Realistic Summer Sports Simulator is easily the most fun I’ve ever had playing a local co-op PC game. It’s free, absurd, hilarious, and essentially perfect. Made by Justin Smith, of Enviro-bear and Desert Golfing fame. If you’ve played those, you know what to expect.
Edit: Drinking is not necessary to have a great time with it, but it certainly takes it to another level.
A Way Out is pretty good from what I’ve heard. I have it installed and am going to sit down with the gf and play it, hopefully start this week. Everything I’ve read about it looks pretty interesting, I’m looking forward to it.
https://www.origin.com/usa/en-us/store/a-way-out/a-way-out
An exclusively co-op adventure best played with friends.
From the creators of Brothers – A Tale of Two Sons comes A Way Out, an exclusively co-op adventure where you play the role of one of two prisoners making their daring escape from prison.
I can’t believe I forgot about this one. Yes it’s amazing.
Well… We gave it a try a few months ago and were hoping for a nice coop experience. Unfortunately the idea is better than the execution. It was a very bland and boring experience and we gave up about halfway through. Real coop sequences were scarce and the story plods along.
After that we tried a retro pixely arcade coop game based on Bud Spencer and Terence Hill movies called “slaps and beans” - Basically a side scrolling Double Dragon / Golden Axe type beat-em-up type game and that was pretty amusing, though far from high art.
Rayman Origins and Legends are two of the best platformers ever made, and the co-op is pretty good. And hey, Legends is free on the Epic Store right now, so definitely check it out.
Killer Queen Black is worth checking out. It’s 4v4 single screen so you can get your whole team on one PC (if you have less than 4 you’ll just get other players or bots). I’ll bet it would be a lot of fun to play it that way.
@Bluddy’s is a fine list! Just to add some of my own notes:
Jamestown is amazing co-op and one of my all-time faves if you’ve got the right friend(s) for it. Jamestown+ is on its way.
Assault Android Cactus is fantastic but I’m not convinced there’s much co-op going on in it! Some amazing levels, the characters are terrific and it just feels so smooth and slick.
Dungeon Defenders is an old favourite and I forget it has split-screen. Tower defence games are great co-op because there’s lots of chatter about where best to place stuff between waves. There’s the original, but ‘Awakened’ is out next year.
Portal 2 is also one of my favourite co-op experiences. It’s just brilliant. I didn’t play split-screen but I can’t imagine it being anything short of amazing still locally.
I can also highly recommend Lovers in a Dangerous Spacetime. Requires proper co-operation and communication but a ton of fun with some interesting unlocks and upgrade decisions.
Rocket League is a classic.
Renegade Ops, Monaco, Rayman Legends (although I prefer the structure/loop of Origins more), Human Fall Flat and Overcooked/Overcooked 2 are all excellent. Make sure you’ve got a strong bond with your friends for Overcooked; it will be tested. In a similar vein: Catastronauts is worth a look if you’re into sci-fi.
Preach!
I’d like to add Magicka 2 for some slapstick wizarding and comical friendly fire. It has one of my favourite magic systems. So clever and creative.
X-Morph: Defense reminds me of Renegade Ops with its arcade action and tongue-in-cheek premise and presentation but the actual gameplay is a slick mash-up of twin-stick shooting and tower defence. Big bosses, destructible terrain, pathing and you get to be the baddies.
Crawl is worth a look if you fancy a dash of competitive play in your co-op dungeon crawling (or vice versa). You get to be the baddies as well as the goodies here.
Oh! FORCED is an… action RPG sort of co-op puzzler. Very clever and requires good co-ordination. Lara Croft and The Guardian of Light is very similar and also great.
There’s Hacktag, a co-op isometric stealth and hacking game. One player is the hacker, the other the operative.
Joggernauts is a co-op runner game where you alternate positions to overcome obstacles. Very cool idea and very tricky.
Mugsters if you fancy some physics-y sandbox-y aliens B-movie rescue missions with a friend.
N++ if you and a friend are hardcore platforming perfection nuts. Seriously good stuff but not for the faint of heart (like me)!
I hear great things about Heave Ho, and Totally Reliable Delivery Service is worth keeping an eye on if you’re partial to the loose-y goose-y physics and hijinks of Gang Beasts and Human Fall Flat but set in an open world delivering stuff in various wacky ways.
I’m also looking forward to:
We Are Screwed!
Moving Out
Fling to the Finish
That’ll do! Phew.
Wha? Awesome! A shame they haven’t put out a single other game since Jamestown though.
Huh? Plenty of co-op!
Great list @geggis!
Haha, yeah, I knew I’d get pulled up on that! :-) While I played Assault Android Cactus with a friend I remarked that we weren’t really co-operating, just kind of co-habiting the same space but playing in solo bubbles. We weren’t communicating or co-ordinating like in Overcooked or Lovers in a Dangerous Spacetime or Portal 2. To me that’s what co-op is; where a single player can’t really progress or succeed alone.
Now you’ve pressed me on it, you could raise this criticism at Jamestown and Cuphead and the Rayman games too, all of which I’ve played, finished and loved as co-op experiences. I suppose I just like my co-op explicit rather than a sort of bi-product of bringing more players to an otherwise solo experience, if that makes sense? I’ve jokingly called them ‘co-hab’ games in the past.
(By the way, said friend and I do a video series of local multiplayer games, primarily on PC, called Side by Side which I’ve linked to elsewhere on Qt3 with the permission of Tom. The older seasons are a bit ropey quality-wise but we’ve gotten a lot better in the last two or three. Our latest episode – posted up today in fact!! – looks at Totally Reliable Delivery Service.)
Check it out, @roguefrog, those two jerks the two hosts provide invaluable feedback about that aspect that is vastly ignored everywhere else.
Can’t believe I forgot to mention it.
Fair enough. The majority of co-op experiences are indeed just adding another player to tackle the enemies with. In many ways I prefer it, since I’m rarely around people who are as experienced in games as I am, including my kids (and there’s a great disparity among them as well based on age).
Has Castle Crashers been mentioned?
Yeah that’s totally understandable and a problem I relate to!
@Clay aye, Bluddy mentioned it above! Fun brawler that one.
@Left_Empty it’s okay ;-)
My kids appreciate the poo jokes in that one. 💩
I have jumped back into Rayman because of this thread.
But all alone. Snif.
Aaaaww.
