(the app is forcing me to put a link so I put Timesplitters 2 gameplay cuz this is mostly a text post)

Hi everyone! I’ve been feeling frustration about games lately, remembering experiences I had as a kid playing co-op story games with my friends, like Timesplitters and Destroy All Humans, etc.

Modern multiplayer games sometimes have some co-op elements, but many of them are party games like Human Fall Flat or Among Us, or big Battle Royales or Multiplayer shooters. The co-op ones seem to only be survival games like The Forest.

I’m always looking for good co-op experiences to play with my friends, but it’s hard to find what I am looking for. I recently played It Takes Two with my partner and that was so wonderful.

Does anyone know any games like what I am looking for? It seems these kinds of games are so few and far between, sadly.

    • Phasmophobia, 1 - 4 players. A really fun ghost hunting game. There’s proximity chat (which I love). You can play it with the intentions of figuring out what ghost it is and winning, or you can try to get each other killed (one of my friends always runs to find the cursed object and use it so one of us dies!)
    • Portal 2, 2 players. A co-op puzzle game. I had a lot of fun playing this with my partner.
    • Stardew Valley, 1 - 4 players. A harvest moon / farming sim. Has a bit of a story, and can be a very chill / a little grindy.
    • Grounded, 1-4 players. It’s like The Forest if instead everyone is half the size of an ant and put into a backyard. You have to fight bugs, build with blades of grass, and explore.
    • Astroneer, 1 - 4 players, a really fun mining and exploring game in space. There’s a story, and you have like 7 planets to explore.
    • Project Zomboid, 1 - ? players (I think you can have as many players as the host computer can handle). A HUGE map and there’s a lot to learn, and you’ll die a lot but it can be really fun to base build and kill zombies with friends. You can customize soooo many difficulty settings as well (make it so zombies respawn after a long time, or they don’t respawn at all, if/when the power goes out, if the gas stations ever run out of gas, etc).
    • Necesse, 1-? players (not sure what the player limit is, it’s at least 4). It’s like if Rimworld and Terraria were mixed together. It’s very fun with friends. It’s in early access but getting regular updates and looks very promising.
    • I almost forgot about PlateUp!. 1 - 4 players. This might be categorized as a party game but a single game can be 30+ minutes and it can be very tense managing your restaurant (do I spend money on more plates or another sink, where do I place all the counters??). It’s a rogue-lite, and the menu gets more complex as the days go on. If you take too long serving any customer the run is over. Very very fun with friends, can be very chaotic.
    • A Hat in Time, 1 - 2 players. A 3D platforming game.