Co op arcade pc games

Here's our most up-to-date collection of the best co-op games for PC, the kind of games best played together. Dig in and you'll find complex, seemingly endless games like Warframe and Destiny 2, time-deleting RPGs that make tables seem ever so quaint, and plenty of more casual co-op games anyone can pick up and play.

Release date: early access Players: Link: Steam. Valheim doesn't reinvent survival games, but it gets rid of all the stuff we don't like about them. This relaxing, but punishing PvE camping trip to Viking purgatory will never let you starve to death, and you'll never need to pay a dime to repair your items.

All the busywork is gone, replaced by a gorgeous, threatening world, and an elegant crafting system that lets you make everything from ugly lean-tos to the flippin' Eye of Sauron. Teaming up with friends to plan adventures and build a home together makes the experience even better. In his Early Access review , Chris sums it up nicely: "Valheim is an utterly engrossing experience that blends thoughtfully-designed survival systems with exciting RPG-like adventures, where each small nugget of progress sets the stage for the next.

Even in early access, Phasmophobia has become a serious co-op hit. Armed with pro ghost hunting tools like EMF readers, flashlights, salt, crucifixes and oh so many other items, you and your co-op partners will have to enter haunted buildings to determine what kind of spirit is running amok. You can each only carry a few tools at once, so you'll need to divide and conquer to collect clues about its identity.

Ghosts will mess with you by turning off lights, locking doors, and popping up to give you a fright or outright murder you.

Oh, and they'll listen to you talk via Windows voice recognition, so be careful not to go shouting their names too often. A good ghost hunting team can work together to figure out which kind of ghost registers an EMF reading of 5 paired with freezing temperatures and escape with all their heads in tact. Proximity voice chat paired with walkie-talkies for distance makes exploring each dark locale a tense adventure for friends who are willing to put their communication to the test.

It's almost just as fun if you and your friends are terrible at your jobs though. Here's why we think it's the best ghost game ever made. Release date: Players: Link: Steam. Rare's swashbuckling sandbox makes for a decent co-op game but it really shines as a co-op hangout.

Sea of Thieves is one of the most stunningly beautiful open world games and it can be completely undemanding—board a ship with your friends, pick a direction, and just sail around drinking grog until you barf, playing musical instruments, and firing each other out of cannons.

Or just chat for an hour while you cruise around taking in the picturesque sunsets. The Anniversary update adds a series of quests that are sometimes frustrating but frequently serve up some thrilling Goonies-esque moments of adventure, and will make you feel like a brilliant crew of swashbucklers.

For excitement you can chase down other crews for some bracing ship-to-ship combat, hunt for buried treasure, or take down a skeleton fort, but it's just as enjoyable to treat it like a chat room with beautiful waves and the occasional Kraken. No Man's Sky has been a fun redemption story to watch unfold.

Developer Hello Games has spent the last four years updating its galactic exploration-survival sim with expansive new features like base building, guilds, and most importantly, online multiplayer. In , No Man's Sky is some of the most fun you can have in a co-op survival sim. The game still occasionally buckles under the weight of annoying bugs, but it's worth powering through for the joy of discovering planets and bizarre creatures with friends.

If you're looking for a space-faring survival game with a bigger focus on building, you should also check out Astroneer.

You can play through all of Monster Hunter solo, or with random strangers from the internet, but co-op is where this game truly shines. Combat channels the combos of Capcom action games like Devil May Cry but feels more risky and deliberate, forcing you to learn the attacks of these giant beasts.

Tougher monsters force you to collaborate and stay constantly on your feet, and fights go much better when you and your hunting party specialize with different weapons. And grinding for the rare drops you need to make gear out of monster parts is just so much more fun with a few friends in Discord. The Iceborne expansion, released in early , adds tons of new monsters to fight and new abilities that encourage teamwork.

It's a good time to go hunting! According to our reviewer, Divinity: Original Sin 2 is "a sprawling, inventive adventure and one of the best RPGs ever made. Chaos and player agency reign supreme in such a reactive world, meaning one friend could piss of a guard or reveal their undead identity at an inopportune time—but that's exactly what makes OS2 so great with friends.

You're no longer dealing with a loyal party of characters you shape over time. You're dealing with three other stubborn people, all vying for different outcomes. It's a beautiful role-playing mess set in one of the most lush, engaging RPG worlds ever.

The first Divinity: Original Sin is a great co-op experience, too, if you need another hundred hours of RPG adventuring.

Release date: Players: Varies Link: Steam. The Halo series may have the most replayable FPS campaigns ever. Each game has a handful of levels that put you in wide open spaces, free to tackle enemies when and how you choose.

Steal a ghost or warthog and careen around the map running over Covenant enemies are they dive out of the way. Seek out a rocket launcher to blow them to smithereens.

Hide behind cover and ping down their shields with headshots. Harder difficulties are made easier with a co-op partner, since as long as one of you is alive, there's a chance to respawn. In the Master Chief Collection, you can even toggle on a scoring mode and modifiers that tweak enemy behavior or make them explode into confetti.

It's a good time. All the games in the Master Chief Collection are being released one-by-one throughout Reach is a great starter if you're brand new to the series. Release date: Players: 2 Link: Steam. We Were Here is a puzzle adventure series designed entirely around co-op. The defusing player can take a laptop to one side of the couch, and the advisers open up their bomb hardware manuals on the other.

Communication is critical and any number of players can advise the bomb technician, making this a fantastic party game. Four players team up to conquer a series of story-like missions that involve each team member performing a different role building up to a bigger heist.

When all four players come together in the finale of each heist, making a dramatic escape from the cops as a collective is incredibly exciting and rewarding—more so than anything found in the main story. If only of them. Release Date: Developer: Valve Link:. What a shock! There's no denying the raw quality of Portal 2's distinct co-op campaign, though.

As the two testing robots Atlas and P-Body, you and a friend get to explore the darker, more dangerous side of GlaDOS's testing routines—the stuff that's too dangerous for non-protagonist human testers. The three-dimensional spatial thinking that makes the Portal series so addictive is only magnified when there's another friend getting stumped at the puzzles with you.

Portal 2's co-op is strongest when neither of you know the answer: if your partner waits patiently for you, you feel like a moron; if they don't, they'll be rushing you through all the discovery that makes the game great.

Several years after release, though, finding two fresh players would be a rare trick indeed. Luckily, Valve's excellent map editor community has created a full array of to explore, and get stumped in, together. The first Guacamelee 2 occupied a spot on this list for years for being the rare Metroidvania-style game that supported co-op.

The sequel offers more of the same, with up to four players able to adventure together and pull off fun, flashy combos in classic beat-em-up fashion. It's a breezier game than something slower and moodier like Hollow Knight, but that's why the co-op works so well.

It's silly, over-the-top, and has really punchy combat. Also, you can fight as a chicken now. Let's get this one thing perfectly clear from the beginning: Artemis is not a Star Trek game. That needs to be understood for legal reasons, OK? Definitely not a Star Trek game. Artemis is the greatest Star Trek game ever made. The players captain, weapons, helm, engineering, communications, science can only see what's in front of them or what's on the main viewscreen, so there's no way for, say, engineering to help out with aiming weapons or piloting the ship.

If you want power redirected to subsystems, though, engineering can do that. Not because you're LARPing, but because you've got to make sure you heard the command correctly or you'll all die. Well, maybe a little because you're LARPing.

It's one thing to have an adventure with two or three friends, sure, but the Arma engine supports dozens of players at once. There's really something to be said for having a human pilot fly you and ten humans to a war zone, drop you off, and leave you to link up with twenty other humans for an assault.

Arma 3 doesn't have to be strictly cooperative, of course, but it's included on this list because it shines the brightest when everyone's on the same side against an overwhelming AI foe.

While you're diving into Arma 3, be sure to check out the. Anger your vengeful god, and Zeus will strike you down with a bolt of lightning.

It's a fantastic, flexible take on co-op mission scripting that should not be missed. It's really saying something about the strength of Valve's terrific zombie shooter that it's still clawing its way onto lists like this one after so many years. A fanatically balanced, cleverly written shooter, Left 4 Dead 2 is built on the strength of four survivors working as a team. As it throws zombies at the team, the group must coordinate their movement and help each other out of danger or death with last second heroics that give each campaign a story worth retelling.

Left 4 Dead 2's active modding community is also a huge part of why this game comes so highly recommended, as it has produced new campaigns, like Lord of the Rings' Helms Deep castle , which have kept L4D2 fun even after the base campaigns grew old. Plus, you can play as a velociraptor , which clearly warrants our highest praise. Note: Some online stores give us a small cut if you buy something through one of our links.

Read our affiliate policy for more info. Aliens vs. X-Coop Beta 2. Downloadable missions. Turn-based gameplay. Co-op content needs to be unlocked through SP.

Downloadable Zombie Nazi maps. Simultaneous split-screen and online play possible. Local Shared No? Singleplayer is essentially co-op with a bot.

Cities act as player hubs, allowing larger player population. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings, Vol. LAN Full Yes? Mario Bros. Grand Prix and Time Trials not available. U New Super Mario Bros. No Orcs Must Die! Wii 4P splitscreen. Rune PC Action-Adv. Simultaneous split-screen and LAN play possible. LAN, Online? The story mode is not available for coop.

Soulcalibur Legends Wii Action-Adv. AI only. Super Smash Bros. When playing story mode the game screen follows P1. SP campaign playable on LAN.

Additional Co-op Terrorist Hunt mode up to 4 players. A 3-person online mode with certain missions using altered SP campaign maps. Player made maps and custom campaigns. Shared No? Players take control of an adventurer challenged with retaking a castle that has been overrun with demons. The reward? The treasure buried deep within its confines… of course. This delightful platformer took the industry by storm when it released back in Multiplayer is right at the very core of what makes Dungeon Defenders so brilliant.

A scintillating blend of tower defense and action role-playing, Dungeon Defenders is good for countless hours of couch coop fun. The objective is the same each time around: defend the Eternia Crystal from hordes of enemies using a variety of heroes, each with their own unique attributes. A sweet mashup of battle arena, puzzle solving, and RPG action, FORCED is a smartly designed cooperative action game with lots of depth, great variety in its challenges, and a satisfying combat system that encourages teamwork.

Played from an isometric view, players control one of four different characters to battle across combat arenas that are connected by short puzzle segments. Each arena that is beaten rewards players with a crystal, which can be used for character progression. Players assume the role of wizards from a sacred order tasked with the ultimate goal of stopping an evil sorcerer who has thrown the world into chaos.

Instead of harvesting souls, players harvest salt, which can be used in a progression tree or spent on leveling up. There are different classes with different attributes to choose from, but each avatar is essentially a blank slate to build according to player preference. It is possible to play the entire campaign cooperatively, too.

A 2D brawler with a pretty art style and some thrilling gameplay, Final Exam has players take control of up to two characters who have returned to their old high school for a reunion. Its gameplay has a surprising amount of variety to it, despite being on a 2D plane.

Guacamelee certainly borrows elements from a host of legendary source material, but thanks to its own charming art style, a host of memorable characters, and great big wads of endearing silliness, it does more than enough to forge its own legacy.

Part metroidvania 2D exploration game, and part action-platformer, Guacamelee is a joy to control. Avalanche Studios is best known for their work on the popular Just Cause games, a series in which chaotic action is at the forefront of the equation.

The fast-paced vehicular combat is best enjoyed with a controller as a twin stick shooter. Nex Machina has players battling an army of droids, saving a few innocent human civilians along the way.

The frantic action and jaw-dropping visuals are vintage Housemarque. You can team up with another pal and play the whole campaign cooperatively. How To Survive strands players on a remote island off the coast of South America, but this is no idyllic paradise. The crafting system allows players to build tools and weapons from fishing rods to Molotov cocktails.

All of the Lego games are an absolute hoot in co-op mode, but Marvel Super Heroes is definitely one of our favorites. Packed with as much charm and humor as a Disney movie and as accomplished from a gameplay perspective as any AAA title out there, Marvel Super Heroes is not to be overlooked. This is another great one for kids, so naturally we had to have it in the best couch co-op games on PC to play with friends.

Trine 4 is the long-awaited current-gen return of the popular co-op game. Multiplayer was always a big part of the Trine experience, and that is not only back, but refined and improved in this latest sequel.

Abyss Odyssey is gloriously designed, wonderfully weird 2D Brawler Roguelike with its own unique style. Each procedurally generated level has its own charm, from ice caves to toxic forests. Gameplay revolves around a fighting system that requires careful timing and understanding of its nuances, rewarding precision and control. A second player can join in at any time for some co-op action.

Temple of Osiris takes the action to a top-down isometric perspective, controlling more like a twin-stick shooter than the third-person action gameplay from the main series. Featuring a four-player co-op story, players must work together to explore the temple, defeat hordes of enemies from the Egyptian underworld. Nuclear Throne is an intense, adrenaline pumping roguelike that is equally rewarding as it is stressful.

Each procedurally generated level brings players closer to being crowned King of this nuclear wasteland, battling dozens of enemies trying desperately to stop them. Things can get very chaotic, with the screen awash with explosions and gunfire. Each randomized dungeon brings new mayhem, flipping tables for cover, rolling around to avoid incoming fire, and shooting enemies as all manner of books, vases, and windows shatter around you. Each chaotic encounter is a careful orchestra of button pressing, timing, and memorizing enemy patterns.

There are loads of ways to customize character abilities, the skills are fun to use, the loot plentiful, and there are plenty of options for cool skill builds. Three players can join the game for a co-op experience as helpers, choose character classes, collect loot, and assist in battle. Death Squared is the ultimate cooperative brain teaser.

Things start easy but quickly get tricky, employing some very clever level design to keep you on your toes. Completing these more difficult stages is super rewarding and a genuinely entertaining experience. Unlike previous Sacred titles, Sacred 3 is a much more linear affair, replacing action-RPG traits with more hack-and-slash style action.

The campaign takes place across over thirty different stages which can be played in any order. Multiplayer places a great emphasis on supporting teammates, with each character given a power meter that fills up as they use their special attacks.

Single-player might be a fairly shallow experience, but Sacred 3 is awesome with friends. Gameplay revolves around beating up hordes of enemies throughout various castles, forests, and ships.

Fans of tactics games, rejoice! Wargroove is a glorious throwback to the golden era of the genre, based liberally on the excellent Gameboy title Advanced Wars.

There are four factions, each of which all look visually distinct but have access to the same units. Certainly, the survival elements, lack of a map, and a lack of structure to the narrative make a playthrough of Outward a real journey of discovery. It sure is tough, though, forcing you to think about your food intake, sleep, inventory, weapon degradation, and much more as you traverse the hostile world of Aurie.