My friends and I have been exhausting our current library of games and are looking for suggestions. It tends to be pretty hard for us to all meet at the same time. Usually we prefer to do stuff that we can finish in one session on the weekends because one person might have to leave as another person joins. Don’t mind if its new or old, but id prefer it not to be $60 if its going to be a 2hr stint
Games on our current rotation:
- Civ VI
- Deep rock galactic
- CS:GO
- War thunder
Don’t really play anymore
- Apex
- L4D2
- Payday 2
- Gmod
- Day of infamy
- Insurgency
- Project Zomboid
- Foxhole
- Risk of rain 2
- Don’t starve together
- Verdun
- Killing floor
- Minecraft
- Terraria
Valheim is good even if you can’t be on at the same time. Just slowly build out a world as you would in Minecraft and save the biome raids for when you can get the party together. It’s flexible.
I opened this thread to see if anyone recommended Valheim, because what you said is exactly what my group does. We’re all dads with jobs and we play when we can, but we schedule 2-3 hour video call sessions to fight the bosses.
When it comes to Valheim, you need the help, too. Those bosses can be brutal.
Seconding Valheim. There’s nothing quite like starting with a simple objective, getting it derailed by a deathsquito or something and now you and your besties are trying to Oceans 11 the stuff you lost out of a hostile biome that you sailed to from across the map.
Have to host/rent a server though, unless the host is always on. Love Valheim, but we had a few server issues that forced us to move on
Valid. We usually set schedules like a D&D session though. Just need the host to be a good DM. Works better for us as opposed to a live server, in my case anyway.
Slowly adding these to a list; I think I might start with Valheim and work my way down
+1 to Valheim, our world is running in a docker container in my living room PC wich is always on xD
I keep hearing great things about Valheim. It’s definitely on my to try list!
They said they don’t really play Minecraft anymore ;p
Yes, I know. The structure of Valheim is similar to Minecraft, in a way that would not be hard to pick up and play if you were already familiar with it. Plus, it’s a great game. So I gave my recommendation :p
Try Helldivers, it’s isometric twin stick shooter, with second game coming this year switching to third person kinda like Risk of Rain 2
This was my first thought along with Magicka. Both are wonderful games with Co-op, though both also have a lot of friendly fire (and it’s always hilarious).
Came here looking to suggest this; glad someone already has!
I once did a weekend on the campaign of Borderlands 2 with friends, it was awesome. Also, PlateUp is a nice coop game to play over a WE
I can second PlateUp. Roguelike overcooked!
Exactly, I prefer it to Overcooked. Sometimes I feel like Overcooked is more of a puzzle game, cause it seems that each map don’t have many ways of reaching a high score, hence being a puzzle to find the best strategy. And that stresses me out in an timed environment lol. While PlateUp it’s fun to try overcoming the hardships of the items and layouts you get. I prefer it :p
100 percent. Borderlands 2 in co-op was amazing back in the day and it is still amazing today. I played it a bit with my wife about two years ago and we had a blast.
Tiny Tina’s Dungeons’n’Dragons campaign had us cracking all the way through. It stil stands out as an example of what good DLC can be
Borderlands is great for this. Tons of random missions for pickup sessions and can be played without the group without huge consequences. I like the improvements with BL3, but the earlier games are still great and usually on sale quite cheap.
I agree, it was perfect for our WE. We played almost non-stop, only to sleep a little bit and eat, and for instance while we took showers the other 3 could continue to play. It’s my best memory of a LAN party (I don’t have many, maybe that’s why :p)
Try Factorio!! It’s got a demo you can try to get a taste as well. I spent ~20 hours in the demo itself before I bought the game. Looooved it.
Oh man, I forgot to add that to the list
I sunk so many hours just into the train system
I’ve heard Satisfactory now has blueprints and copy/paste as a feature. That was something I could never not have after factorio spoiled me.
Ready or Not is fantastic in co-op
It’s a blast but prepare yourself for the learning curve.
Speaking of learning curve, GTFO can be brutal
Its a lot easier if you care less about RoE and more about playing like its Tarkov!
Try Overcooked, cheap and fun, also might get mad at each other
Golf with Friends is casual and at times frustrating fun. Don’t have to wait for each person to hit the ball before you hit yours either, so the games courses don’t drag on.
This has become a mainstay in game night rotation. Fall Guys and Kart Riders (Mario Kart clone, which is surprisingly good) as well.
Wreckfest is a good demo-derby racing game that is fun as well, but is paid.
PULSAR is pretty amazing if you have a few friends to play with. It really feels like actually running a spaceship together. You can shout things like “Divert all power to main turrets” and actually mean that.
Pulsar is the game that I feel like was so close to being a great game but they gave up on it before it got there. Working together to run the ship is awesome but the world is SOOO empty. Like at least add mod support so folks can help or something. I want to love the game but that always stops me.
I’m too early in the game to know this well, but I feel the lack of mod support. This feels like a game that would really thrive with community support, but they have no plans on supporting mods or open sourcing it. They are currently working on a new project that they haven’t elaborated on yet.
Still, I got this game for $14 and if I can find some people to play with I’m absolutely going to get my money’s worth - this kind of game just doesn’t exist with this level of depth. I love the technical detail of how the ship works on and how the systems interact with each other.
I just got this game and I’m having a blast, this is the style of game I’ve been hungry for for a long time.
Check out Phasmophobia.
It’s a ghost investigation game that’s easy to pick up, and has some really awesome scary moments. It’s only about $14 and it’s got an overwhelmingly positive rating on Steam.
Phasmophobia is especially great with a group of friends who are all going in blind. I have some great gaming memories thanks to the first handful of hours with this game.
I will 2nd Phasmophobia. I have like 500+ hours in game. Makes all the difference with good friends, for sure.
That game honestly has one of the best communities I’ve ever seen in a game. I’ve rarely met people who were just asshats and even made a few friends playing.
My friend and I have fun playing Bro Force. It’s like contra. If you like beat em ups, the ninja turtles game or streets of rage 4 are fun.
100% can recommend BroForce
I can always recommend Guild Wars 2. It is f2p but the base game still has alot of content with some restrictions to not get overrun by bots.
Big detailed world to explore together and do stories which you get every 10 levels. If you pick different races and decicions at character creation, it all converges after lvl 60.
You also unlock all waypoints for every starter zone from the get go, so you can play together immediatly.
It can feel very easy there so you might want to tackle zones above your level, but the game gets harder in the 80 zones, group content and the expansions. Especially in Heart of Thorns, where the whole jungle tries to kill you.
It has no subscription which makes it perfect to play and then take breaks and even if you outlevel your friends you get downscaled and still get loot, so you can help or the other way around.
We had a lot of fun with V Rising. It’s a bit like Diablo I’d say, but with base building and crafting and the level is based entirely on gear, so if someone misses a few sessions you can just craft one extra set of the latest armor you unlocked and they are on your level instantly.
I’ll second vrising. It’s a lot of fun. Also if you play on a public server you or your friends can hop on whenever and don’t need someone hosting it. They have PvE and PvP server options.
V Rising was such an amazing co-op play through. My friend and I expect to do it again soon since the new content dropped.
I don’t think Barotrauma has been mentioned yet? Survival in a submarine, as far as I know. Haven’t played it, but it reviews well.
Ark and other survival/crafting games like 7days to die and Raft are great fun. Persistent worlds for collective fun.
There’s a new Starship Troopers co-op shopter out with 16 simulataneus players kilming bugs.
And Legion Td2 for a co-op campaign/bots experience.
Barotrauma is so fun. Everytime you think its going fine until it suddenly isn’t. 10/10 would drown with my friends again
I would recommend Vermintide, its like left 4 dead but you’re bashing rats
On that note I’d recommend Darktide. Why? I dunno, I just like it better than Vermintide.
Really? I love the setting of darktide but couldn’t commit to it like Vermintide. Has there been a fair amount of improvements since launch (I haven’t looked)?
Far too casual of a player to bother tracking a change log for this sort of game. Heck I wasn’t even able to articulate why I prefer Darktide in this comment. The best I can do is direct you to my other comment in this thread.
Haha all good, was just curious if anything major stood out since launch. Partially looking for a reason to give it another go if I’m being honest.
Have they fixed all the issues with Darktide? It was really rough on launch.
I am far too casual to care to keep a running list of issues and their status. What I can say is:
- The population has stabilized in what I consider a good place
- I haven’t had a crash in a couple of months
- Performance is fine even on high settings
- They’ve changed up how the shops and crafting are organized and it makes way more sense than it initially did
- Crafting feels way more useful and accessible than it initially did
That’s awesome! I’m gonna have to revisit that then. I’ve always liked the 40k setting more than fantasy, so this will be perfect. Thanks for the info.
The game is a much smoother experience than V2 and will continue to receive UX improvements as I’m sure you’re aware V2 has had over the years.
That said it will never feel the same as V2, and I think at this stage it’s intentional from FatShark
I don’t know how much of a good fit it might be but maybe Divinity original sin 2?
I don’t know if that’s something that can be done in one session, but I have a group of friends that have been playing Divinity: Original Sin 2 every week for a couple months now, and they really enjoy it.
Great and fun co-op, but it’s long term investment.
Solasta got a multiplayer update recently as well in the same vein.