My wife and I like to play games together, but PC devs often skip couch co-op options. For example, I bought Halo Master Chief Collection because I know Halo co-op is legendary and I never really played Halo growing up, nor did she. But the PC version specifically doesn’t have split screen co-op where the console version does.
We already own and play Stardew Valley, Outward (fantastic game if you aren’t aware), and Civ 5 (we prefer it over 6).
So what other options have you enjoyed that I may have missed?
It Takes Two is a masterpiece for co-op gameplay and is great for casual gameplay. A Way Out was made by the same studio before It Takes Two and it’s easy to see where they were able to improve on the experience, but it’s also a great game for local co-op.
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1222700/A_Way_Out/
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1426210/It_Takes_Two/
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1225570/Unravel_Two/
https://store.steampowered.com/app/253230/A_Hat_in_Time/
https://store.steampowered.com/app/620/Portal_2/
https://store.steampowered.com/agecheck/app/476600/
https://store.steampowered.com/app/252110/Lovers_in_a_Dangerous_Spacetime/
https://store.steampowered.com/app/274190/Broforce/
https://store.steampowered.com/app/242550/Rayman_Legends/
https://store.steampowered.com/app/584400/Sonic_Mania/
https://store.steampowered.com/app/345180/Victor_Vran_ARPG/
https://store.steampowered.com/app/598550/HUNTDOWN/
https://store.steampowered.com/app/431940/Wildfire/
https://store.steampowered.com/app/360830/YookaLaylee/
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1016180/Terror_of_Hemasaurus/
https://store.steampowered.com/app/399820/Kopanito_AllStars_Soccer/
Lovers in a Dangerous Spacetime is SO good.
Saving this comment. Thank you <3
thanks man. i missed out on terror of hemasaurus und just love it.
+1 for it takes two.
There’s also a pretty nice list already in the comments.
I do like a lot Portal 2 but wifey cannot play for too long with me as she becomes impatient. When that’s the case and she just want to watch a story like you would watch a movie, I play A Plague Tales (both of them) and she ends up wanting to know more and finally, crying.
Lmao yeah portal 2 was a little challenging
It Takes Two is co-op masterpiece. It’s mostly a puzzle platformer but changes up the gameplay style every level. Lots of little mini games to get distracted by too. Can’t recommend it enough
LEGO games are fantastic
It Takes Two and A Way Out are co-op masterpieces
We’ve played a couple of the Lego games and found it a little too kiddish simplistic.
I’ll check out the other two thanks
I’ll second A Way Out, then. It’s pretty simple, but very well done
Agree with the latter, the former can be slow and I don’t like how so many stages are so so heavily filled with ‘bring X character with y colored power back here eventually’ spots
Played through It Takes Two with my 13 year old daughter and it remains one of our favourite days. So much fun and the story is just brilliant.
Me and my gf loved playing Divinity: Original Sin 2.
And we’re super excited for Balder’s Gate 3 made by the same Devs as DOS2. It’s just had its release date move forward to Aug 3rd woo!
So I forget about this game, but I do own it and have hardly ever played. Can’t remember why? Maybe I had controller support issues or something. I’ll have to fire it up.
My wife and I tried D:OS and she got really bored really fast. I think the pacing of the first couple of chapters is really slow and there’s a lot of reading and not a lot of action and she just lost interest really quickly. Too bad but I get it.
Yeah, D: OS 1 is boring at the beginning. D: OS 2 is verrrrrry good though. If you can , I highly recommend giving it a try. I believe it to be better than either Pillars of Eternity games
How DOS2 solves the issue of story progressions and cut scenes when you play online coop?
Not sure we played split-screen co-op. The cutscenes would roll just like 1player.
Not exactly a recommendation (most of what I would have said has been covered below) but, my partner and I use Co-Optimus to find new games to couch play together. Here’s a filtered list of PC split-screen and couch co-op games.
Hope that helps!
Awesome resource thank you for sharing!
Cheers and happy gaming!
If you and your wife are into D&D-type stuff Divinity Original Sin 2 has local co-op. It’s an isometric turn based adventure game. Super fun to play and on sale for about $18 at the moment, I think. I will say, it’s a little more involved than some of the more casual games like Stardew, but if you’re willing to put in a little time to learn the game it’s one of the most rewarding games I’ve ever played.
My girlfriend and I actually played through the whole thing together!
I wish there was something else that had a similar experience to divinity! That’s my favorite game to play with my wife.
Sill waiting on baldurs gate 3
Same here! Good news is that baldurs gate 3 is coming out on August 3rd - not long now!
Can’t wait!
Have you played Divinity: Original Sin 1?
I have! In some ways I liked it more than the second.
Us too.
“Not in the mood for cheese?”
D:OS1 felt a bit sillier and less serious. We didn’t get very far in D:OS2 - which I put down to it not suiting splitscreen as well as 1 did.
My partner rage-quitted against the toolbox boss lol
Out of Space is a ton of fun, starts out hard, but stock with it and you can overcome.
Others I’ve seen mentioned already, but deserves more: Lovers in a Dangerous Spacetime and It Takes Two
I tried “Out of Space” last night with my partner and wow, you weren’t kidding. I really liked it, but we died every time. Eventually we switched to the easier “zen mode” and were able to win a few matches. I couldn’t help but wonder if the balance wasn’t finely tuned for 2 players, maybe they balanced it for 4.
For anyone interested: this is a really fun game, but it’s not quite as much like “The Sims in space” as I expected. It’s closer to “Overcooked, but with some placeable furniture that you need to interact with”.
If anyone knows of a co-op (not necessarily local, but that’s a huge plus) game like “The Sims”, I’d be very interested. Rimworld is close, but the multiplayer mod didn’t work well for us. I think my partner’s old laptop couldn’t keep up at 3x speed, causing big desyncs. Factorio is great for co-op IMO (though not at all like “The Sims”, more like Sim City)), but my partner doesn’t really like it because of the gritty environment.
We just played It Takes Two. Great variety of gameplay and level styles. Always something to learn, always something new happening, very different environments. Also, good story for husband and wife coop. Great game, I can recommend!
Shocked It Takes Two isn’t up here. Fiancé isn’t a gamer at all, but she LOVED this game. Brings us back to the great PS2 era 3D platformers.
Besides that, I’ll echo the other comments of Lego games (especially Lego Skywalker Saga)
It’s not split screen, but an enjoyable game for two players in the same screen (so couch coop):
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spiritfarer
You play the new “Reaper” and his cat. Collect lost souls, that still have some issues to solve, travel the “in between” spirit world, build a house boat, take care of gardens, make music, etc. The artwork is cute, while the topics of the lost spirits can be unexpected sad. Still a great game to relax!
There’s a mod that allows borderlands 2 to be split screen
I thought it was natively split screen? I remember I had to mod BL3 to be split screen though
Interesting, I’ve actually never played any borderlands. Is 2 fine to start from? Is that mod very taxing on the PC in question? I’m squeezing every ounce of power I can out of an old dell gaming laptop with a 960M, so I could see maybe struggling if it’s like the hacky way you can do that with Halo MCC where it basically runs the exe 2 entire times.
I believe it is the same mod/framework as the halo MCC split screen so you might have a bas time.
Any of the Borderlands games are fine to start from. The stories are mostly self contained, and the parts that aren’t are explained in the opening cutscenes.
A 960m will probably run Borderlands 2 but definitely not with the splitscreen mod.
I know I could run the game, I’m making RDR2 work somehow. Split screen sounded likely taxing though
I tried playing the switch splitscreen version and it kind of hurt, and I love BL2. I might buy it for my SO on PC just so we can have a better play experience.
My roommate and I played so much borderlands using nucleuscoop
A few that I’ve played:
20XX and 30XX - Megaman-style roguelites. Built with 2-player co-op in mind (either local or online) - when playing local, the screen space is shared but the screen zooms out when players are far apart (similar to Smash), so you still get about the same amount of view distance.
Hypercharge: Unboxed - FPS Horde Shooter/Tower Defence hybrid. Up to 4 players (local or online) have to defend cores from hordes of enemy toys, with the ability to place defences to make the job easier. It’s mostly about the FPS shooter aspect over the tower defence stuff, though.
Streets of Rogue - GTA1-style sandbox roguelite. Up to 4 players (local or online). To describe Streets of Rogue is difficult. It’s a very silly sandbox game where you’re given a few objectives (usually neutralising folks or getting an item from another group of guys), but there’s always many ways to go about things. It’s also one of the few games where the 32 playable characters actually play wildly different from eachother (except the red/blue gangters but that’s also the joke), and multiplayer adds another level on top of that as you can easily help (or hinder) eachother’s Main Objective, as each class has their own goals.
Helldivers - Top-down shooter. Up to 4 players (local and online, at the same time) get dropped into a planet to complete various objectives. There’s a lot of mechanics in this game which would probably kill other games (like how friendly fire is mandatory, or how reloading your gun discards the rest of your clip), but the devs (who also made Magicka, just fyi) made it work very well. There’s a sequel coming later this year, too.
Sonic Robo Blast 2 - 3D Platformer. Up to 2 players local splitscreen, or 32 online can play together to run through co-op Sonic levels. Also the only game in this list that’s completely free (by nature of it being a Sonic fangame).
A Hat in Time - 3D Platformer. Up to 2 players local splitscreen, and 50 online can play together in a platformer which I honestly find a lot more fun than Super Mario Odyssey. Also, Player 2 is an equal to the main hero this time instead of a glorified “little brother mode” - heck, Player 2 can actually trigger cutscenes and stuff without Player 1’s involvement at all. Great stuff.
N++ - 2D Precision Platformer. If you’ve heard of Super Meat Boy, the original N is the game that inspired it. N++ is just a perfected version of N, with a brand new co-op mode with its own unique levels, which now requires two players to flawlessly move their way through levels where even a single slip-up means starting the level again (though that’s fine - they’re at max only 60 seconds long, but there’s over a thousand of them)
Mercenary Kings - Metal Slug meets Monster Hunter. Up to 4 players local or online. Rise up the difficulty ranks by completing missions, upgrading the parts on your very modular guns and don’t forget to eat before you go on a hunt- er, mission.
Pretty much the entirety of the side-scrolling beat-em-up genre, including Streets of Rage 4 (4 player local), River City Girls 1&2 (2 player local) and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Shredder’s Revenge (6 player local and online, yes 6). This entire genre is based on local co-op, so just pick a game and dive in.Not “split screen” but “same screen”:
Unraveled 2
Great for couples.
Unraveled 2 is great but my missus doesn’t like the “gloominess”.
We started that when I had ea play or whatever for a bit, but I didn’t keep that and we never got too deep into it. Should go back to it.
