Portal 2?
It's not very long, but it has an entire co-op campaign that's completely inaccessible without a 2nd player.
My son and i play weekly. Heres our faves
Deep rock galactic
Helldivers II
Enshrouded
Remnant and remnant II
Valheim
How is the Helldivers community these days? I had so much fun with that one before the whole PSN debacle. It kinda killed the vibe for me at the time and I have since moved on to other things, but I was so surprised how much a third-person online shooter sucked me in at this point in my life.
Games playerbase is like, less than half what it was on Steam. Arrowhead has put out like 3 or 4 "apology" letters about "we hear your feedback, we will fix stuff" but its like, how many times you gonna say that? You know?
I haven't played for a while. Last I played, the bots spawn rate was too high when only two people loaded into a 4-5 star mission. They said they put out an update so I played to check, and they actually made it worse. Maybe it has improved since, but I haven't been back to check.
They just put another one out last week.
The fact that they're still apologizing for not listening to the player base and then going ahead and just not listening to the player base really doesn't fill me with confidence.
I remember just a handful of months ago when everyone was saying how "helldivers is already game of the year"
Lmao how the mighty has fallen
My time to shine! My wife is notoriously picky about games. You didn't specify local or online co-op but most of these have local if not online since we prefer to only need one copy.
Seconding 9 Parchments and the Trine series. They are both by the same studio and they are beautiful games, they make sure every new scene is a tableau worthy of a screenshot with hyper saturated fanciful environments. The gameplay is fun, polished and goes by fast, in a good way.
Abiotic Factor has been really fun for my buddy and me. Especially with the new update that came out last week. It's a Half Life themed survival game.
Others that get my vote:
Valheim - Norse mythology themed survival game with Playstationesque graphics
Phasmophobia - THE ghost hunting game(see also Ghost Exile, Ghost Exorcism Inc., Forewarned)
Left 4 Dead - the original Zombie FPS series (see also Back 4 Blood, it's kinda alright) PILLS HERE!
Risk of Rain - Pretty tough shooter series
Stardew Valley - A modern Harvest Moon, farming/life sim
Don't Starve Together - If you played Stardew valley in hell, but everyone's name started with a W
Factorio/Satisfactory - Resource harvesting and logistics sims. One's isometric, ones first person, one has zerg rushes
Grounded - Honey I Shrunk The Kids: the survival game
Deep Rock Galactic - Left 4 Dead for Dwarves. ROCK AND STONE!!!
Overcooked - cooking and serving game, lots of communication required
Portal 2 - First person puzzle game, also lots of communication required
Barotrauma - Submarine sim on Europa, requires marriage levels of communication
Binding of Isaac - Roguelike shooter that's sort of Zelda inspired, multiplayer was a little janky last time I tried it, but that was a while ago
The Forest - Excellent horror survival series
Starbound - Terraria in space
Trine series - A modern Lost Vikings, side scrolling puzzles and platforming
Subnautica 2 - A beautiful and terrifying diving/exploration game, original game has a coop mod 8 years in development, but it's been very buggy
Diablo - First and second games are still very solid experiences and there are some excellent mods out for both
Escape Simulator - Literally an escape room simulator. Has workshop support on steam for even more puzzles.
Green Hell - The Forest, but in the jungle, much more focus on the reality of being stranded in a place where just about everything is likely to kill you.
No Man's Sky - Space/planetary exploration sim
Dead Island - another zombie FPS
Dying Light - a zombie game with parkour
20XX/30XX - Megaman X styled platformers with roguelite elements
GTFO - Extremely hard, stealth based, alien FPS
Most "Souls" games - Very fun coop summoning, if you don't mind the sometimes extreme difficulty
Goat Simulator series - Goofy exploration games
Magicka series - Isometric action adventure games where you combine different elements to cast spells
Barony - a true roguelike FPS RPG, voxel based, very hard
Void Crew - Space sim, mission based, sort of Egyptian mythos themed, meant for up to 4 players but definitely possible with just 2
Human Fall Flat - Puzzle/exploration game
Half Dead series - Cube: the game
Orcs Must Die series - Tower defense
Dungeon Defenders series - also tower defense, but with class based
Secret of Mana - One of the first action JRPGS, the remake has drop in coop just like the original, but I believe it's couch coop, so if you're not right next to each other, you'll need something like Parsec to play it
Have a ton more, but those are the ones I can recall having the most fun. Others have probably listed a bunch of them and I probably missed a few good ones, but hopefully a few of them are new.
You could always tinker with some emulators for some retro coop games!
Since you enjoyed BG3, I'd strongly recommend Divinity: Original Sin 1&2 if you have not played them already.
Other than that, a few random suggestions with sizeable coop campaigns:
Survival Coop
Actiony
Sportish
RPGish
Strategy
Puzzle
Cozy
Co-op is making a comeback!
Playing right now:
Ideas based on games you mentioned:
Interesting team dynamics:
Surprisingly Engaging:
Nintendo:
Keep coming back to it:
I didn't see this mentioned but it's a great couch co-op indie game. Has a 93% rating on steam. https://store.steampowered.com/app/252110/Lovers_in_a_Dangerous_Spacetime/
Can also recommend this game, it's a cute and fun coop that can get kinda frantic at times. The kids love playing it with us
Try out the Divinity Original Sin series, also produced by Larian. Different system and setting but it's wonderful.
i'll just add a few i haven't seen yet:
Project Zomboid. Feels like a Sims game with zombie and great survival elements. Arguably, the best zombie survival game to hit the market. Supports split screen couch co-op.
Stardew Valley. My wife and I have sunk well over 1000 hours into it and we still aren't bored. The amount of mods for it is insane and gives so much more depth to the game, but vanilla is super well done as well.
I haven't seen Rayman Legends mentioned, so I'll throw it out there. It's a pretty flawless game for what it tries to be, and it's a lot of fun to play with a friend. The musical levels are just extraordinarily crafted. Definitely recommended if you're into platforming at all (and even if you're not it's worth a shot!)
Games I enjoyed playing with my then-gilfriend:
Remnant 2 and Deep Rock Galactic are the best that come to mind rn.
Remnant 2 is dark souls with guns and coop actually changes the game in some ways to better enable teamwork to make the dream work.
Deep Rock Galactic is just a wonderful little title about space dwarves mining a crazy bug planet. 100% randomly generated. Each of 4 classes feel like they bring something unique to each mission.
Maybe Valheim?
I didn't see these in the list:
Wyldermyth - indie fairly unique story building campaign with turn based tactical combat.
Wastelands 3 - post apocalyptic RPG with good story, choices, and characters. Great tactical turn based combat. Other than the other Larian games this is closest to filling the BG 3 shaped hole.
Halo Master Chief Collection; 1 - 3, Reach, and ODST are amazing co-op. We've played through all of them multiple times. 4 is... disappointing.
The dynamic story telling in Wyldermyth is fantastic, love interesting character arcs that can develop.
Divinity original sin 1 and 2.
The first one is harder. 2nd one if better to start with. Good fun if you like strategy and storytelling.
You can play Stardew Valley in multiplayer co-op mode, it's also quite cheap at $14, it's available on every platform and even has excellent Linux support
Weird to see someone mention Linux support on Lemmy.
If you're open to silly casual games, Untitled Goose Game
Also, I heard Cult of the Lamb was getting a co-op update
The whole We Were Here series is marvelous. Asymmetrical co-op puzzle games. My friend and I’s recent games list looks very similar to this.
We also do a lot of single player games with one of us streaming over discord. When it’s a slow-burn puzzle or mystery game, it doesn’t really matter who is actually controlling.
For those types, I really recommend Return of the Obra Dinn. We’re currently working our way through the entire Frogwares Sherlock Holmes collection. The old ones are so terrible, which is a greatness all by itself.
Earth Defense Force. You can probably get 4.1 on a sale really cheap and that could be a decent introduction to the series as a whole, it also has the best overall story tone in my opinion, made of 110% grade B cheese
If you two enjoy it and don't feel burnt out, you can later get EDF 5, which has several QoL updates compared to 4.1, but tends to have a higher price.
I play a lot of couch coop with my kid but adults would enjoy all these too. Most can be found under $20 on Steam and a lot are fairly lightweight games but have good coop mechanics and can be a lot of fun to sit down for an hour or two with.
On Switch
My wife who is a huge Minecraft fan has been playing stardew valley with me.
She also loves the portal 2 coop
A few I've played with a friend of mine: the We Were Here series, Portal 2, Monster Hunter World, Factorio and Deep Rock Galactic (which we both didn't like, but it's pretty popular)
BattleBlock Theater is a good action platformer that has coop.
Escape Room Simulator is a good 3d puzzle game that can be played coop as well.
My wife and I just finished Super Mario Wonder. It was a lot of fun. Every level has a weird psychedelic section that completely changes the players or the level temporarily. It shakes it up and gives a lot more variety than the other side scrolling Mario games.
Elden Ring with the Seamless Co-op mod. It's not difficult or complicated to set up and it works extremely well
Halo
If you don't mind an MMO subscription fee, you might try A Tale In the Desert:
It's fairly niche, and it's been years since I've played it, but it seems to still keep an active player base. It's much more cooperative than most MMOs, with very little PvP. It's like the whole community is working together to build a civilization.
V Rising - 49.2 Hours
Enshrouded - 123.3 Hours
Remnant II - 22.5 Hours
Stardew Valley - 252.2 Hours
Edit to add: 9 Monkeys of Shaolin - 7.0 Hours
Don’t Starve Together
Satisfactory
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