Couch co-op thread
Couch co-op thread
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.
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?
+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.
- 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.
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.
Oh this is so cool, I think I'll buy it regardless of if we co-op anything within.
Second, UFO 50 is amazing!
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
My family loves:
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Spelunky (sidescroller Indiana-Jones-themed platformer action-roguelite)
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Pikmin 3 (3D silly minion-bossing treasure hunting)
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River City Girls (sidescrolling beat-em-up with amazing soundtrack)
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Moving Out (3D "goofy physics" furniture-moving obstacle course)
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Kirby and the Lost World (3D action adventure)
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Stardew Valley (isometric farm sim)
All of these are fully coöp from the beginning.
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Beyond all the other great suggestions, you can use the games browser on co-optimus to help narrow things down.
I think Stardew Valley has a Co-op mode? I'm not entirely sure
It sure does. It's quite different to other games suggested in this thread, but if it's the kind of game OP is wanting to try then it's very good as a couch coop game (on PC, not sure if supported on other platforms). Though I get the feeling OP is looking for action or round based, rather than a quiet tending of a farm and exploring the local area.
I have already a few saves (solo and online with others) but I agree, its a great game.
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!
The Sprite with a spear was my jam!
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.
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
It takes Two (co-op puzzle)
Unravel 2 is a bit similar co-op puzzle game.
- Cult of the Lamb
- Ship of Fools
Quite surprised these are not on here yet.
I'll second Ship of Fools, me and my wife have been playing it the past couple weeks. It's a ton of fun and deserves more recognition.
We played Ship of Fools the last time, was pretty fun
Didn't know Cult of the Lamb had couch co-op
Edit: Seems like it was added recently with a DLC. That game hits our taste so we probably will play it.
thx for letting us know CotL has couch coöp
Rayman Legends. My literal childhood on the Xbox One.
Oh yeah that's a classic
I'm a massive fan of couch co-op, so here's some of my favourites:
Heave Ho: cooperative grabby-hand-based platforming
Moving Out: hectic moving simulator (get the first one, not the second)
Drink more Glurp: chaotic parody of a sports event, with grabby-hand mechanics, and wacky powerups to change things up
Wobbly Life: a kid-friendly open world game with jobs to do, and tons of secrets to find. Kinda like Roblox mixed with GTA. Pretty much endless fun.
Toasterball: it's like tennis, but with toasters.
Puyo Puyo tetris 2: Tetris
Ultimate Chicken Horse: Chaotic party platformer
Boomerangfu: brawler with boomerangs
Speedrunners: competitive high-speed platformer
If you have a Nintendo Switch then Snipperclips is a really fun and cute co-op.
I've been playing Broforce with my buddy recently. Lots of shooting and blowing shit up platformer but pretty funny if you're into the classic action movies like Rambo, Commando, etc.
Gears of War if you want to branch into 3rd person cover shooter. (Gears 5 is the only one on steam I think.)
The Lego games usually have couch co-op I think and I've enjoyed those a lot with younger people.
I’d like to add for switch: Snipperclips, Yoshi‘s crafted world and Pode
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.
I absolutely love Children of Morta. I've got 3 saves at this point.
Lovers in a dangerous space time: pilot a space ship with a friend and fight rogue constellations.
Ship of Fools:
Man the decks in a rogue-lite game where you fight sea monsters and find treasure
Some retro suggestions:
- Super Mario Galaxy 1/2 - it sounds like your cousin is probably too old for this but this has one of the best "younger sibling" modes. They help collect and shoot bits. Which ultimately doesn't matter much
- The Legend of Zelda 4 Swords Adventure - It's basically multi-player Link to the Past! Bonus points if you dig up a GameCube, link cables, and GBAs
- Kirby Super Star - a mix of competitive and coop games
- Super Mario World (any) - you take turns but if you don't go 6 levels without dying to his one it can be fun
- Halo 1-3 + ODST - Great classic shooters, the campaigns are customizable for difficulty, and a little kid probably loves alien shooters
- Borderlands 1/2 - Looter shooters with a sense of irreverance
- Dead Rising 2/Off the Record and 3 - Zombie hoard murdering with combo weapons
- The Simpsons '91, Battletoads, TMNT, Streets of Rage, etc - Beat Em Ups are great for multi-player
borderlands3 on console has couch coop too and is pretty fun.
My kids and I have loved these:
Coop:
Competitive:
Rayman Legends is without a doubt my favourite coop platformer with fantastic music and great fluid controls. I strongly recommend it, it's tons of fun
Dont starve together
Vampire survivor
Castle crashers
And if you are into emulation most of ps2 era and before is designed for couch co op so hit the archives (top x lists on you tube makes it easy), depending on your cousins tastes
Dark pictures is a pretty fun movie like Seires my friends and have have very much enjoyed!
There is also ultimate chicken horse (usually better with more than 2 people)
Castle crashers (Side scroller silly adventure game) Gang beasts is also pretty fun
Streets of rage games are good fun
Idk if this is your speed, but my kid and wife and I love playing the Lego games that are based on movies - Star Wars, Indiana Jones, Avengers, etc.
Very couchable and can be challenging if you try to get 100% on each level.
Apologies if I misread the ask!
- Untitled Goose Game has couch coop (just bought yesterday on sale for $8.99!)
- (I believe) Gun Bros
- LEGO Star Wars The Skywalker Trilogy
Not seeing any love for Toejam and Earl Back in the Groove. Reimagining of the 90's Mega drive classic made by the original dev.
Cats Quest 2
Pretty cute game and if one person is significantly better at games, they can carry the team pretty well.
Golf With Your Friends literally brings my family together
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.
Phogs
Niddhog is so freaking good!
What the Golf? is lot of wacky fun. It's not really golf and has like 500 different levels, some wildly creative.
This is single player though?
No supports split screen coop, at least on PC.
Not to be confused with What the Car? That's single player only.
Biped is on sale right now: https://store.steampowered.com/app/1071870/biped/
It's very similar to it takes two
Borderlands and Full Metal Furies spring to mind.
Old Apache Air Assault is neat in coop
There were two isometric Tomb Raider games a couple of years back (Guardian of Light and Temple of Osiris which wasn't as good IMO). You could play in single player, but the co-op mode tweaked the puzzles slightly so you'd need to work together to complete them. And as luck would have it they're both on sale. The first is currently a whopping £1.27 on Steam.
If you fancy going even further back, there was a PS2 game called Kuri Kuri Mix by FromSoft. It may looks like it was made for toddlers, but it was surprisingly tough in places. You almost certainly can't buy that any more, but I'm sure and emulator and ROM site will do nicely.
Best couch-coop games
-= FLOSS games =-
Fish Fillets NG
Battle for Wesnoth
Minetest (websearch: Minetest Split Screen Howto)
-= 80s/90s arcade games =-
Bubble Bobble (lesser: Snow Bros or Tumblepop)
Heavy Barrel or Calibre .50 (lesser: Midnight Resistance or Ikari Warriors) [all need 8-way rotator joysticks]
Smash TV(is twin-stick, but awesome) or Narc
Rampage
Gunforce
Double Dragon
Bad Dudes v Dragon Ninja
Final Fight
Golden Axe
Sunset Riders or Vendetta
Silkworm
Cabal
Top Gunner
Side Arms
Alien Syndrome
Gauntlet
Damn, I forgot about Smash TV. Idk how much time my friend and I spent on that game as kids
Lots of time!
...And even more after renting Running Man on VHS :P
I don't see Out of Space on here. It's pretty fun and challenging.
Goat Simulator is silly fun, especially with kids.
Lara Croft and the Temple of Osiris is awesome since it lets you play up to 4 player co-op.
Vicious Attack Llama Apocalypse is a good co-op twin stick shooter.
This is my Couch Coop To Do List for me and my wife (sorry for bad formatting):
A Way Out Asterix & Obelix XXXL: The Ram From Hibernia Asterix & Obelix: Slap Them All! BattleBlock Theater Biped Bravery and Greed Bread & Fred Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons Remake Castle Crashers Cat Quest II Chariot Conduct Together! Contra: Operation Galuga Cuphead Darksiders Genesis Death Squared Degrees of Separation Divinity: Original Sin - Enhanced Edition Divinity: Original Sin II Dungeon Defenders Dungeon Golf Earth Defense Force 5 Ember Knights Escape Academy Escape Simulator Fly TOGETHER! For The King For The King II Forced From Space Fueled Up Gauntlet Golf With Your Friends Grave Danger Hammerwatch Heroes of Hammerwatch Huntdown Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes KeyWe Knights and Bikes Kukoos: Lost Pets LEGO 2K Drive LEGO City Undercover LEGO Horizon Adventures Lara Croft and the Guardian of Light Lara Croft and the Temple of Osiris Lost Castle Lovers in a Dangerous Spacetime Magicka 2 Mekazoo Metal Slug Monaco 2 Monaco: What's Yours Is Mine Moving Out Nine Parchments Nobody Saves the World Operation: Tango Outward PHOGS! Pizza Possum Pocky & Rocky Reshrined Pode Portal 2 Rayman Legends River Tails: Stronger Together Rogue Heroes: Ruins of Tasos Rooms of Realities Rotwood Sackboy: A Big Adventure Shift Happens Sonic Superstars Spelunky Starbound Struggling Surmount Team Sonic Racing The Adventure Pals The Expanse: A Telltale Series The Plucky Squire The Swords of Ditto Tick Tock: A Tale for Two Tipston Salvage Tools Up! Towerborne Trine 2 Unrailed! Unravel Two Unruly Heroes Untitled Goose Game Voyage We Were Here Together Who's Your Daddy Wizard of Legend II ibb & obb
For future reference, double space at the end of a line to start a new line, double enter to skip a line.
There's a game by Devolver Digital called Heave Ho which is pretty fun. And has a free demo.
Rock'n'roll racing is a fantastic coop racer. I think it's available in a remaster from blizzard somewhere.
Rayman legends, broforce
I see lots of excellent responses, but one of my favorite games is never mentioned, so I'll mention it here, it's Out of Space it's essentially overcooked but calmer.
Pampas and selene: the maze of demons seems fun
Don't Starve: Together
Battleblock theater. Silly coop puzzle platformer
Lara Croft and the Temple of Osiris
Lara Croft and the Guardian of LightOn xbox there’s a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles game that’s fun for co-op