My SO and I have been having a lot of fun playing co-op games on the Steam Deck connected to the TV. We recently finished Split Fiction and I’m looking for the next cool experience to try out. We enjoy casual co-op games, nothing too hard or violent. EDIT: pixel art is apparently a big turnoff for her so that’s out as well.
Games We Enjoyed:
- Split Fiction
- It takes two
- Untitled Goose Game
Games that flopped:
- Stardew Valley - She is open to “farming” games but doesn’t enjoy the energy management aspect of the game. It also gave her motion sickness, somehow
- Overcooked / Moving out - We enjoy these games but as they start to get more chaotic and hard, the enjoyment goes way down
- Ibb & Obb - A bit dull and samey
- Portal - Gives me serious motion sickness, completely unplayable
- Lego Lord of the Rings - I’m a lord of the rings fan but I hated the gameplay for this game, I found it to be so boring. We quit after an hour or so.
Unravel 2 :) It’s a beautiful little co-op game with lots of puzzle-y problems to solve and some dynamic ones as well
It went on sale yesterday so I ended up buying it!
Lovers in a Dangerous Space Time
Manage your malfunctioning space ship together while fending off waves of enemies.
Very fun.
My gf is pretty new to video games but these are a few she enjoyed
Trine 2/3
Snippets
Castle crashers
Unravelled
Diablo 3
Children of morta - my gf also doesn’t really like pixel art but this turned out to be one of her favourite games
We just started the spiritfarer. Absolutely worth it
I already played and loved SpiritFarer, it was an amazing journey. I don’t want to say too much but I just can’t repeat it any time soon.
Spelunky 1 & 2
Monster Prom, Monster Camp, Monster Roadtrip
Also seconding Kingdom: Two Crowns
OP asks for “nothing too hard” and you recommend spelunky, you absolute monster.
Fortunately I already made that mistake once, a friend recommended me Spelunky 2 as a casual mining game…
A few options me and my partner have enjoyed:
Bunhouse - a non-management-heavy farming simulator but you are bunnies growing plants. Cute as hell. There is a sequel where you run a bakery too but we haven’t got round to that just yet.
Unrailed - might fall into the overcooked catagory, but when it gets hard and goes wrong it tends to be a looming inevitablity, not a frantic panic
Nidhogg - a 1v1 fighter, but is quick fire frantic sword fights you can button bash through which is wildly entertaining in 5 min bursts.
I’m not even a huge platformer guy, but Rayman Legends is absolute peak and a fantastic, chill co-op game. The music levels in particular - where the already great soundtrack is synced in time to your jumps and hits - are incredibly satisfying and so well made.
I’d also be remiss if I didn’t suggest Blue Prince. It’s not co-op per se as it’d only be one person at a time “driving”, but the game is about puzzle solving so who holds the controller doesn’t really matter. It’s a fantastic game if you enjoy puzzles and escape rooms. My sister isn’t even a gamer at all but I recommended it to her fiancé and they’ve been playing together and even she’s been enjoying it a lot. From my own experience playing it on my own I also think it would be much more fun if playing alongside someone else. I’ve often missed having someone to bounce ideas off when stuck.
On the notion of “one person at a time driving,” I played Outer Wilds with my partner. 10/10. Just make sure that when there is text, both people can read it before you move on.
Broaden your horizons, start using emulators.
Star Wars: Jedi Power Battles
Kirby and the Forgotten Land
Super Mario Wonder
Any of the Warriors games (just don’t buy it, don’t reward them for releasing the same damn game 20+ times)
Legend of Mana (highly recommended, please don’t sleep on this)
Destroy All Humans 2
Ratchet: Deadlocked
Divinity: Original Sin
Resident Evil 6
Halo: Master Chief Collection
Lego Star Wars
The Tales games are long and go up to 4 players. I’d recommend them if you have more people to join.
Be prepared for a few roadbumps while you acclimate yourself to using emulators. It won’t be smooth at first, but it gets easier the more familiar you become with it.
Death Squared. Puzzle solving, each player controls two blocks on the map used to solve the puzzle.
Keep talking and nobody explodes could be a fun one, only needs 1 device and the other player needs the manual which can be on a phone or printed out. You could even play it over a phone call.
As I recall, the ‘campaign’ gets impossible to do with two players because of the inability to look up enough stuff in parallel. There are mods and custom bombs though.
Blur…from archive.org
We enjoyed A Way Out. Gonna try Sea of stars soon.
I’m a fan of taking turns “driving” for slower paced logic or puzzle games. Titles that come to mind:
- Myst
- Curse of the Golden Idol
- Summertime Madness
- Chants of Sennar
- Superliminal
- Viewfinder
- Baba is You
I can highly recommend all of these as they almost universally benefit from more minds working on them together. I would say Baba is the only one that gets REALLY challenging, but there are good mind and logic bending puzzles throughout them all!
Obra dinn too
My girlfriend and I do the same but with more simplistic story heavy games. We just finished Slay The Princess and it was an amazing experience like this.
No game makes me feel more like a complete idiot than Baba is You. Great game though.
Yeah, it’s a game I chip away at. I’m at a point in it that the levels often take hours and/or multiple sittings to work out.
A bunch of retro games have good couch co-op support & the steam deck can emulate pretty much all of them
Zombie ate my neighbors, smash TV, 2-d brawlers like TMNT turtles in time, double dragon, and streets of rage, Goldeneye, toejam and Earl, bubble bubble
crawl, rounds, ship of fools, pico park (better with a large group), risk of rain returns (2 would also be good except that it doesn’t actually support local multiplayer, only online).
