
If you like Enter The Gungeon, definitely try AK-xolotl. Same type of game, but more linear in a way. Rather than a single dungeon with multiple rooms to explore around, you go into a room, clear it, then choose 1 of 2 doors. Each door has a symbol to tell you which reward you will get after clearing it. Modding your weapons is much easier too.
Oh, it didn’t have co-op when I saw it before, but it has now, wishlisted, thanks, but I’m playing through baldurs gate 3 and that is gonna take over 200h before I move on :p
