Guide

Couch co-op instead of Netflix: the ultimate co-op games for winter

16/11/2025

Translation: Veronica Bielawski

From Nintendo classics to hidden indie gems – these multiplayer games will get you and your gaming buddies through the winter.

Temperatures are dropping, roasted chestnut stalls are popping up everywhere and the urge to hunker down at home is rising – in Ned Stark’s everlasting words: «Winter is coming.» Over the coming weeks and months, we’ll all be spending a bit more time in front of our screens. The social side of things tends to fall by the wayside, which is a shame.

Gaming is just like table tennis and sex: it’s more fun with two people! So here’s an overview of some of the best couch co-op games to get you through the frosty season.

A Way Out

This debut from Swedish developer Hazelight laid the foundation in 2018 for the two games that follow, serving up a Prison Break-style adventure for you and your gaming buddy. You play two inmates who reluctantly become allies in order to break out of prison together. The story thrives on its two mismatched characters and leans heavily into the drama. The gameplay, on the other hand, doesn’t always keep up, occasionally lagging behind the good ideas.

Fun factor: 🎮🎮🎮
Difficulty: 🤯🤯
Potential for conflict: 🔥🔥

Platforms: PS4, Xbox One, PC / Local players: 2

It Takes Two

Three years later, Hazelight upped its game: It Takes Two is a creative genre mash-up where every gameplay element hits the mark. Visually channelling Pixar-style animated films, the game tells the story of Cody and May, who are in the middle of a divorce. What sounds dreadful on paper sets the stage for a varied adventure that hits straight in the heart. It Takes Two leans even harder into co-op, and by the time you hit the credits after roughly twelve hours, you won’t have been bored for a single minute.

Fun factor: 🎮🎮🎮🎮🎮
Difficulty: 🤯🤯
Potential for conflict: 🔥🔥

Platforms: PS4, PS5, Switch, Xbox One, PC / Local players: 2

Split Fiction

Bigger, bolder, madder – Split Fiction completes Hazelight’s co-op holy trinity with the odyssey of two authors, Mio and Zoe. After a botched experiment, the pair find themselves trapped in a virtual world built around their own story ideas. Split Fiction is the studio’s most action-heavy game. Some sections are fairly demanding, so casual players are better off practising with the two predecessors first.

Fun factor: 🎮🎮🎮🎮🎮
Difficulty: 🤯🤯🤯
Potential for conflict: 🔥🔥

Platforms: PS5, Switch 2, Xbox Series X/S, PC / Local players: 2

Moving Out

Is there someone in your life you don’t particularly like? Someone you sometimes look at and think, «I couldn’t possibly hate you more.» Sound familiar? Great, then I recommend Moving Out. This physics-based party game drops you and the poor sod you’ve roped in for game night into the shoes of hopelessly incompetent movers who have to clear out homes of all sizes against the clock. After precisely three minutes, the chaotic gameplay will have you more wound up than you’ve ever been in your life and gives you the kind of rush otherwise reserved for a 3,000-metre skydive.

Fun factor: 🎮🎮🎮
Difficulty: 🤯🤯🤯🤯🤯
Potential for conflict: 🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥

Platforms: PS4, Switch, Xbox One, PC / Local players: 4

Overcooked

If you’ve managed not to strangle each other after the moving chaos, you can take on the mayhem in the kitchen next. In Overcooked, you have to combine the right ingredients into appealing dishes and get them out on time. Sounds easy – and it would be, if the world weren’t simultaneously going under around you. Overcooked’s kitchens are usually set in the most ridiculous locations imaginable, making life hard for you and up to three fellow chefs. Gordon Ramsay would be proud of the sheer amount of yelling this cooking simulator produces.

Fun factor: 🎮🎮🎮🎮🎮
Difficulty: 🤯🤯🤯🤯
Potential for conflict: 🔥🔥🔥🔥

Platforms: PS4, Switch Xbox One, PC / Local players: 4

Untitled Goose Game

The great thing about video games is that they let you slip into roles you’d never get away with in real life. In Untitled Goose Game, for instance, you control an obnoxious goose whose sole aim is to wreak as much havoc as possible. In the very first level, you can bully a small boy until he runs and hides in a phone box. And it only gets better from there.

The two-player mode was added later, and not every bit of it feels fully thought through, but who cares about trifles like that when there’s a dedicated «Hooooonk» button?

Fun factor: 🎮🎮🎮🎮
Difficulty: 🤯
Potential for conflict: 🔥

Platforms: PS4, Switch, Xbox One, PC / Local players: 2

Pode

Hardly any label in gaming is thrown around as inflationarily as «cosy». For a few years now, any game with pastel colours and no headshots has suddenly been dubbed «cosy». The industry has flogged the word to death to the point where it’s lost all meaning – and yet it’s still the first term that comes to mind when I think of Pode. This co-op puzzle game is endlessly cute, completely stress-free to play and even gives you an excuse to hold your co-player’s hand. Now, ain’t that adorable?

Fun factor: 🎮🎮🎮🎮
Difficulty: 🤯🤯
Potential for conflict: 🔥

Platforms: PS4, Switch, Xbox One, PC / Local players: 2

Unravel Two

Speaking of cute: in Unravel Two, two anthropomorphic balls of yarn stumble through a Scandinavian picture-postcard idyll, solving physics-based and platformer puzzles as they go. The Yarny twins are connected by a single thread, which means you’re constantly ~~sabotaging~~ helping each other while trying to pull off elegant swinging manoeuvres.

Fun factor: 🎮🎮🎮🎮
Difficulty: 🤯🤯🤯
Potential for conflict: 🔥🔥

Platforms: PS4, Switch, Xbox One, PC / Local players: 2

Portal 2

Speaking of physics puzzles: GLaDOS is back and she still hates you! In the sequel to the equally brilliant but single-player-only Portal, you can now suffer together with a friend. Co-op mode sends robots Atlas and P-Body through test chambers that will stress-test your friendship harder than a joint Saturday afternoon trip to IKEA. «Thinking in portals» quickly turns into «arguing in portals» when your partner drops you into acid for the tenth time – and claims it was an accident. I KNOW DAMN WELL IT WAS ON PURPOSE, JOSHUA!

The only thing Valve is better at than ignoring Half-Life 3 is cranking out brilliant puzzle games.

Fun factor: 🎮🎮🎮🎮🎮
Difficulty: 🤯🤯🤯🤯
Potential for conflict: 🔥🔥🔥

Platforms: Switch, Xbox One, PC / Local players: 2

Baldur’s Gate 3

Larian’s magnificent role-playing game recently got a full-blown love letter from me:

Opinion
5 years of "Baldur's Gate 3": Why the game remains an unrepeatable masterpiece
by Rainer Etzweiler

What I didn’t mention there is that this monumental work is also playable in co-op. Roaming the Forgotten Realms as a duo is an experience like no other, but it does require serious commitment – the adventure easily lasts up to 100 hours. It’s also a good idea to agree in advance who gets which of the ten horny companions. Rumour has it more than one marriage has ended over this.

Fun factor: 🎮🎮🎮🎮🎮
Difficulty: 🤯🤯🤯🤯🤯
Potential for conflict: 🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥

Platforms: PS5, Xbox Series X/S, PC / Local players: 2

Cassette Beasts

Cassette Beasts takes Nintendo’s Pokémon franchise and bolts on a synthwave soundtrack, a two-player mode and more fresh ideas than the original has managed in the last ten years. The co-op elements are fairly rudimentary, but hunting for beasts together is still great fun.

Fun factor: 🎮🎮🎮
Difficulty: 🤯🤯
Potential for conflict: 🔥

Platforms: Switch, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S, PC / Local players: 2

Trine 4

A wizard, a knight and a thief stumble through fairytale realms and have to pool their powers to save a prince. Or something along those lines. The story really doesn’t matter. Like its predecessors, Trine 4 lives off the interplay between its three characters, whose different abilities provide the solutions to clever riddles and punchy platforming puzzles. Visually, this 2.5D game also shines thanks to its unique «Bob Ross on LSD» aesthetic.

Fun factor: 🎮🎮🎮
Difficulty: 🤯🤯🤯
Potential for conflict: 🔥🔥🔥

Platforms: PS4, Switch, Xbox One, PC / Local players: 3

As Dusk Falls

This interactive choose-your-own-adventure drama has all the charm of an overambitious PowerPoint presentation and is strictly mid both in terms of story and gameplay. So why is it getting a shout-out? For its innovative multiplayer approach: up to eight players can use an app to vote on which decisions the characters should make. It’s a great way to find out which of your friends is the biggest psychopath.

Fun factor: 🎮🎮
Difficulty: 🤯🤯
Potential for conflict: 🔥

Platforms: PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S, PC / Local players: 8

The Dark Pictures Anthology

«Don’t go into the basement, you idiot!» – I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve yelled that at the screen while yet another horror-genre «protagonist» cheerfully strolls towards obvious doom. Man, I’d do so much better! Or so I thought, until Supermassive’s game series, Until Dawn, taught me otherwise.

There are now four instalments in this spooky adventure anthology, all of which can be played with up to four other people. You and your mates take control of a motley crew of potential slasher victims and decide their fates. Do you investigate that strange noise or stay with the group? Hide or leg it? The choice is yours.

Fun factor: 🎮🎮🎮🎮
Difficulty: 🤯🤯
Potential for conflict: 🔥

Platforms: PS4, PS5, Switch, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S, PC / Local players: 5

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Shredder’s Revenge

Fancy an earworm? Here you go. And what’s almost as good as the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles intro song? Tribute Games’ Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Shredder’s Revenge! This side-scroller is pure retro throwback and perfectly captures both the gameplay and pixel look of old arcade machines.

Fun factor: 🎮🎮🎮🎮🎮
Difficulty: 🤯🤯🤯🤯
Potential for conflict: 🔥

Platforms: PS4, PS5 Switch, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S, PC / Local players: 4

Scott Pilgrim vs. The World: The Game

Scott Pilgrim is back – the patron saint of all hipster millennials who hide their emotional immaturity behind vintage shirts and indie band references. This beat ’em up wasn’t (legally) available for a good five years until it was re-released in 2021 as the Complete Edition.

Background information
Your favourite game could disappear forever
by Rainer Etzweiler

Playing as Scott, Ramona Flowers and four other characters, you punch your way through endless hordes of enemies with up to three co-players, Anamanaguchi’s chiptune soundtrack blasting in the background.

Fun factor: 🎮🎮🎮
Difficulty: 🤯🤯🤯
Potential for conflict: 🔥

Platforms: PS4, Switch, Xbox One, PC / Local players: 4

Super Mario 3D World & Bowser’s Fury

Super Mario 3D World isn’t the only mainline Mario game you can play in co-op. It is, however, the only one with a cat power-up and is therefore automatically the best. Fight me on that!

Fun factor: 🎮🎮🎮🎮🎮
Difficulty: 🤯
Potential for conflict: 🔥🔥

Platforms: Switch / Local players: 4

Cult of the Lamb

Most cult leaders fail because of an image problem: too much madness, not enough fluff. Cult of the Lamb corrects this historical oversight by turning a sheep into a religious leader. This indie game mixes roguelike dungeon carnage with a life sim, answering the question no-one asked: what if Hades and Animal Crossing had a baby? Player 2 controls a goat and supports your big-eyed cult leader in all their morally dubious endeavours.

Fun factor: 🎮🎮🎮🎮
Difficulty: 🤯🤯🤯
Potential for conflict: 🔥

Platforms: PS4, PS5, Switch, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S PC / Local players: 2

Human: Fall Flat

Have you ever had to get a drunk friend home in one piece? If so, that experience has perfectly prepared you for this game. In Human: Fall Flat, you steer a drunk marshmallow through minimalist levels full of physics-based platform puzzles. That’s chaotic enough on its own, but in multiplayer it becomes a Herculean task – mostly because it’s much funnier to yeet each other into the abyss than to tackle the actual objectives.

Fun factor: 🎮🎮🎮🎮
Difficulty: 🤯🤯🤯🤯
Potential for conflict: 🔥🔥🔥🔥

Platforms: PS4, PS5, Switch, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S, PC / Local players: 2

Lovers in a Dangerous Spacetime

Lovers in a Dangerous Spacetime sounds like a pretentious arthouse film that movie snobs rave about over white wine. Behind the unwieldy title, though, is a clever multiplayer game for up to four players. Together, you pilot a spaceship through hostile galaxies, juggling positions between the different stations on board. At all times, the cannon, shield and engine need to be manned optimally to steer your ship safely through space. Don’t be fooled by the cute visuals – this space trip is pure stress.

Fun factor: 🎮🎮🎮🎮
Difficulty: 🤯🤯🤯🤯🤯
Potential for conflict: 🔥🔥🔥🔥

Platforms: PS4, Switch, Xbox One, PC / Local players: 4

Resident Evil 6

Heretics might claim that Resident Evil 6 is the worst of Capcom’s cult franchise, but you don’t need such negative people in your life. The sixth Resident does sacrifice its horror atmosphere in favour of an action orgy that would make even Michael Bay nervous, but in return you get one of the best split-screen adventures since Halo: Combat Evolved.

Fun factor: 🎮🎮🎮🎮
Difficulty: 🤯🤯
Potential for conflict: 🔥🔥

Platforms: PS3, PS4, Switch, Xbox 360, Xbox One, PC / Local players: 2

Baldur’s Gate: Dark Alliance

When I first saw the water effects in this game back in 2001, I thought: «That’s it, video game graphics will never get better than this!» Unsurprisingly, they did – but that doesn’t detract from how much fun this cult action RPG still is. Up to that point, no console game had translated Diablo’s addictive formula as competently as Snowblind Studios’ debut. The three playable characters (archer, sorceress, axe/sword-wielding warrior) are archetypal to a fault, but that makes them complement each other almost perfectly, turning co-op mode into a well-oiled slaughter machine. There are better examples of the genre today, but none of them is Baldur’s Gate: Dark Alliance – one of my all-time favourite games.

Fun factor: 🎮🎮🎮🎮🎮
Difficulty: 🤯🤯
Potential for conflict: 🔥

Platforms: PS2, PS4, Gamecube, Switch, Xbox, Xbox One, PC / Local players: 2

Streets of Rage

Streets of Rage finally got a long-overdue sequel in 2020 that really deserves its own spot on this list. But I’m giving the spotlight here to the first title in the beat ’em up series because its soundtrack is an unbeatable banger. «The intro still gives me goosebumps,» reads the top comment under the YouTube video. I can only agree.

Fun factor: 🎮🎮🎮🎮
Difficulty: 🤯🤯🤯
Potential for conflict: 🔥🔥

Platforms: Sega Mega Drive, PS4, Switch, Xbox One, PC (included in Sega Mega Drive Classics) / Local players: 2

Secret of Mana

Squaresoft’s fantasy adventure was many Europeans’ first contact with the role-playing genre and therefore holds a special place in many gamers’ hearts. Mine included – I associate plenty of fond memories with its multiplayer mode, which lets three players unite to save the world. Secret of Mana is often called a multiplayer Zelda, which is reductive but, in the grand scheme of things, fairly accurate.

Secret of Mana 2, aka Trials of Mana, was officially localised for the first time in 2018. It’s on a par in terms of quality and deserves just as much attention.

Fun factor: 🎮🎮🎮🎮🎮
Difficulty: 🤯🤯
Potential for conflict: 🔥🔥

Platforms: SNES, PS4, Switch, Xbox One, PC (included in Collection of Mana) / Local players: 3

«But what about…?»

If your favourite game is missing from this list, you might find it in this older article by Phil. He presented 23 couch co-op games back in 2016. Notably, his list was one title shorter than mine. Does that make my list better? Damn straight. Suck it, Phil.

Header image: "Uncharted 4: A Thief's End"

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