Before the onset of high-speed internet connections, couch co-op, in which multiple players share a screen, was one of the only ways to game together. Classics of the 1980s and ’90s, arguably the mode’s heyday, range from the powder-pink platforming masterpiece Kirby Super Star to the inimitable beat-em-up Streets of Rage. But in recent years, this style of collaborative local play has taken the backseat to collaborative online experiences like MMO shooter Destiny and beast-slaying extravaganza Monster Hunter Wilds. Thankfully, studios like Hazelight, the makers of 2025’s highest-rated title on Metacritic, Split Fiction, are keeping the couch co-op experience from becoming a lost art. Here, we’ve rounded up 15 inventive titles worthy of your consideration. After all, why bicker with internet strangers about a botched boss fight when there could be a close friend or partner sitting next to you?
(PC, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series S/X)
No other studios are making couch co-op experiences of such popcorn panache. We can confirm Hazelight’s Split Fiction is pure co-op bliss, a summer blockbuster that delivers a deluge of delight at a frankly outrageous clip. (Hazelight founder Josef Fares was formerly an award-winning film director.) Playing as Zoe and Mio, you’re thrust into the whimsical fantasy and brooding sci-fi worlds that each of them dream up as fiction writers (hence the title). So begins a self-aware celebration and deconstruction of genre tropes that always has fun with its source material. You’ll ram razor-sharp blades into the mouth of a terrifying robot dentist and swing from the fishing rod of a steppe-scraping giant. It’s the most accomplished Hazelight effort yet: video game imagined as frenetic roller coaster for two.
(Android, iPhone, PC, PlayStation 4/5, Nintendo Switch, Xbox One, Xbox Series S/X)
With screen-erupting euphoria, Vampire Survivors offers an unapologetically pure take on the video-game power fantasy. Start out with a solitary automated attack (a flailing whip or single projectile spell); upgrade your arsenal to become a whirling maelstrom of cosmic violence, wiping out hundreds of enemies every second. Teaming up with a pal, you may find the early portion of the game can be trickier because only one of you gets to enjoy the upgrade that comes with hitting a new level. But the payoffs are arguably all the sweeter. Marvel at the firework display of disintegrating foes; revel in your might as a pair of badass demon slayers.
(Nintendo Switch)
Fittingly, the world’s favorite proletariat gaming star, mustachioed plumber Mario, has long made the case for cooperative play. Early entries, like the 1983 original, were simple by today’s standards: You merely swapped the controller with a partner. In 2023’s Super Mario Bros. Wonder, a return to the franchise’s side-scrolling roots, up to four players can hop into a level, sharing lives and power-ups in one of the series’ most fiercely imaginative entries. Whether bounding through the Pipe Rock Plateau or soaking up the tropical holiday vibes of the Petal Isles, bouncy secrets burst forth from every corner of this undeniably kaleidoscopic world. We’ve run the math: With more players, the delight is simply multiplied.
(PC, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series S/X)
Whether playing together or alone, Baldur’s Gate 3 is a daunting experience. Every action in this isometric role-playing game is decided by the rolling of a 20-sided dice, and there is a frankly dizzying array of menus and submenus to parse. Yet no other RPG gets this close to summoning the pure freeform magic of a pen-and-paper Dungeons & Dragons session. If you and a friend can pierce the game’s somewhat obtuse exterior, you’ll be rewarded with a jaw-droppingly flexible experience, from story and combat to romantic canoodling, all seamlessly narrated by a chatty dungeon master. Alas, you’re not able to seduce one another, but that’s really the only black mark against this absurdly fun all-timer adventure.
(PC, PlayStation 4/5, Nintendo Switch, Xbox One, Xbox Series S/X)
Beat ’em ups of the 1980s and ’90s, including Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Turtles in Time, helped shape an idea of couch co-op that is still with us today: bruising arcade action, furious electronic soundtracks, sick-as-hell pixel art. In short, these are perfect games for kicking back with friends. 2022’s Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Shredder’s Revenge, starring our favorite sewer-dwelling amphibian heroes, is the modern-day inheritor to such titles. The co-op mode, which can accommodate six players, is brilliantly chaotic because, with each additional character, Shredder’s Revenge throws more enemies at you. It’s a game fundamentally about buddies kicking butt best enjoyed by buddies with a pile of New York pizza at arm’s length.
(PC, PlayStation 4/5, Nintendo Switch, Xbox One, Xbox Series S/X)
Summer camp; a handful of 20-something counselors; monsters intent on ripping this do-gooding bunch to shreds. Is there a movie genre more perfectly suited to the couch co-op treatment than the teen slasher? The answer is no, and U.K. studio Supermassive duly delivered on the idea’s rich potential. Where most couch co-op titles typically involve a little light competition if not outright working together, The Quarry sees you and up to eight friends role-playing in a narrative drama. You only need one controller, passing it around as you take turns playing your assigned character or characters, such as sensitive bro Chris (voiced by David Arquette) and sarcastic slacker Max (Skyler Gisondo). Will you collaborate or double-cross one another? Will your character make it out alive, or will they perhaps meet a bloody end and lose a limb or two?
(PC, PlayStation 4/5, Nintendo Switch, Xbox One, Xbox Series S/X)
Divorces are hard, especially if the two parents have been magically shrunk. This fantasy set-up is the catalyst for a journey of reconnection for mother and father, May and Cody, across a variety of brilliantly distinct levels. One is a DIY-themed romp through a tool-inspired land: cue swinging from nails. Another takes place in a garden of gigantic, deadly flora. Really, this isn’t so much a game about divorce as it is one about finding new ways to keep you and your playmate riotously entertained. On this level, as a teeming toybox, It Takes Two, also developed by Hazelight, is an unqualified success.
(PC, PlayStation 4/5, Nintendo Switch, Xbox One, Xbox Series S/X)
Amid the twinkling grandeur of the cosmos, two hapless astronauts are fumbling crucial tasks: docking into a space station; adjusting the angle of satellite dishes; keeping their plants alive. That’s because you, the players, are independently controlling each of their arms and hands, a brain-scrambling challenge in its own right. As such, physics puzzler Heavenly Bodies is often a game of flailing noodle limbs and intrepid spacemen drifting out into the inky abyss. But that’s fine: In this beautifully presented starlit comedy, failure is part of the fun.
(PC, PlayStation 4, Nintendo Switch, Xbox One)
Life is more amusing when you’re causing mischief with a partner, and the same is true in the Untitled Goose Game. In this co-op, you team up as a pair of anarchic geese; steal the bespectacled child’s toy airplane; turn the sprinkler on while the gardener is tending to their vegetable patch; yank a stool away from an elderly man. After each moment of perfectly engineered insolence, pulled off with the slapstick verve of Laurel and Hardy, you’ll likely want to honk together in the faces of your victims. This quintessential English village has never known such fowl behavior.
(PC, PlayStation 4, Nintendo Switch, Xbox One)
In this moment of political and economic chaos, does your brain long for a semblance of order? Then try Wilmot’s Warehouse, a strangely cheerful take on working in a gigantic storage warehouse. At regular intervals, a new van-load of crates bearing cryptic icons arrives, and it’s your job to pack them away. In single-player, this is a deeply personal process: Will you attempt to categorize these goods, or are you content with a little mess? Regardless, you’ll likely slip into a pleasingly Zen state shuffling them about. Playing with a partner, Wilmot’s Warehouse becomes a negotiation: Should what looks like a pen knife go over here with the tools or over there with the camping materials? Where the hell shall we put the rainbow? Through such decisions, this charming little game has the power to make — and indeed break — relationships.
(PC, PlayStation 4/5, Nintendo Switch, Xbox One, Xbox Series S/X)
Have you and a friend or partner ever harbored aspirations of opening a café or restaurant? Then perhaps try Overcooked 2 first to see how you might handle such famously intense working environments. The task is ostensibly simple: A team of chefs cut food, cook food, and serve up finished dishes to a zombie army known as the, ahem, Unbread. Actually doing so is more complicated as you and your gastronomic buddies run around flinging ingredients onto chopping boards and, should things get a little out of control, applying a fire extinguisher to ablaze pots and pans. Overcooked 2 is what you get if you cross Nintendo twee with The Bear’s kitchen nightmare: unbridled culinary chaos.
(PC, PlayStation 4, Xbox One)
What if The Shawshank Redemption was directed by Guy Ritchie, and it’s also a video game? That’s A Way Out in a nutshell, another Fares joint that sees two convicts, Vincent Moretti and Leo Caruso, plan and execute their escape from a high-security prison somewhere in 1970s America. This is a macho affair: You and a friend will do press-ups, chin-ups, and bench presses by day and crack skulls by night. Yet it’s markedly elegant, the camera swooshing back and forth between each character to frame the action more dramatically. For every on-the-nose jailbreak cliche, there is a moment of disarming emotional connection between Leo and Vincent.
(PC, PlayStation 4/5, Nintendo Switch, Xbox One, Xbox Series S/X)
Looking like a popup book from the mind of Tim Burton, Don’t Starve Together is easily the most challenging game on this list. The clue is in its title: This is a survival game that centers on getting enough grub inside your 2-D-cutout character’s bellies. If you’ve played Minecraft, or any other survival game from the past 15 years, the loop should be familiar: scavenge for materials, slowly construct tools, forage berries, hunt the odd rabbit. But beware of permadeath, which means, should you succumb to hunger or any other perilous fate, that’s it — your game is truly over. There’s something about playing with a pal that softens this finality.
(PC, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series S/X)
For Josef Fares, director of Split Fiction, It Takes Two, and A Way Out, this is where it all began. This a significantly less zany, more melancholic affair than any of those games, a chilly fairytale of light puzzle-solving and poignant, worldless adventuring. The 2013 original saw you control two young boys named Naiee and Naia with each analogue stick. The 2024 remake delivers fully-fledged local multiplayer. As you push, pull, heave, and ho your way through stunning Nordic landscapes, the game builds to a show-stopping climax that delivers mightily on its coming-of-age premise. It’s a rare example of mechanics and meaning being completely intertwined. Just be sure to have a box of tissues at hand.
(PC, PlayStation 3/4, Nintendo Switch, Xbox 360, Xbox One)
An uncanny all-star cast (including Ken Cosgrove actor Aaron Staton); a resplendent recreation of postwar Los Angeles; a spate of unsolved crimes. L.A. Noire is a rare single-player game that works even better as a couch co-op experience. That’s because this open-world crime thriller is less about driving and shooting than interrogating suspects. The co-op joy comes in collaborating on these interviews, choosing when to push a subject or pull back; when to buy their story or accuse them of cooking it up. There’s endless fun to be had in reading each virtual eyebrow raise and curled lip, arguing with your co-op buddy about what it could possibly mean — motive, alibis, smoking gun! — before the two of you invariably get it wrong anyway.
The 15 Best Couch Co-op Video Games
