Ooo yes. Monaco is a brilliant coop game.
Broforce. Pixel art combined with insane action is completely awesome. 7-8 might be too young, but my 10 yo boy and 12 yo girl love it.
Spelunky is pretty fun in coop, and great in deathmatch.
So far my son and I have played…
- Sonic and All Stars Racing Transformed (earlier)
- Lovers in a Dangerous Spacetime
- Rayman Origin
- Lara Croft and the Guardian of Light
And thumbs up on all of these so far. Maybe we’ll try Spelunky but I am very worried about a difficulty spike. @moss_icon we tried badland but it got quite hard, but only in singleplayer. Maybe I’ll try co-op there.
We did play through Sunset Overdrive on XBone… well more accurately he watched me play through and did some exploration himself, with the profanity filter turned on. The game is so funny and so over the top that I consider it “cartoon” violence.
edit: also, Co-Optimus - Your Prime Source for Co-Op Gaming - Listing of PC Co-Op Games is a good reference point.
My favorite coop game of all time has to be Towerfall. It’s not as much of a cooperative game as a versus game. It’s extremely fun, the controls are very simple yet with deep and interesting gameplay, 2 players is as good as 4, theres a bunch of ways to change up the game and have different mods and stuff (like ingame mods, not downloadable mods).
I also just played Lovers in a Dangerous Spacetime, which was quite interesting. sounds perfect for you.
Lastly, I know you said Steam, but I’ve played quite a lot of emulated wii games through dolphin. It’s not very difficult to set up and there are HD texture packs and stuff. Playing Smash Bros or mario kart with the computer in 1920x1080 is pretty fun :)
Hmm aren’t there controller issues if we try to play Wii co-op games using an Xbone controller on the PC?
I don’t know what it is about the game exactly, but in my world there have been many hours of bonding with kid playing some version of Gauntlet. It is definitely a good one to bring out every once in a while.
It depends on the game… If you want to play games that are heavily motion based it won’t be easy. mouse actually works pretty well for wii games but obviously it might be difficult to do coop games like that. I just play games like Smash Brothers, Mario Kart, or Mario Party, avoiding the problem all together. Those are the games I enjoyed the most anyway.
I will say that it is possible (even easy) to set up a wiimote using bluetooth on a computer, if you’ve got a spare wiimote lying around or something. But that’s a bit much for me.
Well I suddenly have need of this thread, when in a couple days I have to entertain an almost 6 year old. Hopefully some of these are still ok for the younger tyke, he’s a pretty clever little fella… ?
So I’m piling up the Steam cart with some local co-op games in prep. :)
I have Mario Kart and Smash Bros on Wii-U, also Sonic Racing on PC. I bought Gauntlet earlier too. He’s not big on Star Wars or Lego so I’ll skip those.
I’m thinking Towerfall may be too hard for a 5-6 year old? How about Lovers in a Dangerous Spacetime?
The other’s I’ll probably buy anyway as they’re so cheap … Lara Croft Guardian of Light, Castle Crashers, Nidhogg, Badland.
My son is also 8 and I’m always on the lookout for exactly the same thing. Great to have some new (for us) recommendations.
Of all the games we played, I will suggest Dungeon Defenders. My son loves it and even thought his friends how to play it. Just a great coop games.
Let me add some suggestions for the Wii U. The Wonderful 101 is great in coop (if you have a Pro Controller). Super Mario 3D World is fantastic in coop as well, and I heartily recommend it. If you like cute platformers, Yoshi’s Wooly World is also pretty fun and perhaps too cute. :)
I’m going to go out on a limb and make an unusual recommendation:
Sins of a Solar Empire (newest version is Rebellion)
Yes, it’s an RTS and therefore will provide a challenge to newcomers, but:
It’s pace is glacial compared to others, you can set up teams ahead of time so you can do a great comp-stomp with your kid, and the special abilities of the ships can all (except of the “super” abilities for level 6+ capital ships) be set to go off automatically.
So how does this work? One person drives the mouse, the other fires off the ability hotkeys?
I think Towerfall is pretty simple… I feel like a 5 year old could grasp it. They may not be very good for a while though.
Lovers in a Dangerous Spacetime is easier and fully cooperative, i dont think you’d have problems there.
Great, they were the two ‘big ticket’ items - trigger pulled! Now to visit the Steam Winter Sale 2016 Damage thread. ;)
You can each take a side (you’ll need a laptop/two computers to do this). It’s an older game, so a modern onboard graphics solution should be plenty good. You can then set the number and strength of enemy combatants (and friends, if you want AI sides helping you as well - up to 10 players/AI participants). Speed can be slowed waaaaay down, and MP allows for 10 actual pauses per game. When a ship is selected, right-click on any “power” (you’ll see an icon or two below) that you want the PC to handle on its own. From there, it’s a very basic base-building/tech tree. You grab ships with with a drag box, and then right-click on the planet you want them to go to (scroll-wheel zooms in and out). No 3D to worry about, either (the combat resembles WWII naval combat), and the ships will fight somewhat competently on their own, but you can grab ships and right-click on a single enemy to focus fire, direct them somewhere else, or whatever else you may fancy.
This was the first RTS my son really took to, although he “traveled back in time” and found the joy of the much-more-difficult-to-handle Rise of Nations a couple years later.
I would basically set myself up as a shield for him while he got his fleet built and pushed it forward. We had great fun ruling the galaxy as father and son.
I have a nine-year old son and we’re always searching for co-op titles, so this is a great resource. We’ve enjoyed many of the titles named here: Castle Crashers, Towerfall and others.
While today a lot of our co-op time is spent adventuring or leveling together in WoW and Path of Exile, there are a couple of other games we’ve enjoyed greatly that I’d add to the list.
Plants vs. Zombies 2 – originally bought on the strength of Tom’s recommendation. My son can’t get enough of this and it’s usually him dragging me down to the living room to play together
Diablo 3 +Expansion on console – not Steam but this is a big one. Playing co-op same screen Diablo 3 was a revelation. Each parent will have to make their own judgment on whether it is too violent or not but since I was playing with him, as 99% of the enemies are non-human, and as it’s arguably over-the-top in a non-realistic way I thought it was ok.
Well so much for the co-op games, he just wanted to crash into other cars in Forza Horizon 3 instead… :P
My 11 year old and I LOVE Portal 2 Coop. We have a blast playing the main coop missions and ones we devise ourselves…have a great time with it.
Also, TF2.
I have played many co-op games with my now 23 year old daughter over the years. Castle Crashers was one of our favorites. We also did Portal and Portal 2. And many of the Lego games.
We have also done the Borderlands series and Gears of War series, but I don’t think they would be appropriate for most 8 year olds.
So I finally have everything set up so I can play PC games on my big TV, to play co-op games with my kids. The computer is in the other room, but the xbox 360 controllers work fine. So, games have to be single-screen/split screen, and controller only (no keyboard/mouse or I have to leave the room!)
Last night I broke out Sonic Racing Transformed and Spelunky. My 8 and 10 year olds found Spelunky too hard. They liked Sonic Racing, but my problem with that is that it isn’t really co-op (unless there’s some mode I’m not aware of). You can play the campaign mode, and if any player meets the threshold to advance, you get to advance, so it’s co-op in that sense, but you’re still trying to win the race.
I failed to pick up Lovers in a Dangerous Spacetime during the sale, that seems like it would have been a good match (although maybe too hard)? And we’ve kind of played both Rayman games (Origins, Legends) to death.
So, basically, I am also looking for the same games as everyone else on this thread.