The best co-op games of 2024 to play with your friends

Playing games alone can get a little lonely after long enough. Playing competitive games can get your blood pumping, but it can also get your blood pumping to cook.

That’s where cooperative games come into the picture.

Good co-op games can be hard to find, but a good one can become an ongoing activity for your group, or even a way to make new friends as you dive into the community.

They demand communication and focus, but also skip the frustration of being attacked by the same team for 45 minutes.

We’ve got you covered with a collection of killer co-op games released in 2024. They range from overhead hack’n’slash to boom-punchers to ship management, and they’re all great.

Editor’s note: All games on this list are traditional ‘Web2’ games with no crypto or blockchain integrations. But you might enjoy it anyway!

Void crew

Platform: PC

Void Crew places you and up to three other players on a space cruiser, tasked with journeying, completing missions and ultimately fighting a boss.

On board your ship you must decide on the placement of weapons and utilities, manage your engines and energy consumption, defend the ship and don a jetpack to venture into the inky blackness of space to repair your boat and complete missions.

If you have a team of four, this game becomes something special. The FTL-style mission nodes let you keep things moving while giving you a little downtime between missions. Of course, there’s always the danger of being knocked out of your empty tunnel and ambushed by AI enemies.

Things may start out pretty simple, but by the end your entire team will be working overtime to keep the mission going. There’s a lot of fun to be had here, especially if you have that crew.

Enveloped

Platform: PC (PS5 + Xbox coming soon)

Survival crafting games can be a dime a dozen, but they’re often a great source of co-op play. Enshrouded is in early access, but already offers a lot to do.

The primary mechanics are pretty standard: collecting resources, building enemies, upgrading, and fighting. However, the game puts an emphasis on entertaining combat and offers challenging yet rewarding boss fights. Traversal is also fun, as you end up with gliders and a grappling hook.

Another striking feature is the way Enshrouded handles building. The game is clever in the way it combines textures, meaning that not only can you position anything wherever you want, but the game will also help you make it look good.

Way of exile 2

Platforms: PC, PS5, Xbox Series X/S

So you’re tired of Diablo. That’s where Path of Exile comes into the picture. The first PoE is still alive and kicking with a thriving community, but the new Path of Exile 2 is here in early access with souped-up visuals, a new campaign, and crossplay and cross-progression.

If you know Diablo, it will look very familiar at first glance. There are new classes and the class progression system is as intimidatingly large as ever, with 1,500 nodes to dump skill points into. You can get started with it, or you can use a building guide to help you find the right character.

While there is a single-player mode, playing co-op with a friend or group of friends is of course where the game shines.

Hell divers 2

Platforms: PS5, PC

It would be foolish to talk about 2024 cooperative games without bringing up Helldivers.

Helldivers 2, which recently took home two Game Awards, including Best Multiplayer, was a huge hit in the first half of 2024, thanks to a crucial combination of truly incredible explosions, a level of hilarious satire that encouraged everyone to work together to get started, and of course killer cooperative play.

If you haven’t played this one yet and you have a PC or PlayStation 5, what are you doing here? It’s time to defend Managed Democracy and keep Super Earth thriving.

The Final

Platforms: PC, PS5/PS4, Xbox Series X/S

While most of this list avoids PVP play, we wanted to get at least one here – and The Finals, a free-to-play competitive shooter, is a great place to start.

In teams of three or five players, depending on the mode, you do things like point checking and competing for points. However, instead of pretending to be the real world, The Finals places you in a canonically virtual environment; if you die, you turn into a bunch of cubes that fall to the ground.

The biggest feature here, however, is its sheer destructibility. You can tear apart levels with grenades, mines and exploding tanks, take down entire buildings and completely change the landscape of some levels by the time a match is over. As a PVP game it can get quite sweaty, but with two friends it can be a lot of fun.

Lord of the Rings: Return to Moria

Platforms: PC, PS5, Xbox Series X/S

Of course, Return to Moria’s biggest appeal is the fact that it’s set in Middle-earth.

In this survival game, you and up to seven other players take on the role of Dwarves summoned to Moria to reclaim the Dwarves’ ancestral home.

You explore, collect and build while also facing the dangers of a gigantic cave system that has been abandoned for years. It’s a great addition to any co-op player list.

Edited by Sebastian Sinclair