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.
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
Great list, thanks!
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
Untitled Goose Game — Surprised it wasn’t mentioned.
What’s more chaotic than a goose? Two goose!
Geeses
Goosi?
Gice
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.
If you wanna go retro at all you should check out UFO50. 50 very old school style games, many of which have 2 player modes.
Second, UFO 50 is amazing!
Oh this is so cool, I think I’ll buy it regardless of if we co-op anything within.
- 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
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!
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!
- 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.
My mandatory Sky: Children of the Light mention.
Lots of exploring and cooperating with irl co-players (E: you’d have to play on different devices, but one could play on a big screen, and the other can join and use their handheld mostly as a controller) and strangers, some puzzles/quests, some mild scary/dangerous parts, lots of lore, incredible graphics and good soundtrack. It’s an open ended game (though some features only become available after your first complete run through) and there is an aspect of grinding if you want to get IGC for cosmetics but you’re doing it flying through this gorgeous landscape, and there is a daily cap so you can be pretty chill about it, and IAP are pretty easy to avoid (for me anyway) and are never necessary for gameplay.
There are some issues with bugs, and the company growing and decisions clearly being made by shareholders rather then developers, but at this point it is still absolutely worth playing.
Beyond all the other great suggestions, you can use the games browser on co-optimus to help narrow things down.
My kids and I have loved these:
Coop:
Competitive:
Have you tried Broforce? It seems like a run and gun, but the key is thinking how to get out of situations.
My list of coop games
- Baldur’s Gate 3
- Broforce
- Castle Crashers
- Children of Morta
- Divinity Original Sin 2
- For the King
- “FORCED: Slightly Better Edition”
- Helldivers 1
- Lovers in a Dangerous Spacetime
- Rocket League
^ All of these are on Steam.
All of the Baldur’s Gates are good for couch co-op; the original series are all 3D isometric.
Bard’s Tale was pretty good for this, too, although the second player seems at times like an afterthought.
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.
Mariokart is competitive, not coöp
Not when we’re on the same team
Alright, conceded.
Do all couch game names have a slight sexual innuendo?
You want to come over tonight and couch co-op?
+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.
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.
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.
