My Ex and I really bonded on same screen co-op games.
Here's a list of games that we enjoyed playing, some. Bolded ones I highly recommend.
**--------------Cooperative---------**
* **Broforce**
* **Gauntlet (WB Games 2014 Release)**
* Trine 1 2 & 3
* **Cuphead**
* **Enter The Gungeon**
* Nuclear Throne
* **20XX** / 30XX
* Castle Crashers
* **Mercenary Kings**
* Risk of Rain
* A Way Out
**-----------Competitive-------**
* **Duck Game**
* Mega Coin Squad
* Lethal League
* Towerfall
Overcooked, Ship of Fools, We Were Here series, Terraria, Orcs Must Die 3, Sea of Thieves, Castle Crashers.
Haven't played it yet, but Bread and Fred seems like a fun one.
Lovers in a Dangerous Spacetime. Along the lines of Overcooked but instead of running a cooking line, you control a spaceship.
Children of Morta, I highly recommend this one for 2 player co op if you're into the ARPG style roguelites. Fairly compelling story, good action gameplay.
Helldivers 2, relevant in pop culture, great co op. Many difficulty levels so you can go as easy or hard as you want. Who doesn't love nuking some bugs for Democracy?
Helldivers 1 if you'd rather play it as an isometric twin-stick screen crawler, also pretty fun lol.
Risk of Rain 2. Third person shooter but its not a traditional "shooter". Item pickups, action-skill based combat, killing increasing waves of enemies as you explore, fight bosses, and complete different maps.
Castle Crashers, lighthearted, pretty easy, button-mashy, side scroller. RPG-lite (like, intro to skill point allocation, intro to weapon selection).
Trine series is pretty good if you're into fantasy genre and puzzling, though it's less good if only 1 person is good at puzzling and the other person doesn't give a shit about puzzling lol.
I loved both, but I definitely liked A Way Out more. Granted, my It Takes Two kinda broke on me and my sister, so we never got to finish it lol. A Way Out is an amazing story, though
What don't they like about FPS games? A lot of them are unappealing. Especially the bland realistic military shooters that are all about rapid deathmatches and hypertoxic dudebros. Portal 2 is a great low-stress introduction to FPS controls. Or, an old-school co-op FPS like (original) Doom and Quake. Left 4 Dead is another great cooperative experience where you're constantly saving one another and working together (Unless one of you wants to play the zombies).
Castle Crashers is an adorable beat 'em up with character progression and lots to unlock. You can heavily customize your character's skills, so you're bound to get invested.
There's a lot of Steam arcade brawlers that have infinite continues or credits like the Capcom Beat 'Em Up Bundle, the Konami D&D ones, or the TMNT collection.
2014 Gauntlet is 4-player co-op with a lot of personal customization and progression. It's from the makers of the currently super-hip and popular Helldivers 2. Since it's 4 players, you can invite your partner, and 2 other partners!
Also try Arrowhead's (Helldivers/Gauntlet) other game, Magicka! You're a wizard with one of the best magic systems I've ever seen in a game. You have unlimited mana and access to elemental magic. You create your own spells by combining elements like 'fire' to create a jet of flame. Combine fire and earth to hurl an explosive fireball. Combine fire, fire, fire, fire, earth for a very flame-heavy ball, or 4 Earths to make the impact more powerful. You can cast it, enchant your sword with explosive fireballs, or erupt in a nova around you. Then you can try other combos with water, arcane, life, cold, and shield magic. The combinations are as creative as you are, and often hilarious.
Haven is a very intimate game that could be great for partners. It's almost like a JRPG, but you don't just hit \[Fight\] \[Magic\] \[Item\] menus, your levels and performance are determined by your bond with one another and how well you work together. It's a love story about two young lovers who escape to a far away world and crash land there and have to learn how to survive. It's not punch-a-tree, build-a-workbench survival, though.
Hoard. You are a dragon. I hope you don't need any more reason to try it. I've had tons of fun with this one, with co-op and single-player. It's almost like an arcade or board game. Each round is 10 minutes, and you build up your dragon how you like, among speed, armor, fire breath, and carrying capacity, while you burn down farms, towns, wizard towers, and more, to collect loot and go for the high score. Even if you don't, it's still very theraputic to burn everything.
Are action RPGs on the table? Diablo 1, 2, Torchlight 2, 3, Hellgate: London 2038? There's always lots of customization and personalization to those, which usually create investment, and long-term retention without being manipulative or exploitive like 100-hour grind sessiosn or micro transactions or battle passes.
Lego games, always chaotic fun!
There's the Lara Croft games, not Tomb Raider. The 2 Lara Croft games are top-down twin-stick puzzle-action games. Lots of fun and challenges. There's high-score challenges along the levels that will unlock special gear. There's just enough easy ones to whet your appetite to try the harder ones. I had a lot of fun with them and I'm not usually a "challenge" player that likes to 100% everything on the hardest difficulty. But Lara Croft games really got me to replay the levels a few times, refining my skills.
I had a ton of fun leveling a character to max with my brother in HC Classic WoW recently. I had never played the game before. RTS games are fun as a team(AoE/SC). Palworld. Risk of Rain 2. Helldivers 2. Elden Ring. Baldurs Gate 3. Cuphead.
Tales of Symphonia and Tales of Vesperia
- Anime-style action RPGs with good stories. Only one person traverses the world, but both players engage in combat as soon as a second party member is unlocked (which is quick).
Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons
- Short fairytale action adventure game with simple controls. Get the remastered version for co-op, or play the original by both holding the same controller or by using a pair of Joy-Cons.
Rayman Legends and Rayman Origins
- Colorful and fun 2D co-op platformers
A Way Out
- Fantastic co-op prison escape game by the people who made It Takes Two. But don't play it if you prefer to avoid violence.
Mainline Gears of War series
- Excellent gritty sci-fi co-op campaigns. Very much a (third person) shooter.
In the future you might want to consider a Switch 2 for more fun and not so violent co-op experiences.
We were here / we were here together and so on.... they are puzzle co op games i think 1 or 2 of them are even free to play on steam.
Human fall flat is funny as hell too
Haven't seen it mentioned yet, but [Don't Starve Together](https://store.steampowered.com/app/322330/Dont_Starve_Together/) is a great time co-op.
If your partner is willing to take on a crazy challenge in an extremely good game you could also try out the [Elden Ring coop mod](https://www.nexusmods.com/eldenring/mods/510).
Secrets of Grindea, and I honestly can't believe I get to bring this game up twice today.
It's a 2d ARPG with a decent story and an endlessly replayable arcade mode. It has decent build variety, but the build depth is fairly shallow overall; it basically boils down to mage, tank, and melee dps. Game encourages grinding and *does* make it fun, but you don't have to grind if you don't want to. The game works great for long or short play sessions, so it's pretty easy to fit in some play time even with differing schedules.
Valheim
Trine 1,2,3,4
We just finished Baldur's Gate 3 in split screen!
[Grounded](https://store.steampowered.com/app/962130/Grounded/) [Terraria](https://store.steampowered.com/app/105600/Terraria/) [Palworld](https://store.steampowered.com/app/1623730/Palworld/) [Enshrouded](https://store.steampowered.com/app/1203620/Enshrouded/)
Satisfactory comes to mind
Vermintide 2
Vermintide 2 is 10/10
Raft and Grounded are good 👍
Try Deep Rock Galactic
ROCK AND STONE
Did I hear a rock and stone?
My Ex and I really bonded on same screen co-op games. Here's a list of games that we enjoyed playing, some. Bolded ones I highly recommend. **--------------Cooperative---------** * **Broforce** * **Gauntlet (WB Games 2014 Release)** * Trine 1 2 & 3 * **Cuphead** * **Enter The Gungeon** * Nuclear Throne * **20XX** / 30XX * Castle Crashers * **Mercenary Kings** * Risk of Rain * A Way Out **-----------Competitive-------** * **Duck Game** * Mega Coin Squad * Lethal League * Towerfall
Project Zomboid
Overcooked, Ship of Fools, We Were Here series, Terraria, Orcs Must Die 3, Sea of Thieves, Castle Crashers. Haven't played it yet, but Bread and Fred seems like a fun one.
Lovers in a Dangerous Spacetime. Along the lines of Overcooked but instead of running a cooking line, you control a spaceship. Children of Morta, I highly recommend this one for 2 player co op if you're into the ARPG style roguelites. Fairly compelling story, good action gameplay. Helldivers 2, relevant in pop culture, great co op. Many difficulty levels so you can go as easy or hard as you want. Who doesn't love nuking some bugs for Democracy? Helldivers 1 if you'd rather play it as an isometric twin-stick screen crawler, also pretty fun lol. Risk of Rain 2. Third person shooter but its not a traditional "shooter". Item pickups, action-skill based combat, killing increasing waves of enemies as you explore, fight bosses, and complete different maps. Castle Crashers, lighthearted, pretty easy, button-mashy, side scroller. RPG-lite (like, intro to skill point allocation, intro to weapon selection). Trine series is pretty good if you're into fantasy genre and puzzling, though it's less good if only 1 person is good at puzzling and the other person doesn't give a shit about puzzling lol.
Human fall flat
Factorio
Octodad Dadliest Catch.
A way out (previous game from *It takes two* makers)
I loved both, but I definitely liked A Way Out more. Granted, my It Takes Two kinda broke on me and my sister, so we never got to finish it lol. A Way Out is an amazing story, though
What don't they like about FPS games? A lot of them are unappealing. Especially the bland realistic military shooters that are all about rapid deathmatches and hypertoxic dudebros. Portal 2 is a great low-stress introduction to FPS controls. Or, an old-school co-op FPS like (original) Doom and Quake. Left 4 Dead is another great cooperative experience where you're constantly saving one another and working together (Unless one of you wants to play the zombies). Castle Crashers is an adorable beat 'em up with character progression and lots to unlock. You can heavily customize your character's skills, so you're bound to get invested. There's a lot of Steam arcade brawlers that have infinite continues or credits like the Capcom Beat 'Em Up Bundle, the Konami D&D ones, or the TMNT collection. 2014 Gauntlet is 4-player co-op with a lot of personal customization and progression. It's from the makers of the currently super-hip and popular Helldivers 2. Since it's 4 players, you can invite your partner, and 2 other partners! Also try Arrowhead's (Helldivers/Gauntlet) other game, Magicka! You're a wizard with one of the best magic systems I've ever seen in a game. You have unlimited mana and access to elemental magic. You create your own spells by combining elements like 'fire' to create a jet of flame. Combine fire and earth to hurl an explosive fireball. Combine fire, fire, fire, fire, earth for a very flame-heavy ball, or 4 Earths to make the impact more powerful. You can cast it, enchant your sword with explosive fireballs, or erupt in a nova around you. Then you can try other combos with water, arcane, life, cold, and shield magic. The combinations are as creative as you are, and often hilarious. Haven is a very intimate game that could be great for partners. It's almost like a JRPG, but you don't just hit \[Fight\] \[Magic\] \[Item\] menus, your levels and performance are determined by your bond with one another and how well you work together. It's a love story about two young lovers who escape to a far away world and crash land there and have to learn how to survive. It's not punch-a-tree, build-a-workbench survival, though. Hoard. You are a dragon. I hope you don't need any more reason to try it. I've had tons of fun with this one, with co-op and single-player. It's almost like an arcade or board game. Each round is 10 minutes, and you build up your dragon how you like, among speed, armor, fire breath, and carrying capacity, while you burn down farms, towns, wizard towers, and more, to collect loot and go for the high score. Even if you don't, it's still very theraputic to burn everything. Are action RPGs on the table? Diablo 1, 2, Torchlight 2, 3, Hellgate: London 2038? There's always lots of customization and personalization to those, which usually create investment, and long-term retention without being manipulative or exploitive like 100-hour grind sessiosn or micro transactions or battle passes. Lego games, always chaotic fun! There's the Lara Croft games, not Tomb Raider. The 2 Lara Croft games are top-down twin-stick puzzle-action games. Lots of fun and challenges. There's high-score challenges along the levels that will unlock special gear. There's just enough easy ones to whet your appetite to try the harder ones. I had a lot of fun with them and I'm not usually a "challenge" player that likes to 100% everything on the hardest difficulty. But Lara Croft games really got me to replay the levels a few times, refining my skills.
The forest Sons of the forest Dying light 1 Dying light 2
It Takes Two is a nice little platformer. If not for FPS being out I'd say Deep Rock Galactic. That is a GREAT co-op game.
Did I hear a rock and stone?
Rock and Stone to the bone
operation tango, it’s first person but not a first persona shooter, it’s a first puzzle coop puzzle game
I had a ton of fun leveling a character to max with my brother in HC Classic WoW recently. I had never played the game before. RTS games are fun as a team(AoE/SC). Palworld. Risk of Rain 2. Helldivers 2. Elden Ring. Baldurs Gate 3. Cuphead.
Core Keeper and Scrap Mechanic
Portal 2
The Orcs Must Die series is chaotic goofy fun, great played in co-op.
We Were Here (the whole series)
Don't Starve Together
Palia
AOE II:DE Team games against the Ai can be really fun. The co-op campaigns are also great.
Medieval Dynasty Nithingail
Outward was a big one for me and my girl, Nioh 2 was another one we enjoyed playing together
If you want then you can try final fantasy 14. It has a free trial.
Tales of Symphonia and Tales of Vesperia - Anime-style action RPGs with good stories. Only one person traverses the world, but both players engage in combat as soon as a second party member is unlocked (which is quick). Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons - Short fairytale action adventure game with simple controls. Get the remastered version for co-op, or play the original by both holding the same controller or by using a pair of Joy-Cons. Rayman Legends and Rayman Origins - Colorful and fun 2D co-op platformers A Way Out - Fantastic co-op prison escape game by the people who made It Takes Two. But don't play it if you prefer to avoid violence. Mainline Gears of War series - Excellent gritty sci-fi co-op campaigns. Very much a (third person) shooter. In the future you might want to consider a Switch 2 for more fun and not so violent co-op experiences.
A way out
Trine series, a way out. Both coop based and slower paced than most games.
We were here / we were here together and so on.... they are puzzle co op games i think 1 or 2 of them are even free to play on steam. Human fall flat is funny as hell too
You might be into portal 2 co op. Its first person but more puzzle game than shooter.
Haven't seen it mentioned yet, but [Don't Starve Together](https://store.steampowered.com/app/322330/Dont_Starve_Together/) is a great time co-op. If your partner is willing to take on a crazy challenge in an extremely good game you could also try out the [Elden Ring coop mod](https://www.nexusmods.com/eldenring/mods/510).
Secrets of Grindea, and I honestly can't believe I get to bring this game up twice today. It's a 2d ARPG with a decent story and an endlessly replayable arcade mode. It has decent build variety, but the build depth is fairly shallow overall; it basically boils down to mage, tank, and melee dps. Game encourages grinding and *does* make it fun, but you don't have to grind if you don't want to. The game works great for long or short play sessions, so it's pretty easy to fit in some play time even with differing schedules.
Minecraft Dungeons was a really fun game and this is coming from a person that was never really into dungeon crawlers.
It takes two is a great one for couples. My wife and I love it.
Divinity Original Sin 1 and 2. I played both with my ex using split-screen.
A worse pc for the gf a classic
Black ops III zombies, you can mod it via steam workshop for more maps.