Best Co-op Games 2026: 280+ Picks for PC, PS5, Xbox & Switch

The best co-op games of 2026 on PC, PS5, Xbox and Switch: shooters, survival games, horror, RPGs and two-player co-op over the network and on one screen. 280+ games to play with friends. In short, the best co-op games right now are It Takes Two, Minecraft, Helldivers 2, Baldur's Gate 3, GTA Online and Stardew Valley. The full list is broken down by genre — shooters, survival, horror, RPGs, two-player games and more — below.

We've been running this roundup for years and update it every month: right now it holds 287 co-op games. We weigh critic and player scores, how smooth the co-op is, controller support, cross-play, how active the online is, and whether you can play locally on one screen. The list mixes fresh 2025-2026 co-op hits with proven classics the VGTimes team has beaten in co-op and happily recommends. Pick a genre or format to taste — and line up a co-op game for evening hangouts, streams or long playthroughs together.

Got a weak PC or laptop? Check out our separate roundup, 60 best co-op games for low-end PCs.

No time to read the whole list? Here are 10 co-op games worth starting with. Each one comes from our roundup below; click a section to jump to the full write-up.

1. It Takes Two — winner of Game of the Year 2021 and the gold standard of strictly two-player co-op. See Two-player games.

2. Minecraft — the greatest sandbox of all time: build and survive together. See Survival and crafting.

3. Helldivers 2 — a co-op shooter about combat drops where friendly fire is part of the fun. See Looter and horde shooters.

4. Baldur's Gate 3 — the deepest RPG going, with co-op and cross-play. See Co-op RPGs.

5. GTA Online — the open world of Los Santos, a blast to cruise around with friends. See Open-world co-op.

6. Stardew Valley — a cozy farming sim that hooks you for hundreds of hours. See Co-op simulators.

7. Portal 2 — the best co-op puzzles Valve ever made. See Co-op puzzles.

8. R.E.P.O. — a 2025 co-op horror built on physics and voice chat. See Co-op horror.

9. TMNT: Shredder's Revenge — a high-energy beat 'em up about the Turtles, for four. See Co-op beat 'em ups.

10. Diablo 4 — the definitive Diablo-like: farm loot and clear dungeons together. See Co-op ARPGs and Diablo-likes.

This block gathers online and co-op games of 2026 for two or more — the ones the VGTimes team has already sunk hours into and come away happy with. Classics are kept to a minimum; the focus is on fresh stuff that hasn't gone stale yet — exactly for when a friend pings you with "what are we jumping into tonight?" and the usual picks have worn thin.

A chaotic co-op game from Aggro Crab, released on May 28, 2026 for PC and Xbox. In Crashout Crew up to four players drive forklifts and try to tidy up a warehouse: hauling crates, filling orders and inevitably making a complete mess. In spirit it sits somewhere between Overcooked and physics comedy like R.E.P.O. — success rides on teamwork, while most of the fun is born from ridiculous screw-ups. Fire it up when the mood is "let's get together and goof around," not when you want a serious challenge.

A co-op shooter from indie studio Evil Raptor that landed in early access on April 28, 2026. In Far Far West one to four players become robot cowboys and head into a mystical Wild West, where skeleton pterodactyls, living locomotives and other nasties await. Beyond revolvers and shotguns, spells come into play too — fireballs, for one. Every contract is generated from scratch, so no two runs ever play out the same. The game earned Steam Deck Verified, and its Steam Next Fest demo pulled in 99% positive reviews.

A sequel to the cult underwater survival sim, available in early access since May 2026. The developers moved Subnautica 2's action to a new planet, but the core formula stays the same: exploring the ocean, gathering resources, crafting tools, building bases and sinking ever deeper into the dark abyss.

The big difference between Subnautica 2 and the original is co-op. It supports up to three players together, and that noticeably changes how the familiar gameplay feels: diving into the depths gets less frightening, while base-building becomes faster and more of a group effort.

Windrose is a large-scale co-op survival sim in a huge open world set during the age of piracy. It launched on April 14 in early access on Steam and the Epic Games Store. The game got off to a strong start on Valve's platform, peaking at nearly 70,000 concurrent players and earning 88% positive reviews. The survival game is praised for its pretty graphics, great optimization, good soundtrack, well-thought-out survival, crafting and building systems, engaging combat, a big world and co-op support.

A new game from Tarsier Studios, the team behind the first two Little Nightmares games. Like the developers' earlier work, Reanimal can be described as a 3D platformer with horror elements. There's action here too, plus the ability to drive vehicles. Reanimal is built for co-op, and it'll periodically demand that the two of you stay in sync.

More in our Reanimal review.

The third entry in Team Ninja's series, set in medieval Japan. Nioh 3 is described as a blend of everything best about the original two games. The combat is more flexible and the locations more detailed, so exploring them is more interesting than before — and you can do it alongside two friends. It'll click with anyone who isn't yet tired of the soulslike genre.

A survival game that has astronauts mining another planet's natural resources. To do it, they need to find a way to shield themselves from the elements and hostile wildlife, build a base, and set up and automate production. As you progress through StarRupture, new tools unlock that let you reach areas you couldn't before.

A game from the creators of the famous Hypixel server for Minecraft. It resembles what the original offers — exploring a large, randomly generated open world, gathering resources, building structures out of various blocks and fighting dangerous monsters. Hytale is built around user mods; we've gathered the most interesting ones in a separate roundup of Hytale mods. Also take a look at our article breaking down Hytale's key features.

This game lets you become a vampire. To survive, you'll have to keep hunting fresh victims and growing stronger, as well as building up your castle. The locals become your subjects, and your style of rule is up to you — you can be a tyrant or try to act fairly. But be ready: sooner or later, monster hunters will come for you in Vampires: Bloodlord Rising, so it's wise to prepare for the encounter ahead of time — by enlisting the support of other players who are also vampires, for instance.

Shooters built for a team: military tactical ops, story campaigns for two to four, and old-school meaty action. It all hinges on coordination — who covered you, who swapped roles, who ducked into cover in time — and raw personal skill alone usually isn't enough. If half the fun of a shooter for you is a partner watching your back, you're in the right place.

A brisk third-person action game where, as a Space Marine, we fight insectoid Tyranids and the forces of Chaos. In our view it's worth a look even if you don't follow the Warhammer 40,000 universe. This is a great shooter with satisfying gunplay and crowds of varied enemies.

Co-op gets its own three-player Operations mode: the missions run parallel to the campaign and show its events from another angle. In Space Marine 2 each player takes a Space Marine class with its own gear and progression (a jetpack-equipped Assault, a Heavy with a machine gun, a Sniper and others), and the Tyranid swarms pile on so hard that soloing it with bots is tougher than going in as three live players. Cross-play between platforms is supported.

You can only play through Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War's main story solo, but two extra modes are open to a group of friends — "Secret Missions" and "Zombies."

During the secret missions, players are dropped into all sorts of locations — from the icy waters of the North Atlantic to the deserts of Angola. You'll even get to visit 1980s Moscow. The tasks: steal a prototype of a new tank, intercept a convoy of intercontinental ballistic missiles and obtain top-secret intelligence.

The "Zombies" mode has grown to genuinely incredible proportions. Several sub-modes, story arcs, different types of undead, weapons, loads of Easter eggs, mods and perks. All in all, the project's zombie mode can long since be considered a separate game in its own right, on par with Warzone. In both, you'll be playing in a group of up to four.

In Thunder Tier One you once again play as special-forces operators. This time, though, the camera has risen toward the sky, and events unfold in a fictional post-Soviet country where terrorists feel like the masters of the world. A quartet of brave soldiers must uncover their plans, deal with their leaders and save the world from catastrophe. It won't be easy.

You can play Thunder Tier One Rambo-style: kick off a firefight right away, hide from no one and open doors with grenades. That said, while such an approach is viable in the opening missions, by mid-game it'll get you killed.

It's smarter to go quiet. Skirt the crowds, gun down the bad guys in sync with suppressed weapons, scout the terrain with drones, peek into doorways with cameras and so on. Tactics will often see you slip out of trouble.

The developers deserve special praise for the environment work. Despite the top-down view, the locations are laid out as if this were a military-designer sim. There are even documents scattered on desks that you can read in replay mode.

The result is an excellent project worth the attention of every co-op fan.

Serious Sam: Tormental is a curious roguelike you can play through with a friend. In the story, Sam goes looking for Mental's weaknesses but ends up inside the enemy's mind. To escape the alien invader's consciousness and figure out how to beat him, the hero has to run through plenty of levels and exterminate an unbelievable number of creatures.

Serious Sam: Tormental is no standout roguelike, but it's fun to play in company. You run into recognizable enemies, deal with them using signature weapons like cannonball guns, and you're not limited to controlling Sam — Netrisa, the Bad Lightbulb and a couple of other characters are playable too.

If you prefer first-person shooters, check out another Sam spin-off. In Serious Sam: Siberian Mayhem the hero ends up in the Siberian backwoods: snow-covered trees everywhere, crumbling shacks with rugs on the walls and majestic churches — the idyll spoiled only by an army of alien monsters. Then again, Sam now has an AK and the "Perun" sniper crossbow, so the problem is solvable.

Siberian Mayhem was made by developers who used to crank out mods. Surprisingly, these newcomers managed to create a great game that's more entertaining than the fourth installment. The Siberian spin-off outdoes Serious Sam 4 in many ways: the beauty of its locations, the staging of its battles, the epic set pieces like the mech fight and so on.

On top of that, the game even has a cool multi-phase boss fight. The fourth installment, meanwhile, ended with a mediocre scrap against a rank-and-file (if beefed-up) enemy. It's great that you can play through Siberian Mayhem in company. In fights against paired bosses it makes life noticeably easier, since each player can take on one beast.

In Ready or Not you play as a SWAT team called out to the most dangerous incidents. If someone's planted a bomb or taken hostages, sorting it out falls to us. And don't even hope to storm in and gun everyone down Call of Duty-style — this is a realistic game where a single terrorist can wipe out your whole squad.

To clear a mission, the team has to move with extreme care: control the space, watch their backs and hit the terrorists by surprise. Tactical finesse is the only thing that leads to victory.

See a lot of doors? Block a couple so no one slips in behind you. A room full of enemies ahead? Toss in a smoke grenade. Caught in a firefight? Take cover behind a shield. Still, you can't account for everything, so rest assured: your operators will fall in the line of duty more than once.

Ready or Not also loves to spring surprises. A team can open a door and get blown up — turns out it was booby-trapped. Or run into a suspect who's making every show of surrendering, only to suddenly pull a gun and start shooting. Or step up to a locked door and catch a bullet from a terrorist on the other side who heard a suspicious noise. In short, the game's great.

Gears 5 is a big-budget, colorful and engaging game that continues the series' proud traditions while adding fresh ideas. The Coalition added a semi-open world with side content and a three-player co-op campaign: the two main heroes are joined by the robot drone Jack, controlled by a third player — he doesn't shoot but heals, stuns enemies and cracks open loot, playing a support role. Beyond the story there are the Horde and Escape co-op modes for squads of up to three. If you and your friends are craving an epic blockbuster with cover and chainsaws, Gears 5 more than delivers.

At launch, Ghost Recon Breakpoint was deservedly pelted with rotten tomatoes: the technical problems were endless, the in-game store felt far too pushy, and many promises were simply forgotten. Thankfully Ubisoft didn't abandon the project and whipped it into shape. Today Breakpoint is a solid tactical shooter with four-player co-op: the squad plans its approach to enemy bases together, silently takes out sentries in sync, splits roles (a sniper on the hill, assaulters on the cleanup) and extracts by vehicle across a huge open island.

The game is fun for shooting, tearing down roads in vehicles and running errands. And ganging up on Jon Bernthal — known for playing the Punisher in Netflix series — is a treat in itself. Sure, Ubisoft's creation still isn't perfect, but it has plenty of strengths.

A tactical shooter in the vein of the early Rainbow Six games. In Operator you take part in combat assignments around the world, solo or alongside other players. Winning takes more than good aim — you also need to use gadgets wisely, scouting the area with a drone, for instance.

Six classic Halo games in one collection, each with a campaign you can play in co-op. Halo: The Master Chief Collection is dozens of hours of fighting the Covenant and the Flood together: Reach, Halo 3, ODST and Halo 4 are four-player, while Combat Evolved and Halo 2 are two-player — both online and on one screen (split-screen). For survival fans there's the four-player Firefight mode. This huge anthology of the legendary sci-fi shooter is a must for co-op nights, especially when you're after some nostalgia.

One of 2025's biggest multiplayer hits, from Embark Studios (the makers of The Finals), released October 30. ARC Raiders is a third-person extraction shooter: you descend from the underground settlement of Speranza to a surface ravaged by hostile machines called ARCs, gather valuable resources and try to make it out alive. You can play solo or in a squad of two or three, but it's in co-op that the real tension shows up — deciding whether to cover your partner or run off with the loot. It supports full cross-play between PC, PS5 and Xbox, earned Steam Deck Verified and shot up Steam's sales charts right after release.

A shooter set right after a nuclear war. In the game's open world you can find not only valuable resources but also pricey artifacts. Standing in your way, though, are hostile factions, monstrous creatures, elevated radiation and anomalies. Misery takes place in the fictional Zaslav Republic, though its locations recall post-Soviet towns, with their telltale panel apartment blocks and village cottages.

Fish Stick Protocol offers a journey through bizarre universes that run by their own rules. In these parallel dimensions, your hero might be turned to stone, suddenly resized or flung into an uncontrollable flight. Don't forget the dangerous enemies, either. But if you manage to survive and grab a valuable artifact, you can upgrade your gear and unlock access to new worlds.

A game with asymmetric multiplayer in which one team controls the insects and the other the exterminators. To fight the bugs, you'll use assorted poisons, flamethrowers and even explosives. The spiders' main advantage is their ability to crawl across any surface at high speed. On top of that, in Kill it with Fire 2 you can spin webs that slow the humans down and let you reposition.

A fast-paced shooter with pixel graphics in the style of late-90s games, set aboard an abandoned spaceship. Monsters have seized the vessel, so you'll need to destroy the grisly creatures across procedurally generated locations. It earns praise for its striking art style, solid gunplay and genuinely tough bosses. It has to be said, though, that some gameplay repetition slightly spoils the impression Moros Protocol leaves.

A shooter set in the distant future. You'll pilot a spaceship, make sorties into open space and battle aliens. Jump Space features plenty of missions built for co-op play, where victory takes the combined effort of every player.

The main criticism of the first Space Marine's remaster comes down to its high price and the lack of serious graphical upgrades. If that doesn't bother you, give it a go. This is a quality third-person meat-grinder shooter where you fight hordes of aggressive Orks and, toward the finale, the adepts of Chaos as well. Worth noting that Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine — Master Crafted Edition is aimed at fans of the Warhammer 40,000 universe.

If you like, you can play this new version of the classic 1999 RPG shooter in a group of four. But understand that in the System Shock 2: 25th Anniversary Remaster the game itself is unchanged — only the graphics got a slight tweak. If you want the details, read more about the pros and cons of System Shock 2: 25th Anniversary Remaster.

Sniper Elite: Resistance is a set of bonus levels for the fifth game. It's aimed first and foremost at series fans who want fresh challenges. You won't find anything fundamentally new in this spin-off.

If you like, you can play through Sniper Elite: Resistance's story campaign in co-op. Two saboteurs working together will hit objectives faster, from taking out enemy officers to infiltrating guarded facilities. And if the AI opponents can't put up a fight, head into multiplayer with your buddy. There, full-blown sniper duels against live players await.

Sniper Elite 4 is the perfect sniper game, blending meditative tactical play with dynamic firefights. To liberate Nazi-occupied countries, the hero has to scout the terrain, mark targets and methodically pick them off with a sniper rifle, masking shots behind the noise of explosions or passing planes. That said, some missions require slipping behind enemy lines to, say, plant a charge right under their nose or clear an outpost with a submachine gun in hand.

An elite soldier can handle any task solo, but a trusty comrade's help never hurts. Just be ready: a pair of snipers will draw an especially fierce response from the enemy.

Sweltering heat will soon hit the streets. The world of Lost Planet 3, though, is frozen forever, leaving the flesh and bones of lost travelers to ice over. And it's not just the freak cold that can kill the heroes, but deadly wildlife too. If you drop by planet E.D.N. III, throw on a quilted coat, grab a beefier gun and give the enemies a fight.

Lost Planet 3 grabs you not only with its dynamic battles and atmosphere but with an intriguing story. Chronologically, the third game is a prequel, so there's no need to play the originals.

Kane and Lynch: Dog Days tells the story of two criminals, each with mental issues: Lynch is a flat-out lunatic, while Kane is a mercenary disillusioned with life. It's this duo that takes on Shanghai's criminal underworld and turns the city's streets into an all-out bloodbath.

Sure, the game's heroes are real scumbags, but over time you grow attached to them and start to sympathize. Worth noting that development was handled by IO Interactive, the studio that earlier gave the world the Hitman series.

A continuation of the tactical sniper shooter (Sniper Elite 4 is already in our roundup). In Sniper Elite 5 you can play the entire campaign as a pair: huge open levels of WWII-era France, the series' signature X-ray kill-cams and tons of ways to close in on a target — stealth, traps or open combat. Played as two, missions open up differently: one distracts the patrols, the other takes the target from afar. There's also a separate four-player survival mode against waves of enemies.

A co-op shooter set in the Alien universe, in the vein of Left 4 Dead. In Aliens: Fireteam Elite a squad of three Colonial Marines fights through xenomorph-infested locations, fending off endless waves of creatures. There are five classes to choose from, each with its own abilities (Gunner, Demolisher, Technician, Doc, Recon), plus a big arsenal with mods. The atmosphere bears down, the enemies come in droves, and without a coordinated team you won't crawl out of the hive alive — squarely aimed at Aliens fans and horde-shooter lovers.

A hardcore tactical shooter with a heavy emphasis on realism. Besides competitive modes, Insurgency: Sandstorm has the Co-op Checkpoint mode, where a team of live players captures points and clears positions while fending off bot counterattacks. There's no minimap or markers, death comes from a couple of bullets, and communication and caution matter more than reflexes. For those who love tense military co-op with no arcade concessions.

Shooters about endless gear-farming and holding off waves: looter games in the Borderlands vein, zombie co-ops like Left 4 Dead, and horde modes where the swarms keep coming with no breather. The logic is simple — the tighter the squad works, the further it gets and the fatter the loot off the bosses. Pure pleasure for those nights when your brain wants nothing more than to shoot stuff and stuff a backpack to bursting.

Dead Island 2 is a fine example of repetitive zombie action built around brutality and the vibe of a sunny apocalypse. Co-op is three players online, with drop-in to the host's story game at any moment: together you hack your way through a zombie Los Angeles, run missions, ransack houses for crafting junk and unlock recipes for ever more vicious weapons. There's a pretty interesting skill system based on playing cards, and the series' signature humor hasn't gone anywhere.

In gameplay terms, Dead Island 2 is meaty action where we spend 90% of the time crushing zombie skulls and the other 10% repairing and upgrading weapons and scavenging useful junk. The locations are fairly small but dense, the story is there for the sake of it, but the weapon and character progression is quite varied — and combining those two aspects can heavily shape how the game plays.

Unofficial movie games often turn out better than the licensed ones. Helldivers 2, for instance, perfectly captures the spirit of Paul Verhoeven's film Starship Troopers, with its mockery of American democracy and its alien-bug extermination.

But even if you're indifferent to the 1997 film, the four-player co-op is gripping in its own right. The main hook: friendly fire is always on — a stray shot or an orbital strike dropped in the wrong spot can easily take out a teammate, so the squad constantly watches each other's positions. Help from orbit (airstrikes, turrets, supplies) is called in with "stratagems" — button combos you still have to nail in the heat of battle. The upshot: a carefully planned drop regularly devolves into chaos, with four players desperately fending off swarms of bugs or robots and dragging the fallen to safety. Cross-play between PC and PlayStation works too.

A first-person shooter set in the distant future. We play as dwarf miners hunting for minerals on other planets. While exploring caves, they run into spider-like aliens. The game is built entirely around four-player co-op and the interplay of four classes: the Scout lights up caves with flares and ziplines to ore on the ceiling, the Engineer plants turrets and lays platform bridges, the Gunner covers with fire and a shield, and the Driller bores shortcuts through the rock. You can't switch class mid-mission, so the makeup of a Deep Rock Galactic squad is planned in advance. Difficulty and enemy counts scale to the player count; solo you get a helper drone, Bosco, but as four the caves open up entirely differently. Online only — there's no split-screen, and cross-play works between Xbox and the Microsoft Store.

Tiny Tina's Wonderlands is a spin-off of the legendary Borderlands series. This time, though, the heroes won't be hunting Vaults or fighting maniacs like Handsome Jack. In the story they end up trapped in the lair of the unhinged Tiny Tina, who invites them to play her own version of Dungeons & Dragons. And the lady herself takes on the role of game master.

The setting may have changed, but Wonderlands keeps the series' hallmarks. The heroes split into several unique classes, creatures like banshees and skeletons roam the ornate locations, and you'll wipe out the monsters with thousands of original guns. Don't be surprised if you end up holding a rifle that fires off a winged pistol when you reload.

The fairy-tale setting also untied the developers' hands and let them pack the game with memorable moments. You'll grieve over the sudden deaths of key characters and laugh plenty at jokes like the showdown with the ocean. The villain turned out interesting, too: he realizes he's inside a tabletop game and desperately tries to break out of his assigned role.

It's fun solo, but the game fully blossoms in four-player co-op. There's its own class system that lets you blend two specializations into one build, so a squad of four friends picks complementary abilities — and buries Tiny Tina's world under thousands of absurd guns, like that rifle that fires a winged pistol on reload.

Wild West, tesla-punk and vampires — that's the best way to describe the setting of Evil West. In this shooter we rise to defend the United States and, armed with revolvers, a tesla gauntlet and other gadgets, set out to gun down the undead across America. The whole campaign is played as two in online co-op: one partner draws off some of the creatures while the other finishes off those stunned by the tesla gauntlet, and the XP and weapon upgrades you earn build up for each player. Beyond the fights, there's exploration and leveling up your vampire-hunter abilities.

Evil West understands its role perfectly and doesn't try to punch above its weight. It's just you, an assortment of weapons and crowds of vampires. And that approach works — in the early 2010s this game could well have been a Game of the Year contender.

Decent graphics, dynamic "meat-grinder" gameplay and two-player co-op. You can finish it in a few evenings: it knows exactly when to wrap up so as not to outstay its welcome, delivering a polished, packed experience.

Outriders was one of the big surprises of that spring, drawing over 100,000 players at once on release — and that's just on Steam. The reason for its success wasn't only a shortage of new releases and the solid track record of People Can Fly, the makers of Painkiller and Bulletstorm, but the quality of the project itself. Outriders has an intriguing story about pioneers landing on a new planet, a variety of classes and abilities, crowds of enemies and dynamic gameplay. You can enjoy it all in a group of up to three friends.

At launch the game felt more like a server-connection simulator than a great action title, but today all those problems are behind it. You can also judge it for yourself with the free demo.

Returnal can be called the only AAA "roguelike." In this third-person shooter we play as Selene — a woman who has crash-landed on a constantly changing planet. Every death throws the heroine back to the start, while the planet around her shifts. The player has to help Selene recover her memories and find answers.

The co-op here is unusual: two players run the looping cycles across the changing planet, splitting enemies and picking up weapons, and if one dies, they can be revived without breaking the cycle. There's far more shooter than "roguelike" in Returnal. Varied enemies, an assortment of weapons, the constant need to dodge incoming projectiles — it all somewhat recalls Doom or Metroid Prime. The "roguelike" side is concentrated around the bosses — they drop rare items needed to advance the story — and around the procedural map generation and the heroine's bonuses.

The PC edition includes all the content that came out on PlayStation 5 — DLC, various graphical fixes and extra game modes (like the Tower of Sisyphus). Co-op is here too — you can run the cycles with a friend or a random player. Cross-play, unfortunately, isn't available.

No one expected Square Enix to fumble such a powerful money-printing machine as the Avengers. Marvel's Avengers turned out to be a divisive action game with plenty of odd decisions, but it still gave a great chance to play as your favorite superheroes. However much the project gets bashed, becoming Hulk or Thor and pummeling a crowd of enemies isn't the worst idea.

Co-op is four-player: each person takes their own superhero with their own move set (the tanky Hulk, the long-range Iron Man, the mobile Kamala Khan), and the team splits enemies by role across cooperative operations. And you can take the field not solo but with friends: the story campaign may not support co-op, but the "Avengers Initiative" mode lets you band together as a team and challenge evil side by side. On top of that, the developers haven't abandoned Marvel's Avengers, diligently filling it with new heroes and content.

An action game where you hunt enormous monsters. To win in Wild Hearts, it's important to pick your gear wisely and develop your own combat tactics. The closest analog is the Monster Hunter series. You can hunt the giants as three online: the team corners the beast, hands out roles (who distracts, who strikes the weak points) and builds shared "karakuri" structures on the fly — springboards, walls and traps used together to break the monster's attacks. As three it's noticeably livelier and more tactical than solo.

In this shooter you battle hordes of fantasy monsters. To fight them in Perish you use an arsenal of firearms and melee weapons. In gameplay it recalls the original Painkiller.

GTA has plenty of clones, and the Saints Row series is considered one of the most original imitators. While some projects talentlessly leech off their resemblance to Rockstar Games' title, Saints Row brings something new to the genre — a high level of madness, for one, which is why millions of players fell in love with the franchise. Many consider the third installment the best — no wonder it's the one the developers remastered in 2020.

Co-op brings even more insanity to Saints Row: The Third Remastered: with a friend you can play through the story campaign or simply roam the city, staging a local apocalypse. The Saints really do know how to have fun.

The Borderlands series has always been known for its crazy characters, countless weapons and high-octane gameplay — all of which carries over into Borderlands 3. Each of the four heroes has their own style, enemies attack in crowds, and the quests are full of insanity — the only catch is that the villains can't match Handsome Jack for charisma, but the project's strengths make up for it.

Co-op is four-player, and it's the best way to play. Each hero levels their own skill tree (some get combat pets, others turrets or a berserk mode), and at the start you can choose how to split loot and scale enemies: "Cooperation" mode evens everyone out and gives each player personal drops, while "Coopetition" is finders-keepers. You can join and leave another player's session at any time, with your hero's progress saved. As four, the showdown with the streamer twins Calypso stretches into hundreds of hours of farming.

Zombie Army 4: Dead War is one of those games that makes no claim to high artistic value and was created with a simple goal — to thoroughly entertain a group of gamers. Rebellion's creation nails that: rounding up a group of four and committing genocide on zombie Nazis is a fun experience.

The fun is helped along by a variety of guns and skills, gory X-Ray finishers and nods to classic horror — no surprise players received it warmly.

The very installment that made the series a cult hit, and still a model co-op looter shooter. In Borderlands 2 four of you comb Pandora in search of millions of guns, battle the charismatic villain Handsome Jack and level wildly different builds. The co-op shines through class synergy: the Commando sets a turret, the Siren heals and pulls in enemies, the Berserker tanks. You can join a friend at any time, and difficulty scales to the player count. A genre benchmark that's fun to replay even years later.

Borderlands 4 drew a mixed reaction, mainly because of its poor optimization on PC. Even so, it remains a decent looter shooter with engaging gameplay and pretty, comic-styled visuals. As before, the game opens up in co-op, especially if you pick different characters whose abilities complement each other.

Abyssus is a co-op shooter set in an underwater kingdom. To overcome its inhabitants, you'll have to use tactics and lean heavily on ancient magical technologies. The game has roguelike elements, with the need to revisit familiar locations. Each level, however, is handcrafted.

In this shooter you play as humanoid robots trying to save a planet from aggressive fungi. Naturally, there's nothing serious about Mycopunk. You'll find a quirky arsenal with the option to install upgrades, offbeat tasks from management, tense battles against alien hordes and a pleasant look reminiscent of modern cartoons.

Steel Hunters serves up battles between combat robots. Its battle royales feature five teams of two players each. Every machine can be upgraded depending on your tactics. To win, teamwork with your ally and clever use of the environment are key.

A first-person co-op slasher for four: you hack through hordes of Skaven and Chaos warriors across story missions in the vein of Left 4 Dead, only with an emphasis on melee. There are five heroes to choose from with different roles and weapon sets — from a heavy warrior to an archer and a mage. Warhammer: Vermintide 2 runs on discipline: stray from the group or miss a special enemy that grabs and drags off a straggler, and the whole squad goes down. Progression, crafting and a difficulty system give you reason to replay the missions.

To keep the endless battle from wearing players out, the developers actively support the game, adding new careers, weather conditions and cosmetics — and the seasons rotate periodically, throwing fresh challenges at the fighters.

A six-player co-op shooter about defending against waves of Zed mutants: the team beats back round after round, spends the cash it earns on weapons from a trader in between, and takes down a boss together at the end. Each player has their own perk-class (Berserker, Medic, Firebug, Sharpshooter and others) with its own progression, so a Killing Floor 2 squad is worth assembling balanced — someone to heal and buff, someone to soak up damage. Juicy gore with dismemberment and slow-motion for clean kills.

Killing Floor 2's gameplay is highly dynamic: the enemies don't leave the fighters alone for a second, and the challenges only get tougher. You can hold back the advancing hordes in a group of up to six.

PayDay 2 is a four-player heist sim where what matters is exactly how you take the bank. You can go quiet: knock out cameras, put guards to sleep, blend in as a civilian and carry off the loot without ever tripping the alarm. Or you can go loud: put on a mask, burst in with a shotgun and fend off waves of SWAT while the safe drills open. The team has to split roles — one watches the hostages, another hauls the money bags, a third covers the getaway. Hundreds of weapon mods, masks and skills to suit your style.

PayDay 2 came out back in 2013 and hasn't let players get bored for a moment since. It has received more than seventy updates since release: one of them even swapped the robbers' usual guns for swords and crossbows — the project has plenty of such madness.

Left 4 Dead 2 came out in 2009, but its mechanics haven't aged a bit over the years. Eight players split into two teams: one foursome has to carve a path through the zombie crowds and reach the safe house, while the other takes control of especially dangerous zombies and tries to finish off the poor souls. Whichever side you play, only tight teamwork leads to victory — which is exactly why Left 4 Dead 2 is still called one of the best co-op first-person shooters.

A shame Valve has trouble with the number "three" — how else to explain the never-released Half-Life 3, Portal 3 and Left 4 Dead 3. Thankfully, the original zombie-shooter team didn't forget the genre and is working on the spiritual successor, Back 4 Blood.

One of the best co-op shooters of recent years: a mix of soulslike, looter shooter and roguelike. In Remnant 2 three of you travel through procedurally generated worlds, gun down hordes of creatures and fight inventive bosses that force you to tailor your tactics and builds. The archetype classes complement each other: one heals and buffs the team, another tanks, a third deals damage. Progress is saved for all participants, and you can join and leave at any time. On high difficulties you can barely survive solo — the game is practically built for co-op.

One of the biggest free-to-play co-op games: a space-ninja shooter with acrobatics, tons of loot and endless leveling. In Warframe four of you run missions, clearing maps of enemy hordes, gathering resources and crafting new "Warframes" — suits with their own ability sets. The gameplay is fast: slides, wall-running, combos of gunfire and melee. A gigantic amount of content has piled up over the years, and playing with friends is the best way to get to grips with this deep looter shooter.

A benchmark looter shooter from Bungie with an emphasis on cooperative PvE. In Destiny 2 co-op lives in strikes (for three) and legendary raids (for six) — the latter demand real teamwork, voice chat and memorizing mechanics, but reward you with the best loot in the game. Mowing down hordes, the flashy supers of three classes and a constant stream of new content. A co-op shooter with deep progression and an endgame you can bury yourself in for months — that's Destiny 2 exactly.

A brisk FPS roguelike with a cartoony look and animal heroes instead of humans. In Gunfire Reborn four of you run procedurally generated levels, pick up random weapons and assemble a build from your hero's talents — every run is unique. You can share guns with teammates and pick them up after they go down. Uncomplicated and sticky: rounds are short, and you keep wanting to restart again and again — a solid co-op for one evening.

A section for anyone tired of blasting away at everything and after quieter evenings. Bars and restaurants, farms, moving days with butterfingered movers and downright bizarre experiments you can't pin to a single genre. The main currency here is laughter and chatter over a shared task, with points and difficulty very much secondary.

In Travellers Rest you become an innkeeper in a fantasy world. You start out in a ramshackle space even rats are afraid to enter — but before long, patience and hard work turn the dive into a wonderful place.

Alas, the manager has plenty on their plate. You have to grow ingredients in the fields, keep the tavern clean, stop patrons from squabbling about politics, and hire bartenders and cleaners. Keeping on top of it all is easier if you hop into the game in co-op and hand off some of the duties to a friend.

Travellers Rest will especially appeal to players with old computers. Even if you and your friend have ancient laptops with 500 MB of RAM and some kind of shader-capable graphics card, the game will run.

Hello Engineer: Scrap Machines Constructor is an unusual racer with tricky tracks full of traps. To get through them, you need to build your own vehicle with unique properties. In some cases you'll have to shrink it to squeeze through a narrow section, or, conversely, fit a propeller so you can fly over an obstacle.

Roots of Pacha can be called a "prehistoric" version of Stardew Valley. As a member of a primitive tribe, we have to lead our people to prosperity: protect them from possible threats, earn the blessing of mother nature Pacha, build up the settlement and unlock new technologies.

Study and grow plants, explore the world, fish, mine rare materials in caves, tame animals — there's plenty to do. As you progress and help your tribesmen come up with new technologies, you unlock cooking, metalworking, pottery, and new buildings and structures.

Each day you need to earn Gifts — the local currency — by contributing various items to a communal "pot." The tribe's strength and the player's options depend on the number of Gifts. Of course, there's a friendship system too — you'll befriend all your tribesmen, and with some you can even start a relationship. All of this is seasoned with co-op, with the ability to share talents and resources, joint events and multiplayer cutscenes.

If you didn't get enough of the Stardew Valley vibe, Roots of Pacha will bring you back to that unhurried life of farming and exploring.

A sequel to the cult relaxing power-washing sim from FuturLab, released October 23, 2025. In PowerWash Simulator 2 you scrub grime off houses, cars and curious objects in the fictional county of Caldera, and it's still strangely soothing work. The big new feature fans had wanted since the first game is co-op: for the first time in the series there's two-player split-screen on one screen, plus online for up to four with shared campaign progress. It's impossible to get in each other's way here — only to help — so it's a calm co-op for an evening with loved ones of any skill level.

A comedic cooking sim set in classic fantasy trappings. In Restaurats you cook food for orcs, skeletons, vampires and witches. Satisfying their specific demands won't be easy, of course. Now and then you'll have to tidy up the kitchen and throw out especially rowdy patrons.

Firefighting Simulator: Ignite is a realistic firefighter sim. Every blaze here feels like a kind of puzzle. To solve it, you need to use foam wisely, skillfully work the hose to flood rooms with water, break down doors with an axe and much more. And thick smoke sometimes forces you to act in zero visibility. Note that the gameplay opens up specifically in co-op, when several people act together and help each other.

A rather unusual game — a burglar sim. Your task in Crime Simulator is to break into a guarded property and steal every valuable you can find. You'll use both special tools, like knockout gas, and brute force. Smash windows, knock out the guards and grab everything you can sell to fences.

If you're after something offbeat, take a look at the painter sim Spray Paint Simulator. At first the jobs are simple, but in time you'll have to climb into hard-to-reach spots and shield objects that shouldn't get painted. The gameplay is niche, sure, but it can draw you in — especially once you get a handle on the controls, which can't be called friendly.

Like the first game, Space Engineers 2 invites you to build your own base on a distant planet. You'll research new technologies, defend against asteroids and build huge starships. In co-op you can exchange knowledge or stage battles over resources using your space fleet.

Stardew Valley is a farming sim that more than 10 million people already happily play. Maybe it's worth a look for you too. In the story, a group of friends inherits one of five farms and has to turn a withering, weed-choked plot into thriving land.

To reach that goal, players have to chat with NPCs, start a family and have children, fish, cook, do crafts and even explore huge mines. Only on paper does the game seem simple — in practice every mechanic is deep and beautifully crafted.

This is where the survival games gather — with crafting, building and huge maps. We chop wood, set up a base, fend off creatures and map the world together — from deep woods and islands to alien planets. The heart of it is that feeling when a shared base grows run after run, with everyone's effort poured into it. Want something broader, not just co-op? Then here's our full roundup of survival games on PC.

A hybrid of classic survival and action-RPG in the vein of the early Gothic games. You'll develop a settlement, carry out the village elder's quests, level up skills and raise your reputation in the eyes of the other residents. Don't forget hunting and fishing, which provide food for you and your allies. But the most important resource in Bellwright is time, which is always in short supply. To get everything done, it's wise to plan out a to-do list for the day in advance and stick to it.

ASKA is about Vikings trying to survive in a fantasy world. The locations here are randomly generated. As in many games of the genre, you'll gather resources and craft, as well as fight monsters. Unlike the kindred Valheim, ASKA bets on building a large settlement with dozens of inhabitants.

Another building-focused survival game with an interesting twist — the ability to tame special creatures known as Pals. They're used for combat, help around the homestead and serve as mounts. You'll hunt for them across the large open world of Palworld. Co-op is four-player (or more on a dedicated server): together you build a base where Pals work as an automated crew — chopping, cooking, forging — while you explore the world, catch new creatures and clear tower dungeons with bosses. The division of roles is obvious: someone develops the base and farms Pals, someone heads out on expeditions for resources and new inhabitants.

If you enjoyed Valheim or you love survival games with complex building systems, check out Enshrouded. It lets you raise a huge stone castle whose walls serve as solid protection from the local monsters. Building large structures, however, takes resources that are kept under close guard. They're best gathered with friends — and you can invite up to 15 people to your server.

Sons of the Forest builds on the ideas of the first game and improves familiar mechanics. The co-op and crafting systems have been reworked, the open world has grown considerably, and the enemies are more varied. But on the whole it's the same The Forest, only with the bugs back — after all, the game got its full release in November 2023.

The protagonist sets off to find a missing billionaire but, as the genre demands, everything goes wrong, and we're forced to survive on an island shared with cannibal natives. So you'll craft a lot, fight for your life and unravel the island's secrets. You can do it all in a group of up to 8.

The game can already be played from start to finish, with several endings. The developers decided to build the project's "skeleton" first and are now expanding the gameplay, fixing bugs, refining the already-interesting mechanics and adding new content.

This game suits those who've already beaten Valheim and want something similar. You'll build your own home, grow plants, forge metals and battle numerous monsters. Dawnlands isn't perfect and suffers from technical issues, but it can deliver plenty of fun for fans of hardcore survival games.

Smalland: Survive the Wilds is another take on a tiny world. The player has to survive in a micro-world, fighting insects, exploring forests of grass blades, crossing puddle-lakes and climbing colossal trees.

Unlike another project with a similar setting, Grounded, Smalland's style is more realistic graphically and more magical in its lore. We'll meet fairies, magical creatures and mysterious ruins.

Otherwise it's a "pure-blooded" survival game. We build a base, craft tools, weapons and gear, gather various resources and fight insects and bosses. Among its features are the ability to tame animals, a system of changing seasons and co-op for 10 people. The project is in early access but has great potential.

In Wartales the player leads a band of mercenaries, traveling across the plague-ravaged Edoran Empire and surviving in these lands. You'll have to prove your band's right to exist by constantly fighting other mercenaries, bandits, robbers and monsters. The player's band aren't heroes. And the goal here is to win fame and fortune — definitely not to save the world.

Turn-based battles without the tiresome "hit chance," the ability to recruit new companions with unique specializations, skills, weapons and personality traits. The game also has a progression system, item crafting and ways to upgrade your camp.

In many ways the project is a sandbox — we travel an open world, earning wealth and fame, visiting the empire's ruins and settlements that have weathered the storm of events. Beyond those, you'll also drop into abandoned tombs and bandit camps. And once you take a contract, you can either protect the innocent or hunt down this world's notorious villains.

Co-op for up to four players lets you join forces and, using tactics and strategy, beat the toughest bosses of this mysterious world. And yes, you can share resources, loot and money, as well as spend time together around the campfire.

This game is set in the late Middle Ages. You're invited to lead a small settlement. You need to construct buildings, provide for yourself and the other residents, and prepare for the cold winter. Each character in Medieval Dynasty has their own strengths and weaknesses, which matter — especially when it's time to assign jobs.

In the fall of 2022, Grounded left early access and gave players another quality survival game capable of holding their attention for several dozen hours. The protagonists wake up in a strange place and find themselves "shrunk down." The lawn has become a real forest to them, spiders have grown to the size of a bus, and the small pond in the backyard has turned into a deep, dangerous lake.

We have to find out the cause of the shrinking, survive in the world of insects, build a base, craft gear and, finally, return to our normal size. You can do it solo, but the game is far more fun played with three friends. There's room here for bosses, skill progression and collectibles too.

All in all, Grounded strives to be a model survival game in an interesting setting, with a lot of content and unique mechanics. And it pulls that off beautifully.

Had many people heard of Valheim before it launched? Hardly. That didn't stop the game from storming the Steam charts right after release and winning over millions of players. Now everyone's talking about Iron Gate's creation — and the popularity is entirely deserved. It's a survival game about a world of Vikings, where you build a house, set up your daily life, craft gear and challenge mighty bosses. Co-op is up to 10 people on one server, and almost everything is built for shared labor: chopping wood and rowing the longship is faster as two, the house and forge are built together, and taking down summonable bosses like Eikthyr is far more doable as a group — solo, their arenas turn into torture. World and character progress is shared, and you can come and go whenever.

Worth noting that Valheim's world is huge, its visuals are pleasant and its combat is fairly interesting — no surprise the game has hooked so many players for hundreds of hours.

A survival game set in medieval Japan, where building plays a major role. Putting up structures in Sengoku Dynasty is slow and demanding, since you have to account for a lot of parameters, and resources are always short. Friends help speed up the process, so the game opens up in a new way in co-op.

A large expansion for Icarus that adds six story missions, three new biomes, plus unique weapons and monsters. We recommend checking out the new mode that removes the time limits and lets you play indefinitely.

A post-apocalyptic shooter where building plays a major role. You'll construct intricate mazes and raid other players' structures. To win in Meet Your Maker, it's important to be resourceful and use your available gear wisely.

No One Survived is a wild mix of Valheim, Conan Exiles, DayZ and 7 Days to Die in a zombie-apocalypse setting. You won't find anything new here, but it tries to combine the best traits of most games in the genre. You loot the map, build a shelter, level a tech tree, craft various workbenches and, on those, weapons and gear.

There's no story. But there is an expansive map with several locations, more than 400 items, weapons and armor, a fairly advanced building system, water and power systems, plus NPC traders, hunting and changing seasons. You can flexibly tune all of it to taste and set off to survive with five friends.

A distinctive hybrid of Stardew Valley and Animal Crossing with an isometric camera and a pleasant cartoony look. The game takes place on a sunny island you can explore with three friends. You'll grow crops and raise livestock, fish, and hunt for treasure. There's a particular emphasis on mastering new professions. As you play through Luma Island, you'll be asked to solve puzzles and run simple quests. Money is needed to develop your own farm.

Old Market Simulator has you running a homestead on a small island. You can grow plants outdoors and in greenhouses, raise animals and fish, and craft simple tools. All of it is best sold at markets so you can buy new equipment. Along the way you'll compete with other players to find out who's the better farmer.

The Last Plague: Blight has you survive in a world where a deadly disease rages. But it's far from the only serious obstacle in your hero's path. They'll have to provide their own food and drinking water and fend off wild animals and harsh natural conditions. The developers bet on realism and attention to detail.

Ale & Tale Tavern is a hybrid of several genres at once. Beyond running a fantasy tavern, it has you explore an open world, hunt for valuable resources, hunt and fish, and then cook food and brew drinks. The result is a full range of goods for your establishment. You can speed the process up with the help of other players who take on some of the duties.

The most popular sandbox in the world — and perhaps the greatest co-op game of all time. In Minecraft you and your friends land in an endless procedural world of blocks where you can do literally anything: gather resources, build cyclopean castles, farms and redstone contraptions, explore caves and fight bosses in survival mode. The co-op has no limits — you can play as two over a local network or as a whole crew on a server. Building and surviving together hooks you for hundreds of hours.

Unlike World of Sea Battle, which we covered above, this game is about calm exploration of the world, searching for survival resources and valuable treasure rather than naval battles. Everything you find on the islands and in caves can be kept on your ship as decorations and trophies. That said, Salt 2: Shores of Gold isn't without battles either — aggressive pirates, wild beasts, skeletons and world bosses await.

Details in the VGTimes editorial take on Salt 2: Shores of Gold.

Abiotic Factor takes place in an underground laboratory. Monsters burst out of portals, secret agents want to scrub away every trace of activity, and the equipment glitches and won't work as it should. You'll have to figure out all the machinery, keep your fellow scientists safe and find something to eat for dinner. And it's all seasoned with good humor. This is probably what the first Half-Life would have been if Valve had made it a survival game rather than a first-person shooter.

Despite its plain looks, this climbing sim challenges players. Procedural level generation sometimes creates cliffs and mountains that are nearly impossible to scale, and the game punishes the slightest mistake. Even so, conquering the peaks in Peak is still fun, especially with friends.

In Grounded 2 we play as bug-sized teenagers. They have to explore a small park full of dangers, including aggressive insects. Beyond the genre basics like crafting and finding water, one neat touch is the ability to ride ants as mounts.

A survival game in the Dune universe by writer Frank Herbert, which you may know from Denis Villeneuve's films. You play as a special agent who arrives on the planet Arrakis to find out what happened to the Fremen. As events unfold, you'll be drawn into the conflict between House Atreides and House Harkonnen. Dune: Awakening takes liberties with the canon, but it captures the atmosphere of Dune beautifully.

The key feature of this RPG is the ability to reshape the game world at will. Beyond building your own city, you can level mountains, carve riverbeds, drill tunnels and much more. Terramorphing takes resources, which you get by exploring locations, mining minerals and crafting. If you're into projects with unusual mechanics, give BitCraft Online a chance.

Cubic Odyssey looks like Minecraft thanks to environments made of large cubes. You'll explore an open world, search for resources, craft weapons and fight the local enemies. You can get around the vast locations using aircraft.

An unusual survival game that has you build your own base in the bed of a huge truck. You also explore an open world, rescue survivors, fight the local zombies and gradually upgrade your vehicle. Without upgrades, you simply can't advance the story in Survival Machine.

RailGods of Hysterra takes place in the universe of Howard Phillips Lovecraft. You'll drive a monstrous train and travel through worlds inhabited by Cthulhu's servants and other ghastly creatures from the American writer's books. The game is in early access, and it'll receive updates tied directly to famous novels, such as The Shadow over Innsmouth and The Dunwich Horror.

If you once enjoyed Valheim, take a look at RuneScape: Dragonwilds. It also offers a medieval setting, the need to craft gear and build houses, and battles against mighty dragons using swords and magic. In theory you can play it solo, but it opens up most fully in co-op.

The key feature of Aloft is flight between islands floating in the air. You can make one of them your base. Later this piece of land becomes your vehicle, and you'll explore the open world on it. As a survival game, Aloft is simple — there's no hunger, thirst or disease to track, and food gives temporary bonuses. So Aloft's gameplay turned out meditative — we travel through various biomes, gather resources and battle a fungus that's poisoning one island after another. Like Sea of Thieves, the game only opens up in co-op.

State of Decay 2 is a survival game that doesn't fixate on genre conventions. To survive, you'll gather supplies, build a community, win allies, develop your base and, of course, fight zombies. Then again, the scariest thing in the game is people: trouble can come from other communities or from the comrades sharing your shelter.

State of Decay 2 keeps players on edge at all times: it's impossible to make your camp completely safe, dwindling local resources force you to range ever farther, and the dangers don't let up. Thankfully, you can weather the hardships alongside trusty friends.

Raft left early access in June 2022 and got a full release, but it had already earned the status of a phenomenon. In the story, the heroes come to on a raft in the middle of the ocean: rescue seems hopeless, yet resourceful players will surely manage not just to survive but to set themselves up nicely while fending off the bloodthirsty wildlife.

In four-player co-op, surviving on a raft becomes a coordinated effort: one fishes boards and supplies out of the ocean with a grappling hook, a second expands and reinforces the raft, a third fends off the shark gnawing at the logs, a fourth dives for resources on the seabed. Raft is considered one of the best survival games, blending the spirit of adventure with deep mechanics — from building and crafting to underwater hunting. The developers regularly add something new, and players have long forgotten there was no full release for the longest time.

At launch, No Man's Sky shocked players with its terrible state: the gameplay was tiresome, the eighteen quintillion planets were horribly monotonous, and the list of unfulfilled promises was outrageous in size. Thankfully, the developers didn't give up and set about fixing the mistakes — and they succeeded. No Man's Sky may not have become a masterpiece, but there's nothing to be ashamed of in playing it.

The game has a huge amount of content, so if you like a space setting, the spirit of exploration, gathering resources and constant progression, be sure to check it out.

Don't Starve Together is a stylish game with an unusual art style. Players battle bizarre enemies, explore a procedurally generated world, gather resources, craft powerful gear and, of course, keep the heroes fed by tending their own farm. The longer you survive in the unwelcoming world, the harder it tries to finish you off.

Klei Entertainment's creation became an incredible hit, with around 170,000 reviews, 96 percent of them positive. Take a look at Don't Starve Together: the game is a true gem among co-op entertainment.

Project Zomboid is a hardcore survival game whose hero finds himself at the epicenter of a zombie apocalypse. In such conditions it's no easy thing to avoid being eaten, and the character has other needs to think about, too. He wants to eat, drink, sleep and occasionally have fun — fail to take care of even one of these and trouble awaits.

The mechanics are hardcore and don't go easy on the player. To open a tin can, you need a special knife. Food spoils fast if you don't store it in a fridge. If you plan to rest, don't forget to make curtains and cover the windows: otherwise zombies will spot the poor soul and devour him. The game is full of such little details.

On top of that, the difficulty rises as you play. While at first houses have electricity and water runs from the tap, in time the comforts of civilization disappear. So get ready to craft generators and haul water from the river. In four-player co-op the hardcore gets a touch easier: you can split roles — someone holds a safe house and cooks, someone risks trips into the city for medicine and food, someone fends off the dead drawn by the noise. But the relief is deceptive: a single infected bite on a teammate can spell disaster for the whole group. However long you survive, the ending is the same — the developers flatly warn that Project Zomboid tells "the story of your death."

Not long ago, Terraria turned 10. In that time it became a true phenomenon, selling 35 million copies and landing among the ten most popular games in history. No wonder: Terraria is one of the most polished and engaging sandboxes in the history of game development.

Terraria sends players into a huge world the developers themselves call a canvas. Only the players' imagination and persistence can transform the barren lands into thriving domains with a castle, residents and unseen riches.

One of the pillars of the co-op survival genre — now as an Unreal Engine 5 remaster. In ARK: Survival Ascended you and your friends survive on an island teeming with dinosaurs: gathering resources, building bases, taming and breeding reptiles from the tiny to the gigantic. The co-op shines fully here: together it's easier to defend, explore the map and tame dangerous creatures. A huge sandbox you can bury yourself in for hundreds of hours with company.

Zombie survival with crafting and building that has finally left early access. In 7 Days to Die you and your partners gather resources and fortify your base by day, and every seventh night fend off a blood horde of zombies that smashes through your walls. Co-op is vital here: while some build and repair fortifications, others hold the defense. A potent mix of Minecraft crafting and anxious survival horror, built for playing together.

Survival in the universe of Conan the Barbarian: harsh deserts, the frozen north and forgotten ruins. In Conan Exiles you and your group (up to 10 people) build everything from a hut to a fortified city, capture NPC slaves, master sorcery and battle enemies and the elements. Co-op lets you split duties — someone gathers, someone builds, someone fights. A brutal, atmospheric sandbox where whole settlements rise through shared effort.

A cult survival horror that got many people into the genre (a prequel to Sons of the Forest, already in our roundup). In The Forest, after a plane crash you survive in a forest inhabited by cannibal mutants: building bases, crafting weapons and exploring creepy caves in search of your missing son. As two to four it's less scary and far more effective — one chops wood, another holds the perimeter against night attacks. Tense co-op survival classic.

A gigantic first-person factory-building co-op sim that has left early access. In Satisfactory you and your friends settle an alien planet, mine resources and build cyclopean automated factories with conveyors, trains and pipelines. Co-op here is pure pleasure: one designs the logistics, another explores the world and mines rare materials. An addictive "just one more factory" loop that only gets better as two.

Living megacities and entire countries that are far more fun to cruise around with a partner than solo. Nobody railroads you through a story: play the campaign, jack cars, storm bases or just cause chaos for its own sake. The lion's share of the fun comes from the unplanned silliness the two of you get up to right in the middle of the sandbox. And full-blooded open worlds, with no co-op strings attached, await in our general roundup of the best open-world games.

GTA 5's story campaign is single-player, but all the co-op lives in GTA Online — and there are hundreds of hours of it. With friends you can pull off heists, where everyone gets a role and you can't crack the bank without coordination, tear around Los Santos, open businesses or simply run riot in the streets while fending off the cops. A huge living city, progression, cars, real estate — Online has long since become a separate game people still log into years later. If you need a sandbox where you and your friends can mess around endlessly, nothing better than GTA Online has come along yet.

Dying Light 2 Stay Human is a direct sequel to Dying Light, which has already appeared in our roundup. Twenty years have passed since the events of the first game, almost the entire world has been wiped out by a virus, and the remnants of humanity huddle in half-ruined cities, fighting for their lives against zombies every day.

The protagonist is a Pilgrim named Aiden. People like him travel between cities, delivering supplies and messages, risking their lives as they pick their way through hordes of the infected. The brave soul arrives in the last major city, Villedor, whose fate the player will decide — shaping its look and finding answers to many questions.

The developers tried to address the first game's flaws, cut the muddled bits and beef up the mechanics players liked. Parkour is more interesting and varied, the new zombie-damage system will please anyone who loves the gore, the world is bigger, and the vertical gameplay can genuinely be called vertical.

One thing worth highlighting is the ability to "upgrade" the city: by capturing various objects, we can hand them to one of the factions, and that affects which facilities appear on the map and which bonuses the player receives.

Far Cry 5 is one of the series' most atmospheric entries: the open world of Hope County, Montana, where a deranged preacher, Joseph Seed, has built an armed cult. Far Cry 5 has everything players fell in love with the series for: a huge sandbox with countless outposts, unhinged characters with crazy assignments and hundreds of ways to keep yourself entertained. The game is fun solo, but a cooperative playthrough delivers far more enjoyment.

On top of that, buying Far Cry 5 is a good investment, since the main story alone runs around 17 hours, and exploring the whole world is essentially endless.

A tactical action game in the huge open world of Bolivia that's played entirely as four. A squad of Ghosts is dropped in to dismantle the Santa Blanca drug cartel, and how exactly you clear the regions is up to you: quietly take out the guards by stealth, call in an airstrike or burst in with grenades. Wildlands is valued precisely for its freedom of approach and its co-op: with three partners you can stage synchronized takedowns, cover each other from drones and divide roles. One of the most "friendly" open worlds — playing solo with bots isn't nearly as fun.

A reboot of the wild GTA-parody series: the sunny city of Santo Ileso, where you and a partner build your own gang, the Saints, from scratch. You can play the entire Saints Row campaign as two in drop-in/drop-out mode — a friend joins at any moment. Co-op brings out the series' signature spirit: you stage vehicular chaos, mess around with physics and weapons, and your partners can kick off their own antics right in the middle of your mission. Not the deepest open world, but it's built for exactly one thing — having fun as two without a care.

An open San Francisco that's fun to roam while hacking everything connected to the network. In Watch Dogs 2 the protagonist is a hacker from the DedSec group, and the gameplay is built around hacking: cameras, cars, gadgets, drones. The co-op here has its quirks: it's seamless and online-only — your partner drops straight into the open world with no lobbies or loading. As two you freely explore the city and run special co-op operations (one distracts, the other hacks), but note that the full story campaign isn't built for two — the shared fun revolves around free roam and co-op tasks. A stylish open world, not as bloody as GTA and built for two-person outings.

The sequel moves Watch Dogs to a dystopian future London seized by a private military corporation. The main hook of Watch Dogs Legion is that you can recruit and play as any passerby, each with their own skills. The online mode added free four-player co-op: you explore the city together, run dynamic tasks and take on Tactical Ops — tough operations you can barely complete solo. Everyone has their own squad of recruited agents, so co-op produces unexpected tactical combinations.

A first-person adventure-action game set in the Avatar universe, from the makers of The Division. In Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora you play as a Na'vi and explore the wild, dazzlingly beautiful Western Frontier of Pandora: flying on banshees, hunting with traditional weapons and tearing down the human invaders' bases. You can play the whole campaign as two online with cross-play — progress is saved for both. This isn't a sandbox about chaos but a meditative shared exploration of a lavish open world, where simply soaring over the jungle together feels great.

An armed revolution on the tropical island of Yara, ruled with an iron fist by dictator Anton Castillo (played by Giancarlo Esposito). The series' formula is intact: a huge open world, outposts, improvised weapons and "amigo" animal companions like a crocodile in a T-shirt. You can play the entire Far Cry 6 campaign as two online — storming checkpoints and staging guerrilla chaos behind enemy lines is far more fun together than solo.

A third-person looter shooter in an open post-apocalyptic Washington gripped by an epidemic. You're a Division agent restoring order: clearing control points, farming gear and shaping a build. The whole campaign and endgame (including eight-player raids) are played in co-op for up to four, and it's in a squad that the tactics come out — someone holds the line, someone heals, someone flanks. In spirit it straddles the line between shooter and open-world, but the sandbox city and shared farming make it kin to open-world co-op games.

A pirate sandbox where the whole ship is the co-op. In Sea of Thieves a crew of 2-4 runs a single vessel: someone's at the helm, someone sets the sails, someone bails water and loads the cannons during a boarding. Together you hunt for treasure, run trading-company contracts and battle sea creatures and other pirates. Without coordination the ship simply won't sail — it's one of the most "team-based" open worlds, where half the fun is born from the shared chaos on deck. Heads up: on the open sea you can run into live players, so skirmishes are possible.

An atmospheric RPG set in medieval China with fantasy elements. In gameplay terms the project can be filed under soulslike, with a focus on parrying enemy attacks. Where Winds Meet features many combat styles, and its mechanics open up in co-op, where players can choose different roles.

World of Sea Battle is set in the age when people conquered the oceans aboard sailing ships. It offers more than fifty warships, plenty of quests, and the chance to join a guild that fights for territory, influence and power. World of Sea Battle's main focus is naval battles using heavy cannons. Fights are waged against both computer opponents and live players. Succeed and you can buy your own island, which becomes a permanent base for your fleet.

In Dying Light: The Beast the protagonist is Kyle Crane, familiar from the original 2015 game. In battle he can use melee and firearms, as well as transform into a bloodthirsty beast to kill enemies with his bare hands. As before, the enemies are various types of zombies, weak by day but extremely dangerous at night.

Dying Light keeps a brisk pace throughout the story campaign. The game may lack a clear story, but that shortcoming is offset by a host of cool mechanics. If Techland's creation is to your taste, take a look at the expansions: the developers really nailed them.

A selection of games tailored for playing through as two — on one screen or in split-screen. Couples, flatmates, any duo with a single console between them — this is all for you. When you need couch co-op, with no fuss over online or a second PC, these are the easiest names to start with.

It Takes Two is a model co-op game that will impress even the most demanding player. It's praised for its excellent graphics, touching story, solid humor and a wealth of interesting mechanics: here you can do platforming, shoot at enemies and bosses, solve puzzles, fly a plane, take part in mini-games and even become the hero of a full-on fighting game — and that's just the early chapters. You'd be hard-pressed to find a game that can rival Hazelight Studios' creation for sheer variety of activities.

Josef Fares didn't promise a thousand dollars to anyone who got bored of It Takes Two for nothing — it's simply impossible to tire of the gameplay. And the game manages to keep a brisk pace across all 15 hours.

In concept, Police Stories somewhat recalls Ready or Not — only here the camera is isometric and the team is just two cops. The partners arrive at assignments where villains have planted a bomb or taken hostages and have to deal with the problem.

Kicking down a door and rushing into a room where gangsters are hanging out is a bad idea — better to toss in a flashbang first. And if there are civilians in the room, you have to plan your actions so the innocent don't get hurt. Not every criminal needs to be shot, either — some may surrender. In short, the cops have plenty to handle, and there's no room to relax.

The developers managed to create an excellent co-op game that, despite its retro graphics, quickly draws you in and impresses with its tactical mechanics.

A pixel beat 'em up that keeps the mechanics of the series' early games. It also has modern roguelike elements and many characters with different combat systems. Double Dragon Gaiden: Rise Of The Dragons is worth playing first and foremost for those who grew up with the early entries on the NES. Everyone else risks getting bored after a couple of hours.

An isometric action game with hordes of monsters and aggressive bosses. To beat them, the game offers a huge arsenal of weapons, including lasers, flamethrowers, machine guns, electro-cannons and much more. You can play through the story mode with a friend, including on one screen. At the moment Greedland is in early access. Over time the developers will add new maps, unique enemies and additional weapons.

The Ascent is set in the distant future. Humanity has long plied various planets and lives side by side with aliens, while power has slipped from the hands of states to corporations. The Ascent company, for one, is so influential that it runs entire planets. But one day it suddenly collapses, plunging society into chaos. What happened, and how do we live now? It's up to the hero to answer these questions!

In the end, a team of players will tear around the planet Veles, gunning down crowds of villains and carrying out tough assignments. Mighty aliens, hulking robots and deadly corporate troops will try to stop them — all of them deserving a burst from a machine gun, a couple of rocket shots or a hydraulic punch that turns flesh to dust. There are plenty of weapons and abilities in The Ascent, so everyone can put together a build to their liking.

The developers managed to create fun combat that holds your attention to the closing credits. Plus they drew an incredibly beautiful and detailed world that perfectly fits the cyberpunk slogan "high tech, low life."

LEGO games are wrongly considered kids' entertainment. In reality, projects about little brick people can thoroughly entertain even an adult player, and Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga proves it. No surprise, since the game features all nine episodes of the cult saga, and you can take control of every well-known character — from Anakin, Luke and Darth Vader to the Mandalorian.

At first glance the gameplay is simple. The heroes run around recognizable locations like Tatooine and Coruscant, beat up enemies, search for blue blocks, turn piles of bricks into elaborate structures and so on. In practice, though, the process is maximally addictive — you can slice up stormtroopers with a lightsaber and toy with them using the Force endlessly. And the environment breaks apart into little pieces so beautifully that it's simply impossible to stop smashing everything.

On top of that, LEGO Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga looks great. You'd think a world built of bricks wouldn't be much, but the artists did such a great job that during play you keep wanting to stop and gawk at the water surface of Naboo. A special pleasure is playing through the saga in local co-op.

In 2023 the legendary tactical series returned. It offers a choice of mercenaries and their gear, careful budget management and battles against superior enemy forces. Jagged Alliance 3 turned out no worse than the first two games — it can still deliver a good time for fans of turn-based battles. If you like, you can play it through with a friend.

Many games let you furnish your home, but in Hell is Others it's one of the main mechanics, revealed from an unusual angle. The protagonist, Adam Smithson, lives in a little apartment high above Century City. His faithful companion is a bonsai that, like everything in this city, feeds on blood. So we'll have to descend again and again into the dark streets to replenish supplies.

Together with other players, we'll explore the city, fight and gather supplies to furnish the apartment and plant new plants. The latter, in exchange for a generous watering of blood, will bear various kinds of ammunition — ricocheting or silenced rounds, for instance. Other furnishings also grant Adam new traits and advantages.

Every descent into the city is a big risk. Various monsters can appear from around any corner, and other players won't pass up the chance to grab your loot. You can't linger too long in the city, or you risk staying there for good, never reaching the elevator to get back home.

A wildly difficult run-and-gun in the style of 1930s hand-drawn cartoons, where almost all the gameplay is epic boss battles. In Cuphead you play as Cuphead and Mugman as two on one screen, and the co-op here is a double-edged sword: it's more fun together and you can revive a fallen partner, but there's twice as much chaos on screen. The game demands precision, memorizing patterns and steady nerves, but a shared victory over a particularly stubborn boss delivers an incomparable sense of triumph. A cult classic of local co-op.

A fun adventure game in which a group of friends head home after a resort vacation. The return trip proves no easy thing, though — the road is wrecked, and to get past the tricky stretches you'll have to be resourceful. Ideally, to play through RV There Yet? you'll want to split roles — one drives, another sets up winches, and a third scouts the terrain and reports what's ahead for the group.

Stuck Together is a curious game in which two toys glued to each other try to escape a deranged owner. To get out, you need to grab the scenery with your hands at the right moment, swing and leap forward. And success depends on the actions of both players. Note that Stuck Together can be played as two on one computer.

Lego Voyagers stands apart from other games tied to the famous plastic construction toy from Denmark. By genre it's a platformer with lots of simple puzzles. The closest analog is It Takes Two. The result is a sweet two-player adventure that pays a lot of attention to teamwork.

A set of several dozen mini-games. Among them are adrenaline-fueled races, lively dancing, speed cooking and much more. A can't-miss pick for a noisy party in mixed company. The competitions in Lego Party! turned out engaging and fun.

A co-op quest in which one player controls a little mouse and the other its mechanical copy. They have different abilities, and to play through the story mode you need to use the strengths of both creatures. Note that Wires And Whiskers is set in a world of mutants, radiation and unstable technology.

This is a collection of puzzles designed for playing through together. Cartoony graphics and the low difficulty of the local puzzles make it an ideal pastime for the whole family. And the puzzles here are smartly combined with simple action.

A platformer in which you play as Disney cartoon characters — Donald Duck, Goofy, and Mickey and Minnie Mouse. You're invited to run through colorful 2D levels, solve a series of puzzles and collect as many coins as possible. Thanks to its vivid animated style and recognizable characters, Disney Illusion Island suits both kids and nostalgic adults.

Revenge of the Savage Planet is a survival game set across several planets at once. Each has its own biome with unique flora and fauna. You'll upgrade your ship and gradually unlock new areas that were previously off-limits. Ultimately you need to return to Earth and take revenge on the employer who left you for dead.

A heist sim in which you have to find, then carry off, money and various valuables. The situation is complicated by the fact that the resort where the game takes place is gradually sinking underwater. As a result the environment is constantly changing, so you can't plan ahead — you'll have to improvise on the fly.

In Vinebound, dozens of arenas geared toward co-op play await. On them you need to destroy enemies and solve set tasks using unusual weapons. As you progress, new tools unlock, and the game allows combining items with one another. The result opens up broad possibilities for building your own tactics.

Split Fiction is the new project from Hazelight Studios, the makers of It Takes Two and A Way Out. Its key feature is unique mechanics on every level. Among them are sword fights, jumping across car roofs, a stealth episode in zero gravity, dragon flights and much more. Split Fiction will keep surprising you, especially if you don't know in advance what lies ahead. More on the game in our Split Fiction review.

The goal of the game is to climb out of the depths of hell to the surface. The catch is that all the heroes are linked to each other by chains, so you'll have to think through your joint actions. Together with your buddies, you'll scale sheer walls, leap across chasms and ride bizarre vehicles. If you like, Chained Together can be played as two on one screen.

A fun puzzle game in which you have to move belongings from one point to another while overcoming numerous obstacles. Moving Out 2 comes into its own specifically in split-screen, when four friends race through the levels trying to outpace each other. It'll do for a family evening or a noisy party alike.

Overcooked! 2 turns players into cooks who have to hurriedly prepare patrons' outlandish orders and thereby... save the world. You'd think chopping cabbage, frying meat and washing dishes would be dull, but in four-player co-op it becomes a fun panic. The cramped kitchen forces you to divide up: one chops, another fries, a third assembles orders and washes plates, and the moment you lose the rhythm, orders burn, the queue grows and everyone yells at each other. You can play on one screen or over the network.

While the game starts with the simplest tasks even a solo player can handle, with each new level the dishes get more elaborate and cooking demands coordinated work. The locations spring surprises too: you'll have to cook between two constantly separating trucks, on a slippery ice floe, or aboard a ship rocking on the waves. All of this made Overcooked! 2 a multi-million-selling hit.

A Way Out is the second Josef Fares project in our roundup after It Takes Two. Released in 2018, the game impressed a great many players. What hardships Leo and Vincent didn't have to endure: the partners broke out of prison, came under heavy fire, hid from pursuit and never for a moment forgot about the ones they love.

The game is played strictly as two — you can't even launch it solo, and even over the network the second player joins for free. The screen is split almost the whole time, and scenes run in parallel: while one distracts a guard, the other looks for an escape tool; in chases and firefights you have to sync your partners' actions on the fly. In between there are arguments over shared decisions and fun two-player mini-games. The story doesn't reach for the stars, but it hits you in the gut with a touching finale. A must for co-op fans.

Frantics is a PlayStation exclusive you play on mobile phones rather than gamepads. The game has plenty of entertaining mini-games you can win not only through skill but through cunning. Nothing stops you from undercutting a friend at the last moment and snatching the coveted win.

Frantics has plenty of activities, requires no special preparation and works great as entertainment for a group. The main thing is that everyone can take a loss and keep their sense of humor.

Rayman Legends is a true gem among platformers, combining a huge number of levels, varied biomes, fun boss fights and absolutely marvelous musical levels. Off the top of your head, you can't name a platformer that can match Michel Ancel's creation for scope and variety.

If you're looking for a game you can play with a child, Rayman Legends is the perfect option. But be ready for only the early levels to be simple — the final stretch will demand serious skill.

LEGO City Undercover is another project that can engage adults and children alike. The game's hero, a brave police officer, has to go undercover, uncover a criminal conspiracy and stop cunning villains — all in an open world and with the brand's signature humor.

Thanks to Lego games you can step into the shoes of Batman, the Avengers or Ninjago, but Undercover is one of the popular brand's biggest hits.

And here's the third Josef Fares game in our roundup — the one he debuted in the industry with. Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons may have been a first attempt, but you can't deny its heart and gameplay quality. In this puzzle-platformer, two brothers set off on a long journey for water from the Tree of Life that will cure their father's illness. The adventure delivers many interesting and dramatic moments, and the finale will bring everyone to tears.

Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons may fall short of Fares' later projects in many ways, but it's still good enough to deserve attention.

The coziest corner of co-op gaming: the rules click instantly, the thrill kicks in from the first second, and split-screen turns an ordinary evening into a mini-championship. Inside: racing, sports sims and rowdy four-player brawling — you can take on the AI together or scrap with each other on one screen. On Switch, add Mario Kart World to the list — more on it in the Switch exclusives section. Pure racing classics, with no eye on co-op, sit in our general roundup of the best racing games.

Rocket League is the most unusual football of your life: instead of players, little cars tear around the pitch, ramming a giant ball into the goal at speed and mid-jump. The co-op essence is in team play: you and your friends form a 2v2 or 3v3 team against other live players or bots, and victory rests on coordination — someone pushes the attack, someone covers the goal, and it's important not to all crowd the same ball. There's split-screen on one screen and cross-play across all platforms.

The most ambitious and polished kart racer SEGA has put out to date. Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds, like its main rival Mario Kart World, offers races for up to 24 players, but stands out with its portal mechanic, which changes the tracks in seconds right in the middle of a race. And the portals elegantly solve Mario Kart World's key problem, where different tracks are joined by long, not-very-interesting highways.

A remaster of Naughty Dog's cult 1999 kart racer, reworked by Beenox. Crash Team Racing Nitro-Fueled is the main Mario Kart rival on non-Nintendo platforms: drift boosts, weapons, dozens of tracks and recognizable characters from the Crash Bandicoot universe. It supports local split-screen for up to four and online races for up to eight. Goes down well on a family evening or a friendly tournament by the TV.

The Crew 2 is a fun racing game where players compete on the road, on the water and across the skies. The project also has a big seamless world open for exploration. You can roam the map and take part in races solo or in a group of up to four.

The game is full of strengths: it's praised for its excellent graphics, realistic physics and a huge number of activities.

A demolition racer from Bugbear that entered early access in March 2025. Wreckfest 2 is dented metal, battered junkers instead of supercars and one goal: drag your wreck to the finish while shoving rivals aside. The sequel brought back the long-awaited split-screen, so you can stage a derby with a friend on one screen. Beyond racing there's a demolition-survival mode in an arena. The best there is for blowing off steam and gleefully crumpling other people's metal (and your own).

Arcade racing with the iconic Hot Wheels cars on mind-bending tracks of orange track — loops, dead loops and banked turns just like in childhood. Hot Wheels Unleashed delights with pleasant physics, drifting and a huge garage of collectible models. There's two-player split-screen, so you can stage a race with a friend on one screen. Bright, nimble, sticky — a racer like this is good at any age.

This football sim isn't flawless and differs little from the previous installment. The changes are minor — dribbling is more responsive, goalkeepers behave more intelligently, and forwards have learned to act unpredictably. None of that amounts to serious innovation. Still, if you want to lead your favorite club or national team, EA Sports FC 26 is the best choice. The game simply has no serious competitors.

The official game of the 2025 FIA Formula One World Championship, also known as Formula 1. It can be recommended not only to those who follow the racing but to all fans of high speeds in general. Besides, games in this genre have been rare lately. F1 25 offers a full story mode, the ability to run your own team, dynamic weather effects, modern graphics, and faithfully recreated cars and tracks.

Madcap mini-golf built for a big group. In Golf With Your Friends up to twelve people play at once, with all the balls on the course at the same time — which turns a calm game into fun chaos full of trips, power-ups and pranks. Dozens of fantastical courses, modes like hockey and dodgeball, and a pile of modifiers. There isn't much sport here, but there's no end of fun for a group.

A rowdy physics brawl about jelly-like figures clumsily pummeling each other on dangerous arenas — rooftops, trucks, a Ferris wheel. Gang Beasts is famous for its clumsy physics: half the fun is accidentally falling off a ledge together with your opponent. There's a co-op mode against waves of enemies and free-for-alls with a group. Pure mayhem, especially when the whole group is howling with laughter in one room.

A free-to-play platform fighter in the vein of Super Smash Bros. with around fifty fighters. In Brawlhalla you can not only scrap with each other but also play through co-op modes against waves of enemies and bosses, as two or as a group. Simple controls, cross-play across all platforms and regular updates make it a great entry point into the genre. And the price — zero — removes any barrier to rounding up friends.

Lane defense practically begs to be co-op: while the hordes pour in wave after wave, you and your partners slap down towers, set traps and plug holes in the line, shouting to each other about where it's about to break. The key is to divide up zones of responsibility and not skimp on shared upgrades, otherwise the same maps wear you out twice as much solo. Miss your one corridor and a breach takes down the base for everyone at once.

A hybrid of tower defense and third-person action: you don't just set traps along the path of the orc hordes but also hack enemies apart in the thick of battle. In two-player co-op Orcs Must Die! 3 works best — one blocks off one corridor with traps, the other a second, and together you stage an infernal grinder of spikes, catapults and tar. The third installment upped the scale: huge "war scenarios" with hundreds of enemies on screen appeared. The very meeting point of strategy and chaos that works best as two.

The very installment that got fans hooked on the series' co-op formula. Orcs Must Die! 2 added full two-player co-op, an endless-waves mode and shared progression. The idea is the same: combine traps with active combat and keep the orcs from reaching the portal. Despite its age, as two it still keeps you glued to the screen — a cheap, risk-free way to get acquainted with co-op TD.

A reboot of the cult mix of tower defense and Action-RPG, built for co-op for up to four. In Dungeon Defenders: Awakened you pick a hero (knight, huntress, mage, monk), build towers and auras around the crystal between waves, and dive into the fight yourself during an assault. On top of that, RPG mechanics are layered in: loot, leveling, gear, pets. With three friends, everyone takes their own role in the defense — it's the most "party-style" tower defense in the roundup.

An unusual blend of tower defense and first-person shooter. In Sanctum 2 you first build a maze of towers, funneling enemies along the path you want, and when a wave starts, you pick up a weapon and gun down whoever breaks through. As four, the defense becomes a coordinated system: someone handles walls and slows, someone picks off the flying and armored creatures. The sci-fi setting, different classes and first-person shooting set it apart from classic TDs.

A people's-favorite tower defense about monkeys popping balloons — deceptively cute, but genuinely hardcore on high difficulties. The co-op mode in Bloons TD 6 lets 2-4 players defend one map: you split the track into sectors, pool the money from popped balloons and together hold back waves you can no longer handle solo. A huge number of towers, heroes and maps plus regular updates — the co-op here lives on for years. Works on PC, phone and consoles alike.

Commanding an army as two is a pleasure all its own: one carries the economy and churns out units, the other holds the front and leads the troops into attack. The section has both real-time RTS, with micro pushed to the limit, and thoughtful turn-based games where you can sit over each move. Any scale — from defending a single base to drawn-out global campaigns, with victory forged four-handed. To dig deeper into the genre, our separate selection of the best RTS of all time will help.

A remaster of the 2004 strategy game set in the Warhammer universe. The package includes the base game and three official expansions. The visuals are noticeably improved, while the gameplay is the same as 20 years ago. Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War — Definitive Edition is a great option for those who miss quality RTS games.

This is a remaster of the series' second game, which came out in 2002. The reissue carefully carries over all the original's features, but on new technology. Also worth noting are new campaigns and a full co-op mode. Stronghold Crusader: Definitive Edition is set during the Crusades. To reach your goals and defeat your enemies, it's important to maintain a balance between building, raising an army and keeping the residents happy. And resources are often scarce, so the main struggle is precisely over them.

A real-time strategy game in a modern setting. To win in Broken Arrow you need to send tank forces and aircraft into battle, drop paratroopers and run reconnaissance with drones. Five players per side take part in each match, so large-scale battles await. True, to get to grips with all the finer points you'll have to spend time mastering the mechanics. But the result is worth it.

The return of the legendary WWII strategy series, where you have to skillfully manage a small squad of soldiers. As before, there are several military specialists, including a sniper, a driver, a Green Beret and others. To reach a mission's objective in Commandos: Origins, it's important to use each of their skills. If you like, you can hit a tactical pause and dole out specific orders to each soldier in the squad.

An unusual hybrid of tower defense and strategy. On January 15 the game left early access and launched. In it you'll build, raise armies and clear territory of enemies. But your primary task is defending the citadel from hordes of aggressive undead. To do it, you raise high walls and various types of towers and position your troops wisely. During battles your heroes gain experience and unlock new skills that come in handy later during an offensive. And push forward you must, since the most valuable resources are often far from your fortress. Separate rewards are on offer for killing the local mini-bosses.

The closest analog to this game is the strategy They are Billions. That said, those who miss Warcraft 3: Reign of Chaos can also get plenty of enjoyment out of Age of Darkness.

In co-op the players' bases are set a considerable distance apart, so you won't get in each other's way building defenses. If needed, you can share resources and hand a friend control of individual structures on your base.

The gameplay in this series hasn't changed in years. Individual entries differ mainly through their setting. Anno 117: Pax Romana, for instance, is set in the days of the Roman Empire. A thick atmosphere of ancient Europe, architecture characteristic of the era and battles against enemy armies await. The main emphasis, however, is on city-building, as before.

Sid Meier's Civilization 6 can keep you engaged for a long time, both against the AI and against live players. Gathering friends on a single server, picking a favorite faction and trying to be the first to reach triumph is an engaging undertaking.

Co-op in the 4X strategy works like this: players form teams (up to six on a server) and lead them to victory together — sharing scouting, trading technologies and resources, coordinating armies against shared AI opponents. You can pick scenarios that vary the match, and a host dropping out no longer ends the game. A single co-op session easily stretches across a whole evening.

A benchmark space RTS with a separate Co-op Missions mode. In StarCraft 2 you and a partner pick commanders with their own armies and special abilities and play through missions against the AI as two, leveling your commander from mission to mission. It's far more approachable than the hardcore competitive mode: you don't have to be an esports pro to enjoy a coordinated defense and joint pushes. It's where you should start your acquaintance with co-op RTS.

An RTS set in the Halo universe, built for gamepad and co-op. You can play the Halo Wars 2 campaign as two, with allies sharing a common base, resources and unit cap — and you can even hand control of your squads to your partner. That creates an unusual dynamic: one player takes on the economy and supply, the other commands the front. A rare case of a comfortable console strategy that's a pleasure to play as two from the couch.

An updated version of the legendary historical RTS with improved graphics and a co-op mode. In Age of Empires 2: Definitive Edition you play through historical campaigns as two (and in co-op all scenarios are unlocked from the start) or fight together against AI armies. You gather resources, develop your civilization through the ages, build armies and storm the enemy together. A classic that plays fresh decades later — especially in company.

A tactical RTS about the Eastern Front of WWII with an emphasis on cover, suppressing fire and realistic ballistics. In Company of Heroes 2 co-op lives in the Theater of War mode — a set of missions you can play as two against the AI — as well as in joint skirmishes against computer teams. Coordination matters here: one presses with infantry, the other brings up armor. A tense military strategy where a partner's shoulder is felt especially keenly.

Dark Quest 4 is a turn-based tactics game inspired by the board game HeroQuest. You're invited to assemble a squad of heroes, tune their abilities and set off into deep dungeons to thwart the plans of the dark sorcerer Gulak. The visuals recall the early Warcraft games, and all battles in Dark Quest 4 play out turn-based, as in Heroes of Might and Magic.

A cozy yet deep RTS about Vikings settling the harsh northern lands. In Northgard: Definitive Edition you manage a clan: expanding territory, gathering resources, surviving winters and developing your village. In co-op you can team up with a friend against AI teams — sharing the map, coordinating defense and economy. Pretty hand-drawn visuals, clear mechanics and a pleasant pace make it a great co-op strategy for both newcomers and genre veterans.

A test of friendship's strength: you don't need to shoot, you need to think together and negotiate endlessly. We've gathered the best co-op puzzle games on PC — from cult portal puzzlers to escape rooms and physics sandboxes. Many rely on asymmetry: each person sees their own thing and has to say every little detail out loud, or the puzzle won't yield. For an evening like that — whether as two or with a noisy group — the section is a real hit.

Portal 2 is another game of venerable age that the years haven't spoiled one bit: the graphics still look decent today, the story campaign still intrigues, and the co-op mode made the project an eternal classic.

Portal 2's strongest suit is its puzzles. Experimenting with the portal system to crack the next riddle is a joy. If for some reason you missed the game in 2011, be sure to give it a go today — Valve's creation is worth it.

One of the most popular physics puzzlers in co-op — over 50 million copies sold. In Human: Fall Flat you control a goofy jelly-like figure and solve puzzles in surreal worlds, grabbing at everything with your hands. The physics is deliberately clumsy, and that's exactly where all the humor comes from: you try to drag a crate onto a catapult or build a bridge and end up dropping your partner off a cliff. In online co-op for up to eight, every level turns into fun mush — people pick this up not for the difficulty but for the all-out laughter.

The benchmark of the co-op escape-room genre and a free game to boot — a great entry point into the genre. In We Were Here two players are separated in an abandoned castle amid an icy wasteland and can't see each other: all you have is a radio. One explores the rooms and describes what they see, the other uses the scraps of information to suggest puzzle solutions. The game is built entirely on communication: without clear dialogue you won't solve a single riddle. If it clicks, the series has several sequels with more intricate puzzles.

A spy co-op puzzle strictly for two with asymmetric roles. In Operation: Tango one player becomes a field agent, the other a hacker breaking into systems remotely. You see completely different screens and can't peek at your partner's, so the whole game rests on a clear, fast exchange of information. A stylish spy-cinema presentation, cross-play across all platforms and a nice touch: only one of you needs to buy a copy — the second joins for free.

A co-op puzzle that fans of classic first-person quests are sure to love. Your goal is simple — get out of the building. But to do it you'll have to solve a host of tasks, examine every object and figure out what's needed to make leaving the inhospitable house possible. Escape Simulator 2 has many maps, and their number will grow in the future thanks to new user-made levels. You can play in co-op for up to eight: the rooms let you split up and dig into puzzles in parallel, calling out over voice chat or in text — "I've got code 4-7-2, what does that open?" Together the puzzles crack noticeably faster than solo.

A cult co-op puzzle about defusing a bomb — 98% positive reviews on Steam. In Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes one player is locked in a room with a ticking bomb and can see it but doesn't know how to defuse it. The others are "experts" with a defusal manual who can't see the bomb. Salvation lies only in communication: the defuser describes what's in front of them, the experts frantically flip through the manual and dictate the solution while the timer ticks. Only the defuser needs to buy a copy — the manual is free, and the partners can be right beside them or on voice chat.

In Trine 5: A Clockwork Conspiracy you'll once again explore large levels, solve interesting puzzles and fight numerous monsters. The game stands out with its colorful graphics and genuinely distinct characters with unique abilities, as in the classic The Lost Vikings. It supports split-screen and co-op for four players.

Biped 2 is a colorful 3D platformer with puzzles. The game has modes for one, two and four players, each with their own unique levels and tasks. And if you like, you can make your own obstacle course or check out other users' creative experiments.

A gentle two-player puzzle-platformer from Coldwood and EA. In Unravel Two you control two tiny creatures made of yarn, the Yarnys, linked by a single thread. That thread is the main mechanic: you use it to grab ledges, swing, build bridges and pull your partner up. The game demands constant coordination and is incredibly cozy at the same time: warm hand-drawn visuals, heartfelt music and a calm pace. A calm two-player playthrough with no rush or nerves — just right for a cozy evening.

A puzzle-platformer with the option to play through as two on a split screen. Its look is inspired by the works of Hayao Miyazaki, known for Princess Mononoke and Howl's Moving Castle. Cartoony visuals, beautiful scenery and smooth animations create a special, cozy atmosphere. The local puzzles will make you think, but you're sure to reach the solution yourself, without extra hints. Lost Twins 2 is a great option to play through with a girlfriend.

A charming puzzle with a unique mechanic: you control two paper figures and literally cut pieces out of each other to get the right shape and solve a task. Snipperclips launched as a Nintendo Switch launch exclusive and quickly became a favorite for co-op play. To push a ball through, cut out a key or reach a button, you'll have to constantly negotiate who's going to "trim" whom and how. Simple, good-natured and terribly inventive — grab it for a pair or a group of up to four.

A puzzle about coordination where each player controls their own cube robot, and the task is deceptively simple — get each cube to its colored pad without killing your partner. In Death Squared the levels are full of lasers, traps and blocks that respond to only one of the cubes, so clear dialogue is a must: one wrong step and the puzzle restarts. The story campaign is played as two, and a separate mode offers co-op for up to four. A good way to find out how well the two of you really work together.

Rusty Lake's first co-op point-and-click adventure (from the makers of the Cube Escape series and Rusty Lake). The Past Within is built on an unusual asymmetry in time: one player is in the past, the other in the future, and they solve completely different puzzles without seeing each other's screen. Hints from one era affect the riddles in the other, and the "future" player's actions change the "past" player's world. You can only finish it by constantly describing to your partner what you see. Rusty Lake's signature dark, surreal atmosphere is all here. Important: each of the two needs to buy a copy.

A chaotic co-op puzzle about renovating apartments — something like Overcooked! 2, only instead of cooking you're hanging wallpaper, laying tile and lugging furniture. In Tools Up! up to four players get an apartment floor plan and have to put it in order within a set time, constantly getting in each other's way and making a fun mess. Success depends entirely on dividing roles and team coordination. A peppy, easy co-op for a group evening — no pretensions, just fun.

A cozy, beautiful two-player puzzle about the friendship between a rock and a fallen star. In Pode players control two heroes with different abilities: one grows plants and crystals, the other moves rocks and light, and only by combining their skills can you solve puzzles and move forward. No timer, no stress — it's a calm, meditative adventure with hand-drawn Scandinavian-style visuals. It sits well with a relaxed shared playthrough — even if your partner isn't a seasoned player.

A group-friendly puzzle-platformer for a big crew. In Pico Park two to eight players solve levels that are flat-out impossible to clear solo: you have to stand on each other's shoulders, form living ladders, toss and pull your partners, and press buttons in sync. The more people, the more fun and frantic it gets. Simple pixel graphics, an instant start and shared shouting — no wonder people love hauling it out at parties and family gatherings.

The main new feature of Little Nightmares 3 compared with previous installments is the arrival of full co-op for two players. And clearing it requires both characters' skills. The heroine, named Alone, uses a wrench for defense and solving puzzles, while her partner Low hits targets at range with a bow and arrows. Otherwise the gameplay is almost unchanged. It's good that the new developers at Supermassive Games managed to preserve the signature atmosphere of the first two Little Nightmares in the threequel.

In the new installment of the How 2 Escape series, you need to find a missing submarine and then learn what happened on it. One player handles the investigation themselves, while the other actively helps. The project can be recommended to those who miss classic quests.

This simple interactive film is sure to please quest connoisseurs. You're invited to run a detective investigation on a mysterious island where a person has vanished and a murder has taken place. You can study all the circumstances of the case together with friends.

Figment 2: Creed Valley stands out with its vivid visuals and unusual concept. The game takes place inside a human mind gripped by nightmares. Together with Dusty, the embodiment of courage, we have to save this "world" and defeat the Nightmares.

To do it, you'll have to fight a lot, solve puzzles and explore a world filled with music. The heroes and their enemies communicate exclusively through song.

It's a sweet, engaging game with a simple but interesting story, a neat concept and quality execution. So if you want to set off into a fairy tale, this is just the thing. In local co-op, the second player's character is Piper — the protagonist's companion bird.

A curious puzzle in which each player sees only part of the overall picture. To progress, you have to act together and exchange information over voice chat. The riddles in Tick Tock: A Tale for Two gradually get harder, and you'll have to act fast, since you need to finish within the allotted time. Also worth noting is the local story, inspired by Scandinavian myths.

Trine 4: The Nightmare Prince is a very curious co-op game. The colorful platformer is most often praised for its clever puzzles, each of which can only be solved using the heroes' strengths. Battles against enemies, some of them genuinely huge, are tasked with varying up the gameplay. In some fights you can't survive without mutual aid: the wizard can set the archer's arrow on fire, for instance, and help land a deadly shot.

Trine 4 will engage a group of four for dozens of hours and charm them with its lightness and remarkable puzzles. If you enjoy the game, the earlier installments are worth a look too.

A co-op puzzle strictly for two whose main tool is radios and describing what your partner sees (a sequel to We Were Here, already in the roundup). In We Were Here Together two players end up in different parts of a mysterious Antarctic station and solve linked puzzles, communicating by voice alone: one sees a clue, the other the mechanism it opens. Without clear communication you won't budge a single room. An honest test of a duo's coordination.

A series of true escape rooms in video-game form. In Escape Academy you study, as two (on one screen or online), at an academy for escape masters: each room is a set of tricky riddles, ciphers and mechanisms to solve against the clock. The co-op here feels natural — as two you spot clues faster and combine your finds. Enjoyed We Were Here and want more pure escape puzzles? Then don't pass this by.

Digital board games and card games where you sit down not against each other but as a single team against the system itself. There are no PvP duels here — just shared wrangling with the deck, the board and a common foe, where victory and defeat are everyone's alike. Love board-game nights but without the grudges and arguments over who betrayed whom? Then this is exactly your case.

A sequel to the legendary roguelike deckbuilder that, for the first time in the series, added co-op for up to four. In Slay the Spire 2 you climb the Spire together: moving simultaneously, applying buffs and protection to one another, and in co-op special cards and team synergies appear. Enemies get more health and hit everyone at once, so a coordinated deck is a must — someone takes the support role, someone the damage. A case of turning a solitary, "quiet" card game into a noisy team adventure. Released in early access in 2026.

A digital version of the cult board game — a tactical dungeon crawler where battles are built on action cards. In Gloomhaven a party of 2-4 mercenaries fights through dungeons, and every turn is a little puzzle: cards are played all at once, so the team needs to talk through in advance who hits whom, who heals and who holds the line. Online co-op for up to four, shared loot and a campaign with leveling. One of the best adaptations of tabletop classics for those who like to think over every move together.

A digital adaptation of one of the most respected co-op board games. In Spirit Island you play as the spirits of an island who jointly drive out the colonizers: each spirit has its own unique powers, and the board is shared, so any move of yours directly affects your allies. This isn't a game of reaction but a collective strategic puzzle — you'll have to plan moves out loud several steps ahead. Online multiplayer with cross-play between PC and mobile was added in a separate update. Difficult, but extremely rewarding for a coordinated team.

Star Realms brings the rules of the board game of the same name into video-game form for smartphones and PC. You'll build military bases, trade with other factions, assemble your space fleet and attack hostile alliances. Or fend off enemy attacks. All battles play out by card-game rules, where the winner is the one who manages the combat capabilities of their starships most wisely.

Another adaptation of a popular board game — this time a strategy tied to railways. In Ticket to Ride Europe you're invited to take control of trains, ferry passengers and supply cities with resources. The winner is the player whose tactics for seizing profitable routes prove the most effective.

RPGs for two and for a whole party: shared story campaigns, soulslikes with summonable phantoms, action-RPGs and big adventures. It's not just about reflexes here, but about how you mesh in roles and builds. Worth diving into for anyone ready to settle into a single world for a long time and walk the path with friends from green rookies to heroes.

Wayfinder is a colorful RPG with dynamic combat, an open world and numerous dungeons. In gameplay it recalls Warframe. You can play it solo or in a group.

Here you'll assemble your own team of tamed monsters and send them into battle against enemy squads. Something similar was in the Pokemon games. Cassette Beasts differs from them, first and foremost, in its higher difficulty.

A solid soulslike from Team Ninja, the makers of the Nioh duology and Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty. Rise of the Ronin is set in 19th-century Japan, when the shogunate was trying to hold on to power and continued to fight the growing influence of European countries. In battle you can rely on a traditional katana or firearms.

You can play the best RPG of 2023 with friends. And you don't have to buy two copies — Baldur's Gate 3 has split-screen that lets you play as two on one screen (on PC you need to connect two gamepads). Judging by reviews, the co-op experience differs from the solo one, since it brings more unpredictable moments and unexpected situations.

Minecraft Legends invites you to look at the universe from a new angle. Rather than digging in a mine, we'll lead a whole army to defend the cubic world from the malicious Piglins (pig-people). You need to build relationships with various peoples, stand against three Piglin factions, build bases and break through the enemy's defenses.

You also need to gather resources, but now with the hands of your minions, by marking deposits and giving orders. It's the same with battles — it's far more worthwhile to build siege engines, hire more allies with the resources you've gathered and set off with friends to storm the enemy fortress. You can try going solo, of course, but a player can't damage enemy structures on their own.

The project can't be called especially deep. It lost the main hooks of Minecraft and at the same time didn't become polished enough to be called a strategy. But it didn't become any less entertaining as an "evening" diversion, especially with a younger brother or just any Minecraft fan.

The co-op mode for Ghost of Tsushima is aimed at those who've already mastered the local combat system. You can play through a separate two-player story campaign that tells a different story of the invasion of Tsushima Island. Beyond that, you can battle countless waves of Mongols. To survive, you'll have to act together and cover each other.

V Rising is a great mix of RPG, slasher and survival game, seasoned with an interesting setting. Add to that a great early-access start, interesting mechanics and flexible server settings, and you get one of the most addictive projects of 2022. With allowances for early access, of course.

We play as an awakened vampire. The local inhabitants, however, are anything but happy about it. You'll have to gather resources, build a vampire castle and drink dry all who won't submit — from rank-and-file enemies to bosses, who share their special abilities along with their blood. You'll fight peasants, vampire hunters, and rivals in the form of dark mages and necromancers.

The blood system deserves special mention. This fluid is vital to vampires. It's used to restore health and to gain powerful buffs. Every enemy in the game has their own blood type and quality — from zero to a hundred percent. And players will hunt for enemies with the purest, most powerful blood to get the best buffs. That said, nothing stops you from catching a deer just to sate your hunger.

Other pluses: a large, detailed world, an interesting crafting and gear system based on the gear's "Power Level," dynamic combat and the chance to set off on a journey with friends or do battle against other vampires. The game can't boast a story, but it holds the gothic atmosphere of vampire reality beautifully. And flexible server settings let you avoid problems with grinding or lengthy crafting.

SpiderHeck is built on a few simple but extremely addictive mechanics: the physics of the heroes and their weapons, a "roguelike" system of bonuses and power-ups between rounds, and a variety of arsenal, maps and enemies. Plus the ability to cling to walls and shoot webs — we are spiders, after all!

First and foremost it's a game about player-versus-player: you appear on the map, whip out a weapon and destroy your opponents first. The main thing is not to clobber yourself with a clumsy throw of a laser sword or a grenade hit.

No less interesting is the co-op mode, in which players join forces against waves of monsters. Between waves you can pick a power-up, like more frequent weapon spawns, powerful jumps or slowed time after killing mobs. Fast rounds, on-screen chaos and shouts of "hey, who threw a sword at me?!" are guaranteed.

A new hardcore game from Team Ninja, the makers of the Nioh duology. This is a classic soulslike, only in the trappings of ancient China. You can play through Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty with two friends. To unlock the co-op mode, though, you'll have to beat the first boss solo.

Overfield takes place across two dimensions at once — a fantasy world and our reality. Most of the time the heroes furnish their home, take part in various competitions in the spirit of a cosplay contest, play football and party hard. But periodically they head into another universe, where they fight monsters alongside allies. The result is a peculiar analog of Persona 5, but with a co-op mode.

An RPG in which you'll explore dungeons and fight powerful opponents. To beat them, it's important that your team members' individual skills complement each other. As you progress through Fellowship, the locations get tougher, so teamwork is especially important. Beating powerful monsters earns valuable trophies that let you make your heroes even deadlier.

Daimon Blades is a first-person action game with roguelike elements and a focus on melee. It's a prequel to E.Y.E: Divine Cybermancy from the same developers at Streum On Studio. In their new project, you and three players have to fight through hordes of demons using a variety of melee weapons with unique properties. The battles turned out genuinely spectacular and brutal. The only letdowns are bugs and an unstable frame rate, but they're promised to be fixed soon.

Elden Ring Nightreign is a spin-off built for co-op play. Battles against mobs and genuinely powerful bosses await, and to beat them it's important to combine each player's strengths. Note that among the enemies you'll come across monsters from the Dark Souls series. As practice shows, FromSoftware fans don't accept Nightreign at first, but in time they get drawn in and start to enjoy it.

Despite its plain looks, Gedonia 2 may interest genre connoisseurs, since it has a large world open for exploration, many classes and quests for every taste. While the first game could only be played solo, the sequel added a co-op mode.

You can hunt monsters not only solo but with three other players. You're free to explore the world together or head off to fight on your own. If needed, you can always send an SOS, and others will rush to help. And if you're curious how Monster Hunter Wilds differs from other entries in the series, check out our VGTimes review of Monster Hunter Wilds.

"Hades with co-op in the setting of Arthurian England" is the most accurate description of Sworn. The game takes place in Camelot, where the king and his Knights of the Round Table have fallen under a dark spell and established a tyranny over the land. You'll have to challenge them and save Albion from evil.

Thanks to the fairies' blessings, your heroes gain special combat effects. To beat the local enemies, you'll have to combine skills and adapt to the current situation on the battlefield. And the arenas and enemy lineup change at random. Keep in mind that the game is aimed at roguelike fans. To everyone else it may seem too hard.

Monster Hunter: World is the best-selling game in Capcom's history, with more than 14 million copies sold. And that's despite the Japanese corporation's portfolio including titles like Resident Evil and Street Fighter. The monster-hunter game has plenty of strengths: take the impressive bestiary, the finely tuned gameplay, the cute chef cats and the well-developed lore. You can hunt giant beasts as four online: the team tracks the beast, sets traps and divides into roles — someone with a heavy hammer stuns the head, someone with blades hacks the tail, someone heals and buffs with a horn. The carcass is split among everyone, and each player crafts their own gear from the parts. You need to get used to the Japanese system at first, but after a hundred hours your hand reaches for the Iceborne DLC on its own.

Divinity: Original Sin 2 is one of the best isometric RPGs in history. Among the game's strengths are excellent graphics, a deep combat system, elaborate character progression and a dramatic story. The quests are superbly crafted, too: anyone who completes your companion Lohse's quest will be tormented by moral dilemmas for a long time after.

Co-op is four-player, and Larian made it unusually lively: each player has their own character with their own goals, and in dialogue you can disagree, pull the story in different directions, secretly steal and even square off in a duel against each other if your interests clash. In turn-based fights this turns into joint elemental combos — set spilled oil ablaze, douse enemies in rain and zap them with lightning. A playthrough takes around 100 hours, and as a bonus there's the equally worthy first game.

Could Hidetaka Miyazaki have imagined that the experimental Demon's Souls would create a new popular genre that would draw millions of players into a world of beautiful suffering? Many fans consider Dark Souls 3 the pinnacle of the master's work, combining well-developed lore, magnificent locations, a great variety of enemies and high difficulty. Although, if some boss seems insurmountable, you can call a friend for help and gut the fiends together.

Co-op here is the signature "Souls" kind: to summon up to three phantom helpers into your world, you burn a White Sign Soapstone at the fog before a boss. The summoned partners fight alongside you, draw the boss's attention and give you breathing room to heal, but with each guest the boss gains more health — so it still won't be an easy stroll. A tried-and-true trick against a particularly stubborn boss — so you don't kill yourself over it solo.

The world of Magicka 2 may be colorful, but it has no shortage of villainy and horrors. Treacherous wizards destroyed a great city, and hostile creatures trample the land — only a quartet of brave mages, armed with an impressive number of spells, can put things right.

Just don't forget, as you turn yet another location into a scorched field, that "friendly fire" is on in Magicka 2 — which means both enemies and allies can fall victim to your magic.

Divinity: Original Sin is an old-school RPG, which means tactical turn-based battles, exploration of a huge open world and the ability to interact with any object and character. In a way, the game can be called an attempt to "digitize" the tabletop role-playing game Dungeons & Dragons.

The protagonist is a Source Hunter, of an ancient and forbidden magic. Someone used it to commit a murder, and the investigation will lead us to the most unexpected places. There are no restrictions — go anywhere, talk to any character and solve tasks in the most unusual ways.

Valuable loot, combinations of spells and skills, countless ways to interact with the game world — there's even a clip online where players kill one of the bosses by pelting it with paintings via telekinesis. So if you're looking for a project where you can show resourcefulness and out-of-the-box thinking, Divinity: Original Sin and its sequel are just the thing. The game can be played online or in local co-op.

An unusual hardcore survival-RPG where you play not as a chosen hero but as an ordinary adventurer. In Outward you have to track hunger, thirst and fatigue and even plot a route without a marker on the map. You can play the whole game as two — a rarity with support for split-screen and online at the same time. Co-op softens the harshness: together it's easier to survive in a dangerous world, drag a wounded partner and plan expeditions jointly. A game for those who like an RPG that genuinely challenges you.

A grim action-RPG in the vein of Diablo with a deep dual-class system. In Grim Dawn four of you hack through hordes of monsters in a ruined world, gather loot and combine the abilities of two masteries into unique builds. Co-op speeds up farming and makes clearing dungeons more thrilling — enemies get tougher, but the drops are richer. One of the best Diablo-likes for those who love digging into gear and build-crafting with friends.

Isometric hack-and-slash and looter RPGs in the Diablo vein: we mince hordes, rake in piles of gear and tweak builds to no end — in company it's both faster and more thrilling. Nearby sit kindred roguelikes with leveling and farming. It all runs on the "okay, just one more run" principle: farming bosses shoulder to shoulder and showing off the loot that dropped is double the fun.

A top-down RPG that resembles Diablo in gameplay. That said, Path of Exile 2 turned out much harder. Even early on you'll have to move carefully, study the mobs' and bosses' abilities and allocate your skill points thoughtfully. To many newcomers the game will surely seem harder than Dark Souls. But there's a charm to that kind of hardcore, comparable to what Hidetaka Miyazaki's projects offer.

Even corporations on Sony's level pay attention to the roguelike genre, yet there still aren't that many decent roguelikes, and co-op ones are practically nonexistent. Risk of Rain 2 is exactly one of those.

The game has a big, varied world, an interesting combat system and plenty of nasty enemies — no surprise the project sold a million copies in its first month of early access. The full version of Risk of Rain 2 came out a year ago and earned "overwhelmingly positive" reviews on Steam. If you missed the release, round up a group and set off. But know this: it won't be easy.

Diablo 4 turned out to be one of Blizzard's best games in recent years. Yes, it's not perfect, but destroying hordes of demons in it is still fun. Especially when you do it with friends.

Besides standard online co-op, Diablo 4 has split-screen that lets you play as two on one TV. It's only available on consoles, though.

Ravenswatch is an action-RPG with roguelike elements, at least for now. In a group of up to four, we challenge the Nightmares that have filled the world of Reverie and warped everything they could reach.

The characters in this game are heroes of fairy tales. There's Little Red Riding Hood with an assassin class, for instance, who turns into a mighty Wolf at night. There are 6 characters in all, among them Aladdin, the Pied Piper and the Snow Queen.

The gameplay can be called classic — we travel a map dotted with markers, fight enemies, complete tasks and find items that strengthen the heroes. All to face and defeat the main boss at the end. The heroes have five skills, with a sixth unlocking at the final level. Leveling up grants access to random modifiers, and the gear you receive affects the heroes' various stats. The game has a day-night cycle that affects gameplay and the environment.

A top-down action-RPG that many players rated higher than the kindred Diablo 4. You'll destroy skeletons, ancient mages and dragons across five time periods that show different stages in a fantasy land's development. While Last Epoch may seem too easy early on, closer to the finale you'll have to carefully consider every step. And those for whom that's not enough are in for endgame content, deep dungeons and various challenge arenas.

Shard Squad is a top-down fantasy action game in which you have to mind the element of each attack and combine them with one another. It's exactly the joint strikes that let you deal serious damage, without which beating the local bosses won't be easy. And thanks to a multitude of spells, you can develop your own unique tactics. Shard Squad's art, styled after SNES-era Japanese RPGs, deserves special mention.

Like the first game, Titan Quest 2 is an RPG in the vein of the Diablo series, but set in ancient myth. You'll encounter monsters, heroes and gods familiar from history books and popular shows like Hercules: The Legendary Journeys or Xena: Warrior Princess. You can explore the lands of ancient Greece in a group of four. As of this writing the game is in early access, but a playthrough already takes around 10 hours.

An action-platformer where you'll fight enemies for valuable loot and new weapons. Each one has its own properties, so it can be useful in one situation or another. Neon Abyss 2 opens up most fully in four-player co-op. You can, for instance, plan joint tactics using different abilities and firearms. The game also earns praise for its pleasant styling after 90s platformers from the Super Nintendo and Sega Mega Drive era.

33 Immortals is a roguelike with MMO elements. It offers location exploration and top-down battles in small teams. The game world here is randomly generated, so every raid is unique. To succeed in battle, it's important to use joint techniques that deal huge damage. If you can survive the local dungeons, unique bonuses for the whole squad and boss battles open up. Also worth noting is the interesting setting: with Hell, Purgatory and Heaven.

Path Of Exile is considered one of the best Diablo clones for good reason. The game has so many activities, mechanics and locations that a newcomer might even get lost — but linger in Grinding Gear Games' creation and read a couple of build-crafting guides, and the Diablo-like reveals its potential.

Sure, Path Of Exile can be criticized for its simple main story, but it really just stands in for a tutorial: the game's strongest sides are hidden in the endgame. The project is very good — it's even surprising that it's distributed free-to-play, and you can play comfortably without spending a dime.

A thorough exploration of Diablo 3's world takes around 160 hours, and the most devoted fans have practically been living in the third game for eight years now. Who knows — by the time you've had your fill of it, the sequel may already be on the way.

What sets Torchlight 2 apart from Diablo 3 and Path of Exile is its kind, bright world. The mechanics and combat, meanwhile, are no less polished than its competitors'. In the game, players pick one of four classes and set off on an adventure across locations full of dangers and treasures.

The series does have a sequel, but in polite company Torchlight 3 isn't mentioned. It's the second game that's the highest-rated entry, worth a look for every hack-and-slash fan.

A hello to everyone who remembers console get-togethers, when a whole crowd would bash away at old beat 'em ups. Here are modern "street brawls" with co-op both locally and online, but with their old-school spirit carefully preserved. Call a friend, fire it up for a couple of evenings — and off you go, clearing pixel alleys of street scum.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Shredder's Revenge diligently plays on nostalgia and aims to deliver exactly the feelings we got from games of the 90s and 2000s. The developers describe their project as "a tribute to classic Turtles games like Turtles in Time."

The gameplay is based on classic combat mechanics and polished to perfection by the developers. We punch our way to victory through tons of enemies, using combos, special skills and each character's fighting style.

The story is classic — Bebop and Rocksteady decide to attack Channel 6 and steal nightmarish devices to bring Krang and Shredder's cunning plans to life. Co-op is for six players at once (locally or online), which is rare for the genre: you can choose the Turtles, Splinter and April, each with their own move set, attack range and speed. With a full lineup, fun chaos breaks out on screen, but the game encourages teamwork — combos pick up from one another, and a fallen player can be revived. Locations, bosses and pixel art familiar from the cartoons come along for the ride.

An old-school beat 'em up styled after Super Nintendo and Sega Mega Drive games. Thanks to pretty visuals, great humor and brisk gameplay, the project can be put on par with the best modern entries in the genre, in the vein of Streets of Rage 4. At first River City Girls 2 will surely seem easy, but in time tough opponents start to appear, and gameplay situations force you to change tactics. New characters you can unlock as you go will come to your aid.

In our view, projects like this open up specifically in co-op. The game supports split-screen as well as cross-platform multiplayer.

Streets of Rage 4 will delight players who wistfully recall the game industry of bygone days — that audience will surely have a beat 'em up squeeze out a tear. Some may find the gameplay too straightforward and the visuals old-fashioned, but that's not the case. The combat in Streets of Rage 4 is well-developed, and the art is drawn with soul.

Co-op is for up to four (up to two on one screen, up to four over the network): each person picks a fighter with their own style — one's fast, one goes for power — and the streets get cleared together, picking up combos and pulling off joint finishers. Firing it up after a hard day, calling a friend and going to beat up street scum is a great idea.

A cult beat 'em up from The Behemoth that became one of the genre's benchmarks back in 2008. Castle Crashers Remastered is an updated version with sharpened graphics and improvements: you pick one of the knights, hack through hordes of enemies in a fantasy setting and level your character in light-RPG fashion. The signature hand-drawn style, absurd humor and memorable bosses make it ideal for a rowdy evening as four. The co-op runs both locally on one screen and over the network — a classic the years can't touch.

The long-awaited return of Scott Pilgrim, released on March 3, 2026. Scott Pilgrim EX is made by Tribute Games — the same people who gave us Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Shredder's Revenge. It's a spiritual successor to the 2010 game, but with a more open structure in the vein of River City Ransom: the heroes explore a wintry Toronto, fight the local gangs, drop into shops and unlock shortcuts. Seven playable characters, Paul Robertson's signature pixel art, a new soundtrack from Anamanaguchi and deep, responsive combat. Critics unanimously call EX a game that surpasses the original in almost everything. It opens up in co-op for up to four.

That same 2010 beat 'em up based on the comic and film, reissued in 2021 as the Complete Edition. Scott Pilgrim vs. The World: The Game is a retro brawler with pixel graphics and Anamanaguchi's cult soundtrack, in which up to four players run through seven levels to defeat Ramona's seven evil exes. Besides Scott, Ramona, Kim and Stephen, there are unlockable and downloadable characters. If you enjoyed Scott Pilgrim EX and want more, or the other way around — you'd rather start with the source — this classic is just begging for a shared playthrough.

A magnificent blend of roguelike and classic beat 'em up. In Absolum all the available characters feel different, the fights demand precise timing and crowd control, and the pleasant 2D art gives each region of the local fantasy world its own inimitable charm. The runs don't get stale thanks to branching paths, side tasks and Rituals, which radically rework your builds and push you to experiment with characters.

A retro-style side-scroller where everything revolves around the idea of synergy between heroes advancing through a level. The arenas in MARVEL Cosmic Invasion are nothing special on their own, but what hooks you is how smoothly you have to work with your partner to push forward. There are about 15 Marvel characters to choose from, each with unique combos and a specialization.

A modern heir to arcade games and series like Contra and Metal Slug. Neon Inferno is an intense shooter with pixel graphics, a cyberpunk aesthetic and a brisk soundtrack. Among similar projects, Neon Inferno also stands out with its unusual shooting across the foreground and background. At first it seems not too intuitive, but once you finally master the combat, your impression of the chaotic battles shifts sharply for the better.

If you'd like to get acquainted with beat 'em up classics, take a look at Double Dragon Trilogy. This collection consists of three classic entries in the series, released between 1987 and 1990. In gameplay terms it's a standard genre entry. Worth noting that the local brawls can engage not only old-school Sega Mega Drive fans but modern players too.

A bloody beat 'em up with pixel graphics set in the 80s. The developers exaggerated what was happening in those years and piled on the horror in the spirit of experiments on people, yet the distinctive aesthetic of perestroika is instantly recognizable.

And Mother Russia Bleeds has excellent gameplay. A variety of opponents and quite powerful mini-bosses await. You'll fight them both bare-handed and with various weapons, including bottles, bats, swords and pistols. Also worth noting that each of the four characters has their own fighting style and unique skills.

A reboot of the cult beat 'em up series after 26 years, with hand-drawn cartoony visuals. In Battletoads (2020) three of you, as the toads Rash, Zitz and Pimple, punch through hordes of enemies, with assorted mini-games and the signature "turbo tunnels" of nostalgically high difficulty between fights. Each toad plays differently, and co-op turns the grinder into fun chaos. A warm nod to the old school and a solid reason to settle in on the couch as three.

A vivid metroidvania-beat 'em up in a Mexican setting with a masked luchador. In Guacamelee! 2 up to four players fight enemies locally, master acrobatic moves and solve platforming puzzles, switching between the worlds of the living and the dead. Juicy brawling combines with precise platforming, and co-op adds chaos and mutual aid. A stylish, funny and moderately hardcore adventure for a group.

A couple of the most notable co-op horrors, pulled from our big roundup. Ghost hunting, fleeing a maniac, screaming your head off on voice chat — there's plenty of that here. But this is just the tip: the whole scary crew lives in a separate roundup of co-op horrors, and there's far more of it there.

The Texas Chain Saw Massacre is an asymmetric horror with maniacs and their victims in the vein of Dead by Daylight, only with the characters of the classic The Texas Chain Saw Massacre. The game is well-made and has a signature grim atmosphere. It may appeal not only to fans of the Leatherface films but to all lovers of multiplayer horror.

Barotrauma is a 2D submarine sim in the horror genre for a group of 2 to 16 players, borrowing some mechanics from games like Space Station 13, RimWorld and Dwarf Fortress. In the near future, humans have set off for a moon of Jupiter whose ocean teems with life. Besides four factions players can befriend or fight, the place is filled with various monsters. Players take on different roles, like engineer or doctor. Each has their own tasks, but the goal is one — to survive and hold out against the monsters and the hardships of the ocean depths.

But that's the concept. In practice the game often turns into a circus and a whirl of deaths. Forgot to close the hatch? Hello, monsters. Dropped sodium into the water during repairs? Blew up the compartment. Injected neurotoxin instead of antibiotics? Well, then...

A multitude of possibilities and well-developed mechanics, 6 classes, various missions and procedurally generated maps, several game modes. Multiply all that by a fun group of friends and you get a great project that'll last for many pleasant evenings. And when the enthusiasm runs out, just add mods, and everything takes on new colors.

Demonologist resembles the viral hit Phasmophobia. The player, with three teammates, heads to some cursed place, tries to identify the type of evil spirit and exorcise it using equipment and the clues they find.

Replayability is handled by a system of random events and ghosts, while progress between runs comes from a system for customizing your hideout, which players can upgrade, furnish to taste and use to show off achievements. You can even buy a pet!

Varied maps, non-obvious mechanics, timed events and daily tasks add interest. The main thing is to endure the low difficulty, on which the ghost doesn't touch the players for a long time. Trust us, even on medium it's quite capable of wiping out half the team by the midpoint.

The game that kicked off the whole boom of co-op ghost-hunting horrors. In Phasmophobia you and a team of up to four head into cursed houses with an EMF reader, a spirit box and a flashlight to identify the type of entity living there. The main hook is voice chat: the ghost hears your words and reacts to names, so loose talk is dangerous. The atmosphere keeps you on edge not with jump scares but with oppressive silence and the feeling of being watched. If you haven't played a co-op horror yet, this is exactly where to start.

One of the most viral co-op horrors of recent years and the conceptual predecessor of R.E.P.O.. In Lethal Company you and your partners work for a sinister corporation: landing on abandoned moons, gathering scrap to meet a profit quota and trying to get out before monsters emerge from the dark. It all starts as an absurd comedy and ends in panicked flight and screams on voice chat. Exactly the mix of dread and laughter that works best for a group of up to four.

The first co-op game in the famous Outlast series. The Outlast Trials brings the franchise's signature helpless horror into co-op: you and up to three friends become test subjects of the Murkoff corporation and must complete sadistic "trials" — carrying out tasks in creepy locations like a police station or an amusement park while running and hiding from deranged enemies. There are almost no weapons; your only hope is stealth, perks and team coordination. One of the most consistently scary co-op games: there's more horror than laughter here.

A merciless co-op horror shooter strictly for four, where the main weapons are silence and discipline. In GTFO a team of prisoners descends into an infected underground complex, and most of the time you have to creep past sleeping monsters, shining a flashlight and scanning the rooms. One careless move and the whole horde wakes up. It's a game about hard coordination: without dividing roles, voice chat and a shared plan, you won't get past the first sector. One of the most hardcore and atmospheric co-ops about fear and teamwork.

A spiritual successor to Left 4 Dead from its own creators: a four-player co-op shooter about clearing hordes of the infected. In Back 4 Blood you fight through campaign stages, gunning down crowds and especially dangerous mutants, and the key feature is a card system that changes the enemy lineup, abilities and conditions every run. This adds replayability and forces the team to adapt its tactics. As in L4D, it's not the same solo with bots — the game lives precisely when three live partners are watching your back.

A four-player co-op action game from the makers of Vermintide, who carried their signature "Left 4 Dead with melee" formula into the grim universe of Warhammer 40,000. In Warhammer 40,000: Darktide a squad of Inquisition rejects clears the hive city of Tertium of hordes of heretics, combining juicy chainsword carving with lasgun fire. Four classes (Veteran, Zealot, Psyker, Ogryn) complement each other, and the crowds of enemies force you to stick together. A harsh, bloody and incredibly atmospheric co-op for those who like a partner to be needed literally for survival.

A co-op horror clearly inspired by the film Alien. Together with your buddies, you'll search for valuable resources on the decks of abandoned spaceships. The search is complicated by the appearance of creepy monsters that pose a huge threat to your team. Many of them are invulnerable to ordinary weapons. To survive in Species: Unknown, you'll have to develop a special tactic and act together with your allies.

This game's mechanics somewhat resemble Lethal Company. But MIMESIS has one distinctive feature — mimics. They look and behave just like live players — they help complete tasks, share their thoughts and even crack jokes. You need to spot the enemy before it's too late. Because of this, players constantly suspect each other, creating an atmosphere of distrust almost like in Among Us.

A variation on the theme of the later Five Nights at Freddy's games. In Storebound you find yourself locked in a supermarket, trying to find a way out. But that won't be easy, since creepy monsters have set out to hunt you. To avoid dying at their hands, you need to act together with other players, distract the enemies through joint effort and try not to make noise.

This game's concept is similar to Storebound — you and your friends are stuck in a supermarket where zombies and mutants roam. In The Midnight Walkers you can kill them with melee and firearms. Noise, however, attracts even more monsters. The situation is complicated by technological hazards in the spirit of poison gas that causes hallucinations. On top of that, a real hunt goes on among players for especially valuable loot, and many of them will be ready to open fire on you for it.

The Headliners is about the harsh daily grind of journalists amid an alien invasion. They try to file a report in a city attacked by terrifying aliens. Their task is to get to the epicenter of events to photograph monsters, ruined buildings and dead people. The scarier the shot, the better. But the game turned out not scary but funny. Unpredictable situations combined with the absurdity of what's happening guarantee a fun time, especially in co-op with friends.

An asymmetric horror in which four players wander locations and solve puzzles, while a fifth controls a monster and tries to kill everyone else. And among the available creatures are beings with the most varied abilities. The placement of key items changes after each new game. The result is a sort of analog of Left 4 Dead, only with the gameplay of a classic quest.

Darkest Days is a hardcore survival game set in a zombie apocalypse. You'll fight the living dead alongside friends, drive around an open world in a car and try to leave the dangerous lands. An important role here is played not only by food but by medicine, since the local infections are deadly to the heroes.

Among Us 3D is a reimagining of the mobile game with a third-person view, as in modern action games. On top of that, impostors can now act covertly — sneaking up from behind and distracting other players, for instance. But the essence of the project stays the same. Crew members try to repair the spaceship, while impostors stage sabotage and pick off the rest of the crew. You can spot the infiltrator at general meetings, where each player makes the case for their innocence.

This game has you become a janitor cleaning up the aftermath of research teams' failed expeditions. It's important to mind the laws of physics and try to avoid the dangers left behind after the incident (like unstable lasers). It sounds simple, but in practice Backrooms Cleanup Crew is engaging, especially when you and your friends start making mistakes.

A peculiar analog of Lethal Company, but with its own quirks. You'll infiltrate territory with dangerous monsters and try to carry off valuable items. It's important not to give in to panic at the sight of an aggressive enemy and to deliver the loot safe and sound. For everything to go well, players need to cover each other. In practice, though, even a well-thought-out operation often turns into chaos.

And if you've already picked up R.E.P.O., you can check out our selection of mods for R.E.P.O.