Six great cooperative games

From logical deduction to real-time dexterity, here are six great cooperative games you might enjoy.

Mar 08, 2023

Well, hello! Thanks for stopping by to read another edition of Don’t Eat the Meeples. Today, I’m writing about some great cooperative games. They’re six games I think really show the breadth and depth of cooperative gaming these days, from a deduction game to a real-time dexterity game.

I hope you enjoy this week’s newsletter. In some other news, I’ve revived a newsletter I started thinking about in 2020, in which I watch episodes of classic anthology speculative fiction and discuss them — think The Twilight Zone or The Outer Limits, among many, many other options. I published my first new post there in three years, and I’d love for you to check it out. I’ll include a big plug at the bottom, and a little link here: The Speculative is a newsletter about anthology speculative fiction.

Pandemic Rising Tide

Of the Pandemic series, Pandemic: Rising Tide is probably the game that deviates from the pattern the most. It’s not because there’s not a disease being fought, because this game shares that in common with Pandemic: Fall of Rome, as well as some of the tie-in spin-offs. (I haven’t played the Star Wars, World of Warcraft or Cthulhu variants, so I can’t speak to those particularly well.)

It’s because of the game’s core conceit: Players are working to protect the Netherlands from flooding by building dikes and pumps. Rather than a virus that pops up in areas around the board and spreads from there, Rising Tide has water coming in from the ocean and spreading from higher areas to lower areas. The idea of water flow in the game takes this from just another Pandemic to something that feels unique and engaging.

Horrified

I love cooperative games that are easy to teach but still engaging, and I think Horrified fits the bill really nicely. It’s a game about defeating classic movie monsters — Frankenstein’s Monster and his Bride, the Creature from the Black Lagoon, the Mummy, the Wolfman, the Invisible Man and Dracula — by completing unique tasks, protecting villagers, keeping the terror level as low as possible.

The charm of Horrified is in its theme. It’s not the most innovative game, but it’s approachable, still makes good use of its mechanics, and catches players with a great hook: Defeat some very recognizable monsters. That’s fun!

Burgle Bros

One of my favorite cooperative games to pull off the shelf is Burgle Bros, a game that pits you against security guards, traps and challenges spread across the map as you attempt to pull of a big heist. It presents an interesting challenge every time you play, with variable maps and variable guard movement. As you traverse the map, you’ll run into all manner of difficulties. It forces players to coordinate as they solve the game’s puzzles, and it’s just a whole lot of fun.

Burgle Bros designer Tim Fowers, in an interview I conducted with him in early 2021, offered some great insight on cooperative games.

“At the core of co-op games, there's this idea of vulnerability, where I cannot help myself, so somebody else comes in and says you're valuable, but the way they say you're valuable is through sacrifice, either sacrificing time or resources.”

MicroMacro

There are several games in the MicroMacro series available now. I’ve played through most of Crime City and part of Full House, but the idea on all three out there is the same. You and the other players have really big paper illustrated map (it’s a nice map!) and a stack of cases in front of you. Those cases might have you solving a murder, a theft, or any number of other things — I won’t spoil it for you. Once you start a case, you’ll go through each card, finding on the map an illustration that matches with what you’re trying to figure out.

The whole thing seems a little absurd. It’s basically Where’s Waldo but with a bit more violence. You wouldn’t think it would work from that description, but you know what? It really does.

For Science!

I spotlighted For Science! in June, and it’s such an interesting spin on a cooperative game. It’s played in real-time and requires a surprising amount of dexterity and communication. All that together could have been a mess or jumble, but this game really puts it all together elegantly.

For Science! is a real-time cooperative game, which means that it's going to be an altogether frantic experience. You play as a team of scientists racing against the clock, performing research to develop cures to diseases, which sounds a lot like A) reality, and B) the game Pandemic, but I assure you, it's not really like either. To develop cures to diseases and perform supporting research, you'll be designing cures, then building those designs with blocks. And you'll have to do all that quickly, because this is a real-time game, and you'll have to do it carefully, because otherwise, you're going to knock over your blocks, which is not exactly a desirable outcome — but it'll happen, and you can try again. This isn't Jenga. Mostly.

Paint the Roses

Logic deduction games often take a competitive form, but Paint the Roses has me asking if cooperative games are a more natural fit. Playing as royal gardeners in the world of Alice in Wonderland, everyone has a whim card from a range of three difficulties. Those whim cards show a pattern of up to to two different tile attributes (symbol, color, or both) that will guide you in placing a tile on the board. When you place a tile, you’ll mark instances of the depicted pattern, communicating to your fellow players something about your whim. If they get it right, the team moves forward, away from the guards that are chasing you down.

Paint the Roses is a clever little game, and if you love logic puzzles, this one might be right up your alley.

As promised, here’s a full plug for my speculative fiction newsletter. If you are interested, I’d love to share more with you every week.

Well then! Thanks again for reading, and I look forward to chatting with you more next week. Have a wonderful week, all!