Online multiplayer has become part and parcel with many video games these days, but finding something you can play on the couch with a loved one has gotten tougher. If you’re looking for some cooperative fun, though, we can help. Below are 25 of the best couch co-op games we’ve played across the Nintendo Switch, PlayStation, Xbox and PC. Note that we’re focusing on genuine co-op experiences, not games that have local multiplayer but aren’t truly cooperative in practice. (So, no Mario Kart or Jackbox.) Even still, our list encompasses everything from platformers and puzzlers to RPGs and arcade shooters.
Super Mario 3D World
You know the broad strokes of any Super Mario game by now. Within the series, though, 3D World stands out for using a largely fixed camera and levels that are more semi-3D than the totally open spaces of games like Super Mario Odyssey or Super Mario Galaxy. There are still many items to grab and secrets to uncover across the characteristically charming, brisk and inventive stages, but everything you can find at a given moment is right in front of you, which encourages you to look closer and move from foreground to background.
Co-op play can be chaotic, but 3D World owns that. You and up to three buddies share lives but are scored on your individual performance, with the leader at the end of each level getting a literal crown placed atop their head. This makes for a sort of competitive co-op mode, one in which a particularly devious “teammate” could straight-up grab you and chuck you off a cliff in an attempt to secure their high score. The adventure only has to be as spicy as you and your partners want it to be, though; if you aren’t playing with a group of sickos, 3D World should be an exciting update to a familiar Mario formula.
Buy for: Switch
Length: 17 hours
Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze
Like most Donkey Kong Country games, Tropical Freeze is a 2D platformer that’s both structurally straightforward and aesthetically gorgeous. Donkey Kong is not Mario: He has a more immediate sense of gravity to him, so when he leaps, he comes down hard. But the platforming is uniquely deliberate as a result, and the way the game leads you from one stunning scene to the next, even within the same stage, is a delight.
Tropical Freeze can get difficult, particularly during some later boss fights, but a “Funky Mode” in the Switch version eases things slightly. If you have a Wii or Wii U, meanwhile, this game’s predecessor, Donkey Kong Country Returns, is just as great, if not better.
Buy for: Switch
Length: 15 hours
Rayman Legends
If Donkey Kong is Mario’s brutish animal pal, Rayman is the eccentric French buddy he visits when he’s overseas. Rayman Legends is a more out there 2D platformer than the Nintendo properties above: Instead of the pristine environments and perfect geometry of a Mario or Donkey Kong game, here everything is a bit more abstract, cartoony and crass. (There are more fart sounds, for one.)
The moment-to-moment movement is a little less precise, too, but Legends still plays fast and light, with stages that are loaded with optional rooms and collectibles that invite your curiosity. This is an unpretentious game, a fun side-scrolling platformer that merely wants to be a fun side-scrolling platformer, and it becomes more enjoyable (and frantic) with friends.
Buy for: Switch, PS4, Xbox, PC
Length: 16 hours
Luigi’s Mansion 3
Luigi’s Mansion 3 is another ghost-hunting adventure starring Mario’s scaredy-cat brother, who this time must stomach his fears and use his “Poltergust” vacuum to rescue his friends from a haunted hotel. Its co-op mode isn’t available until an hour-ish into the story, but at that point, a second player can become “Gooigi,” a Luigi clone made of green goo with infinite lives (it makes sense when you get there). Though the game isn’t particularly tough, this setup gives you more freedom to mess around with puzzle and boss fight solutions without having to start over repeatedly.
Luigi’s Mansion 3 has some frustrating elements more generally – controlling that ghost-gobbling vacuum can be annoyingly imprecise, and backtracking through previously-conquered areas can get tedious – but the creative level designs and Pixar-esque animation give it a distinct personality compared to other Nintendo games. It’s a silly and usually satisfying time, one that’s especially well-suited for kids.
Buy for: Switch
Length: 16 hours
Clubhouse Games: 51 Worldwide Classics
Clubhouse Games is a compilation of 51 classic tabletop games, from Yahtzee and Connect Four to shogi and nine men’s morris. Not every entry in the collection supports couch co-op, but most do, and almost all are made easy to grasp.
Apart from being accessible, though, Clubhouse Games stands out for the quality of its curation. The included games span cultures, time periods and even modes of play; some are built on skill or patience, others on abstraction or chance. When you first boot up the game, you’re asked to identify your “heart’s desire,” and there’s a fair bit of detail on each game’s origins and history as you go along. Taken as a whole, this is a game that recognizes play itself as a kind of universal connection. But even ignoring all of that, Clubhouse Games is a fun, chill time, much like busting out a favorite board game.
Buy for: Switch
Length: 18 hours
BoxBoy! + BoxGirl!
BoxBoy! + BoxGirl! may not look like much, but this minimalist puzzler from Kirby makers HAL Laboratory has the kind of simple pleasure and regularly inventive design you’d expect from a Nintendo-published game. In its two-player campaign, you play as Qbby and Qucy, two walking boxes with the ability to grow additional boxes out of their heads. Your goal is to get from point A to point B, using those boxes to cross gaps and navigate various obstacles along the way.
The catch is that you can only create a certain amount of boxes at a time, so you and your partner often have to think outside the box (sorry) to find a safe way past. You’ll start off making basic bridges, but the bite-sized levels quickly build on themselves with a stream of new ideas. Eventually, you’ll find yourself using boxes as makeshift grappling hooks, shovels, laser-blocking shields and more, all in ways that quickly make sense. Simply beating the game isn’t that difficult, but collecting the tricky-to-reach crowns tucked away in each stage brings a greater challenge for those who want it.
Buy for: Switch
Length: 11 hours
It Takes Two
The 3D platformer It Takes Two is one of the few full-scale, narrative-driven games that’s exclusively designed to be played in co-op. As such, it takes care to avoid the trappings of many co-op experiences: It rarely asks both players to do the same thing at the same time, and thus it rarely makes one person carry all the weight. It constantly throws new concepts at you, and while some levels can drag a bit, its bouncy movement feels good throughout.
Its saccharine yet oddly dark story isn’t as satisfying: Few games make divorce seem like a happy ending as much as this one, and you’ll probably never want to hear the words “Dr. Hakim” again by the time you’re done. But if you can ignore the dialogue, It Takes Two delights more than it doesn’t.
Buy for: Switch, PS4 & PS5, Xbox, PC
Length: 14 hours
Portal 2
The first-person puzzler Portal 2 launched more than 11 years ago, but it recently received new life with a Switch rerelease. Either way, its sharp writing and cleverly layered puzzles more than hold up today. Co-op play takes the form of an entire separate campaign – it’s not as big on story as the solo mode, but it still does a fantastic job of gradually teaching you how to think spatially. It also ensures you and your partner actually communicate. There’s no way to play on PS4 or PS5 nowadays, but on PC, you can download a range of community maps for a greater challenge, too.
Buy for: Switch, Xbox, PC
Length: 11 hours
Streets of Rage 4
Streets of Rage 4 faithfully revives the classic series of early ‘90s, side-scrolling beat ‘em ups from the Sega Genesis (which remain fine co-op playthroughs themselves). You move to the right, position yourself efficiently and pulverize waves of bozos with a flurry of punches, kicks, throws and special moves. The hand-drawn animation style and bouncy soundtrack are both great, and most set pieces convey the “rage” part of the title effectively. This isn’t the most ambitious game, as it largely aims to hit high notes from 30 years ago, but it provides the kind of thrill, style and refinement any good beat ‘em up should.
For a more accessible, albeit simpler, throwback brawler, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Shredder’s Revenge is worth considering as well.
Buy for: Switch, PS4, Xbox, PC
Length: 4 hours
Lego Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga
Lego Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga is a Lego-ified romp through the nine mainline Star Wars films. Like most Lego games, it’s dead simple to play – collect the things, bop the bad guys – but that makes it something just about anyone can pick up and enjoy. The best thing it has going for it is its sense of humor, as its abbreviated remakes of each film are loaded with cutesy gags and in-jokes. (One favorite: wandering around Cloud City and finding the room where Lando Calrissian keeps his hoard of capes – and a heroic portrait of himself.)
There’s an absurd amount of side quests and collectibles beyond the narrative bits, but most of those are repetitive, and Skywalker Saga’s systems, while fun, aren’t meaty enough to make optional content all that interesting. Still, if you stick to the main stuff, you should find Skywalker Saga to be a good-natured love letter to some inherently goofy films.
Buy for: Switch, PS4 & PS5, Xbox, PC
Length: 40 hours
Stardew Valley
Stardew Valley has exploded in popularity since launching back in 2016, and it’s easy to see why: More than just a laid-back farming sim a la Harvest Moon, it’s an escape, an engrossing alternate life where you’re allowed to putter around your farm, mosey through town, and take life slow, free from the burdens of aggression and competition. You and a friend can share a farm and divide up tasks in co-op, but the game isn’t fussy; if one of you would rather fish, explore the beach or simply sit around your house, it’s okay to do your thing. And if you’d rather ruthlessly optimize your land for profits, that’s an option, too. Just note that you’ll need to build a cabin for your partner if they’re joining an existing farm.
Buy for: Switch, PS4, Xbox, PC
Length: 87 hours
Halo: The Master Chief Collection
Halo: The Master Chief Collection bundles remastered versions of the first six mainline Halo games, which continue to provide tighter control and pacing than most first-person shooters that’ve launched in the decades since. The original Halo’s campaign in particular remains essential. While some of the later narratives here go completely off the rails – looking at you, Halo 4 – the general tone still strikes the right balance between goofiness and badassery. The newer Halo Infinite sadly dropped couch co-op altogether, but there’s still good fun to be had driving Warthogs and dual-wielding space guns in the classics. Just be aware that local multiplayer is only available on Xbox, not PC.
Buy for: Xbox, PC (no local co-op)
Length: 47 hours
Divinity: Original Sin 2
Divinity: Original Sin 2 is a massive isometric CRPG for those who look back fondly on fantasy series like Ultima or Baldur’s Gate. It has loads of dialogue, deep character customization, and challenging turn-based combat (by default, at least). It’s not a game you’d play casually – a playthrough can last well over 100 hours, and it’s more than willing to throw a mountain of mechanics at you, regardless of whether you’re able to keep up.
If you want to dig into something dense, though, Divinity’s complexities are ultimately rewarding, and its world is wonderfully reactive. Its approach to co-op is also unusually thoughtful: You and a partner can go through the entire campaign locally, but you’re distinct characters, and neither of you have to follow the other’s lead. Indeed, part of the fun is in the ways your “buddy” could undermine your adventure, taking up a quest with contradictory aims or killing an important NPC. It asks: What’d happen if your RPG party members behaved like actual people? The answer: a mess, potentially, but a thrilling one. Just note that local multiplayer is unavailable on the Switch version of the game.
Buy for: PS4, Xbox, PC, Switch (no local co-op)
Length: 100 hours
Untitled Goose Game
Untitled Goose Game is a simple puzzle/stealth game that gets a lot of mileage out of its premise: You are a goose, and your only goal in life is to aggravate the residents of a little English village. If the idea of dragging a groundskeeper’s rake into a lake, pulling a seat out from under an old man right as he goes to sit down or generally honking at everyone in sight sounds funny to you, it’ll probably give you a good laugh.
The actual game part of the game doesn’t have much variance to it – you’re largely trial-and-error-ing your way through a checklist of troll-y activities – but it’s all appropriately silly, and it ends quickly enough to not run its joke into the ground.
Buy for: Switch, PS4, Xbox, PC
Average length: 4 hours
Chicory: A Colorful Tale
Chicory: A Colorful Tale is an open-hearted adventure game set in a world of talking animals, where the wielder of a magic paintbrush is tasked with literally filling the land with color. You play as a sprightly dog who becomes that wielder. What follows is a cozy adventure in the vein of Zelda, but with a twist: You can use the brush to paint over the environment, at any point, anywhere you want, in various colors and patterns. This turns a somewhat familiar game into something of a digital coloring book, one that remembers your markings in time as you go along. Chicory is exceedingly gentle and never suggests you’re doing it wrong, so if you want to spend 45 minutes ignoring the story and painting trees purple, you can. There are tons of accessibility options on top of that.
In co-op, player one still controls the pace of progression, but player two gets another brush with all the same abilities. On top of giving a second set of hands to deal with the game’s various puzzles and boss encounters, this lets you both create a shared impression on the world, like two kids sharing crayons on a children’s menu. The narrative gets heavier than the cutesy art style suggests, exploring themes of self-doubt, impostor syndrome and other struggles that can come with creative work. But it’s refreshingly earnest throughout. If you’re looking for a warm, caring, but still goofy co-op experience, Chicory is worth a shot.
Buy for: Switch, PS4 & PS5, PC
Length: 14 hours
Spiritfarer
Spiritfarer is a management sim not unlike Animal Crossing, but with some light platforming elements. Like Chicory, it’s generally relaxed, sincere and low-stakes, but occasionally devastating in the way it puts a friendly face on adult themes. Here, you play as Stella, a young woman who becomes tasked with ferrying freshly deceased souls into the afterlife. This mostly involves exploring the seas on a big boat, doing quests and gathering and crafting resources to make passing on more comfortable for the many characters you get to know. Player two joins in as Stella’s pet cat, Daffodil, who can’t trigger quests but can otherwise help with platforming and management tasks.
Spiritfarer’s sim elements can sometimes feel monotonous, and the way the game addresses death head-on can be sad, but it stands out for being as much about love and care as sorrow. If you and your partner are into management sims and aren’t afraid of shedding a tear or two, there’s beauty to be found here.
Buy for: Switch, PS4, Xbox, PC
Length: 33 hours
Overcooked! All You Can Eat
The Overcooked! games set you and up to three friends as chefs tasked with preparing various meals on a timer. In theory, this is as simple as grabbing the right ingredients, preparing them properly, then sending the finished plate off on time. But as the orders keep piling up and parts of the levels start to conspire against you, your ability to scramble and communicate under pressure becomes increasingly put to the test. There’s a non-zero chance your partner will call you an “idiot sandwich” by the time you’re done.
With its adorable looks, Overcooked! knows what it’s doing, but fighting through the anxiety of its most chaotic levels brings a particularly comical sense of accomplishment. The All You Can Eat edition here includes the original Overcooked!, the (superior) sequel Overcooked 2!, and all their DLC. It also adds an “assist mode” that lets you ease up the timers on each order, which, yes, kind of defeats the point of the game, but also might be necessary if you and your friends start screaming at each other over cartoon fish chopping.
Buy for: Switch, PS4 & PS5, Xbox, PC
Length: 41 hours
Lovers in a Dangerous Spacetime
Lovers in a Dangerous Spacetime is a vibrant space shooter in which you and up to three partners must collectively navigate a chunky battleship through levels packed with baddies and other obstacles. There are eight panels for controlling the ship’s engine, shields and various weapons, but each player can only man one station at a time, so you have no choice but to scramble and communicate to keep your shared body alive for as long as possible. The net effect isn’t unlike Overcooked!, then, but if you don’t mind a little stress, Lovers is effective in the way it makes you and your buddies work toward a common goal.
Buy for: Switch, PS4, Xbox, PC
Length: 7 hours
Cuphead
The run-and-gun shooter Cuphead is a stunner, with a lovely soundtrack and luscious animation that combine to make the whole thing feel like a playable cartoon from the ‘30s. (It’s no wonder there’s now a TV show based on the game.) Somehow, the story, about a pair of talking cups who make a deal with the Devil, fits the art style like a glove.
Actually playing Cuphead, meanwhile, is an exercise in punishment. It is brutally difficult, with several intense boss fights that demand serious concentration. Playing it in co-op makes it even tougher, as those bosses gain more health, and having two characters jump around can make the action more chaotic. That said, the challenge is not cheap, and overcoming each fight brings the expected wave of catharsis. If you have a bit of a masochistic streak, it’s worth a go. A recent DLC expansion only adds to the beautiful mayhem.
Buy for: Switch, PS4, Xbox, PC
Length: 15 hours
Spelunky + Spelunky 2
Spelunky helped popularize the trend of modern 2D platformers with roguelike elements – i.e., games where you mostly start from scratch upon death. Spelunky 2, released about a decade later in 2020, essentially polishes the original game’s formula.
Like Cuphead, neither of these games is for the faint of heart. Traversing their caves while avoiding the many death traps within is like descending into cartoon Hell. But again, it’s a (mostly) fair and legible challenge, if you can stay patient. The procedurally generated levels keep exploration from feeling totally rigid, and the frankness and pure speed with which death can hit you gives everything a morbid sense of humor. Couch co-op can feel somewhat unnatural at times – everyone has to stick near player one to stay on camera – but having a partner or three to revive you is a relief, provided you don’t accidentally blow each other up first.
Buy for: Switch, PS4, Xbox, PC
Length: 104 hours
Ikaruga
Ikaruga is more than two decades old at this point, but it remains a crown jewel among shoot ‘em ups. It takes a simple idea – every enemy and projectile in the game is either white or black, and you have to change your ship’s color accordingly to survive – and makes the most of it across five meticulously crafted stages. It’s another notoriously difficult one, but there’s not an ounce of fat on it, and its central mechanic forces you and your partner into a near-perfect state of concentration. If you’re craving an arcade-style shooter, it’s still a rush. And if you get sick of dying, know that recent releases have added more accessibility settings, including the option for infinite continues.
Buy for: Switch, PS4, Xbox, PC
Length: 3 hours
Wizard of Legend
Wizard of Legend is a top-down, 2D dungeon crawler with an emphasis on speed. It’s another skill-based roguelike, but letting your arsenal of spells fly and figuring out how to best chain attacks with your partner is a joy. Simply moving around is pleasingly kinetic, and the pixelated art style is kind on the eyes. It’s probably not enough to convince the roguelike-averse to hop aboard, but Wizard of Legend is a good one of those all the same.
Buy for: Switch, PS4, Xbox, PC
Length: 16 hours
Assault Android Cactus
Assault Android Cactus is an especially intense twin-stick shooter. You and up to three friends play as little androids charged with surviving hordes of robot baddies on a space freighter. (The tone is much more campy than gritty, thankfully.) Its tension derives from the fact that each android runs on a continuously depleting battery; if emptied, it’s game over. Since you can only replenish that battery by defeating waves of enemies, it behooves you to play aggressively and keep moving. The nonstop rush of baddies, gunfire and power-ups Cactus throws at you is exhilarating, and it’s heightened by quick-burst levels that rarely sit still. Plus, while this isn’t an easy game, it’s far from unfair, with most of the challenge coming from chasing high scores.
Buy for: Switch, PS4, Xbox, PC
Length: 6 hours
Wilmot’s Warehouse
Wilmot’s Warehouse is a clever little game about organizing an ever-growing warehouse. At the start of each level, you get a batch of colorful boxes, which you must gather and tuck away on a timer. Exactly how you organize them is up to you. When the timer ends, customers will start requesting certain products within the warehouse, and the challenge becomes retrieving the corresponding boxes as quickly as possible.
The game, then, is coming up with a system that will let your specific brain remember where everything is and adapt to new box types as they roll in. There’s a frenzy to completing orders, and a dark undercurrent to the idea of two warehouse workers being scored as they fulfill this many orders and strive this hard for efficiency. (The latter is made particularly clear in the game’s sudden ending.) In the abstract, though, Wilmot’s Warehouse makes a soothing game out of our unending desire to create order from chaos.
Buy for: Switch, PS4, Xbox, PC
Length: 8 hours
Escape Academy
Escape Academy is, in essence, a series of digital escape rooms. You work with a partner, combing for clues, deciphering codes and solving puzzles to get out of a locked room within a time limit. Like the real thing, it can result in some shouting, but it encourages constant communication and ultimately provides a sense of empowerment. The puzzles themselves are varied, but maybe a touch too easy, and the overarching narrative is (mostly) just kind of there. But if you and a partner have been itching to try a real-world escape room, Escape Academy should serve as a charming substitute for a couple of afternoons.
Buy for: PS4 & PS5, Xbox, PC
Length: 5 hours
Author: Why you can trust us
Source: Engadget
