Six great innovative cooperative games
Plus, 10 more boundary-pushing cooperative games
There are few things in gaming I love more than a great cooperative game. I love the feeling of solving problems with other player.s I love the shared success. I love the competition against the game. It’s all just a great time, and it’s part of what drew me so fully into hobby board games. When it’s been a while since I’ve played a cooperative game, I find myself looking for opportunities to play one.
There are so many great cooperative games these days. When I first got into board games, the options were somewhat few — they were good options, but I found myself wanting more. Well, now there are a lot more.
Pandemic (2008)
I know, I know — Pandemic isn’t innovative these days. There are more unusual cooperative games, more out-there cooperative games, and more strategic cooperative games. This is the game that launched a thousand ships, as it were, and it would be a shame not to at least mention it. You’re saving the world from a series of viruses spread across the world, which escalate with the game’s key idea of intensification. The places that are already getting infected will generally continue to get infected, and you’ll have to plan effectively to avoid outbreaks. At almost-predictable intervals throughout the game, you’ll shuffle all the cities you’ve infected so far and put those back at the top of the stack.
We don’t need to go into depth, but there’s a nice list of games that quite directly owe their successes to Pandemic. Let’s go through a few of those together.
Pandemic Legacy, which took springboarded off Risk Legacy into something much bigger, was an invigorating. It felt fresh and innovative. Obviously it took a lot from its predecessor, but it did a lot for gaming. Remember when every few months, there was a big legacy game garnering attention? That hasn’t slowed much, but it’s now a norm, and it doesn’t feel so much like the hot trend. Designed by Matt Leacock and Rob Daviau, published by Z-Man Games.
While asymmetric games have been a feature of war gaming for as long as the genre’s existed, and while they’ve entered into board games more generally for several years now (owing to titles like Vast and Root) Spirit Island (2017) brought asymmetric powers to cooperative gaming better than any other game I’ve played. It really still follows the classic Pandemic model of escalation across a map, but it does it in a more strategic package. Designed by R. Eric Reuss, published by Greater Than Games.
Flash Point: Fire Rescue owes a lot to Pandemic — you’re fighting fires, and they intensify and spread. It’s a model that works really well. Nice game, too. Designed by Kevin Lanzing, published by Indie Boards & Cards.
Daybreak is sort of a successor to Pandemic, in that you’re trying to save the world from intensifying problems. I’m a big fan of this one. Designed by Matt Leacock and Matteo Menapace, published by CMYK.
Pandemic is designed by Matt Leacock and was originally published by Z-Man Games.
Hanabi (2010)
If you describe the physical innovations of most of these games, you’re going to come up short. Hanabi’s big twist is that you turn your hand of cards around so you can’t see them. That’s really the big twist, and it’s one that’s seen in card gaming history, but not all that frequently. As an example, Blind Man’s Bluff is a poker variant in which your cards face outward, and you’re trying to assess if you have the highest card at the table. That wasn’t the genesis of Hanabi, though. As described by designer Antoine Bauza, the game’s core idea came from one of his playtesting rituals and through the advice of his wife.
Hanabi is a tough little game in which you’re trying to play cards in the correct order, but you don’t know the cards in your hand. Other players will give you hints about those cards, and you’ll have to use a combination of deductive and inductive logic to figure out what you’re being told.
Designed by Antoine Bauza, published by ABACUSSPIELE.
Exit: The Game (2016)
I still remember playing my first Exit game. It was 2019, and it was The Abandoned Cabin. Fitting that I’d play the first one released. I’d thought I should play them after they were released for a long time, but hadn’t — I’m not sure why, in retrospect. The premise was interesting — an escape room in a box, and I already liked escape rooms a lot — but it took a trip to Seattle to finally open up a box and play. It was just my friend Scott and me, and I was spending time with him before the Northwest Chocolate Festival, which my wife was flying up for the next day.
We worked our way through The Abandoned Cabin. It didn’t feel arduous, but the puzzles weren’t easy. We put in a lot of thought into solving those puzzles, and as we worked our way through them, we were surprised and delighted by the experience. I won’t get into the specifics for fear of spoiling the game for you, but that first night playing that game hooked me on the series. My wife arrived in Seattle the next day, and I’d already picked up several more. The Mysterious Museum, the Haunted Roller Coaster and Dead Man on the Orient Express were played on successive nights. It was a magical experience. (Dead Man we played with just the two of us, Scott and I, while our spouses made some of the best chocolate cookies I’ve ever eaten.)
We brought that love of the Exit series home with us. We played just one more in 2019, then one at the tail end of 2020 virtually with a couple friends of ours, Heather and Michael. We did that again in January 2021. I don’t miss those times, but there was a joy in playing these games together. 2021, when we could, saw us play through the series at a fast clip. 2022 continued at a faster pace, and 2023 saw us ease to a gradual halt — in part because we had a baby and moved 12 hours away, but also because we’d managed to play through all of the series to that point. When we visit, an Exit game is the order of the day, and it’s still provided opportunities for remote gaming, though the cause is different.
The Exit games are tremendous. They pack the idea of an escape room into a box better than any I’ve played. I enjoy the Unlock games, and I’ve more recently been playing through the Deckscape and Decktective games, but the Exit games are near to my heart. Not only are the designs incredible and thoughtful — and somehow still translated from German to English seamlessly (and there are plenty of word-based puzzles!) — but they’ve produced some of my most memorable gaming experiences.
Designed by Inka and Markus Brand, published by KOSMOS.
The Mind (2018)
If you were involved in the hobby in 2018, you’ll probably remember well the controversy around The Mind. For some reason or another, it had a way of making folks upset at its premise, perhaps because it had no business working as well as it did. The Mind is played in complete silence, save for the space between rounds, and the premise is a simple one: Everyone has to play their cards in order. Players start in the first round with just one, but they’ll get up to 8 cards or more before the game relents.
Silence in a game is unusual, and while it’s not totally unheard of, it felt counterintuitive a game that’s asking you to collaborate and coordinate a simple task. The Mind is innovative because it worked, and while it’s not universally beloved among hobby gamers, it’s an eye-opening experience.
Designed by Wolfgang Warsch, published by NSV in Germany and Pandasaurus in the U.S.
For Science! (2021)
I’ve written about For Science! a few times, and my feelings about it have only grown more fond. Unfortunately, it remains largely out of print, which is really too bad. This is a real-time dexterity game, and that it’s cooperative is icing on the cake. You’re trying to sequence cures for diseases by meeting building-block conditions on cards, which show you the pieces that must be touching. You’re doing it in a ridiculously condensed timeframe, but when you place that last block, your structure stands, and you beat the clock? That’s where For Science! shines.
This could have just been a series of mechanics slapped together, but R. Eric Reuss did excellent work here. Everything clicks together really well, and you’ll sometimes feel like you’re up against an impossible task — but not so impossible that you won’t try again and again and again.
Designed by R. Eric Reuss, published by Grey Fox Games.
MicroMacro: Crime City (2020)
Innovative is, as we well know by now, a relative term. On the surface, there’s not much innovative about the MicroMacro series — it’s a take on a popular children’s book series, Where’s Waldo? (or, for the more international audience, Where’s Wally?), but only in that you’re trying to find very small details on a very large poster. Those details aren’t just ‘man with a hat’ sorts of things — you’re looking for clues. You’re solving mysteries. You’re finding the tiniest little detail that will point you in the right direction for your next clue. The MicroMacro series is weird, but it’s weird because it works. (And maybe it works because it’s weird.)
Designed by Johannes Sich, published by Pegasus Spiele.
More cooperative games that push boundaries
I know, your favorite game isn’t in the short list above. I’m sorry — I really am. But there are limiting factors. First, I haven’t played every game. Yet. I will need a time machine and maybe Wolverine’s regenerative abilities, but I’ll get there eventually. Second, I don’t know that every cooperative game belongs on this list. Finally, I had to stop somewhere, and I know this isn’t now a wholly representative list of innovative cooperative games.
So, here goes. Some more great games.
Burgle Bros: Another incredible game. This one just missed out. (It’s such a good game. It’s got a touch of Pandemic with the way the guards move around the map, I suppose? Maybe it should have appeared in the Pandemic section. There’s a third one of these on the way, and I’m planning to write about the series when it does.) (Tim Fowers; Fowers Games.)
The Crew: If you know me, you know that I love The Crew. I think it’s a truly excellent game. I don’t know that it counts as truly innovative, though. I didn’t want this list to just be “these mechanics, but they’re cooperative now!”, though I fear I might have done that. Whoopsies.
Dead of Winter: Is it truly cooperative if one of you can be a traitor? It’s not the first hidden traitor game, but I think this one works well. (Jonathan Gilmour-Long, Isaac Vega; Plaid Hat Games)
The Gang: Great game! Cooperative poker. (I want to write about this one soon, too.) See also: The Crew. (John Cooper, Kory Heath; KOSMOS)
Gloomhaven: Great, but I think it’s really in-line with some classic board games — HeroQuest, maybe? Also, I’ve not played it. I know, I know. I’m sorry. I’ll change that someday. (Isaac Childres; Cephalofair Games)
Magic Maze: It’s real-time fun, except when somebody’s banging a big red pawn in front of you because you’re not paying attention. Each player controls one direction on the map — it gets wildly chaotic. (Kasper Lapp; Sit Down!)
Mysterium: It’s sort of cooperative Dixit. I love it, but that’s what it is. It rules, though. (Oleksandr Nevskiy, Oleg Sidorenko; Libellud/Asmodee)
Shadows over Camelot: Cooperative with a hidden traitor — but very early. This one’s out of print, though Bruno Cathala is working on a new edition. (Bruno Cathala, Serge Laget; Days of Wonder/Asmodee)
Sherlock Holmes Consulting Detective: Reading a book isn’t innovative. It’s amazing, though. Is my bar too high? I’m worried my bar is too high. (Raymond Edwards, Suzanne Goldberg, Gary Grady; Space Cowboys/Asmodee)
Sound Box: If you told me that I’d love a game in which you’re making a sound among a cacophony of other sounds while somebody is blindfolded — well, that sounds like a very strange party to me. But the game’s great. (Hjalmar Hach, Lorenzo Silva; Horrible Guild)
Hey, thanks for joining me again this week! I hope you’re doing well. If you’re in the U.S., I hope you had a great Thanksgiving. There were something like 36 pies at our Thanksgiving celebration with my wife’s extended family. (I’m not exaggerating. There were so, so many pies.) If you’re not in the U.S., I hope you had a tasty treat last week and got to play some board games.
Next week: A last-minute gift guide.