Hi guys!
Soon I’ll be traveling and visiting family. I’d like to be able to hook my Steam Deck to their TV and let their kids have a rip at couch multiplayer games allowing up to 4 simultaneous players. The good ole classic WiiU Mario Kart is there and been played until exhaustion by now, so I’d be happy if I had more titles (either SD-compatible or just plain emulated) at the ready if they wanted to try.
Thanks!
I found Brotato to be fun.
If you like 80’s action movies, there is Broforce.
Duck Game is good as a platform shooter.
I had a blast playing Overcooked 1 & 2 with my partner and they run fine on Deck. I only played with 4 players once and it was a bit chaotic since it was the first time playing Overcooked for most of us.
If you plan on emulating Wii U, New Super Mario Bros. U sounds like a fun option. In the same vein, Rayman Origins and Legends are great co-op platformers too and are both Gold on ProtonDB
Towerfall
Gang beasts
Overcooked 2
Broforce
Or taking turns in 1v1 games
I would recommend Overcooked and Moving out, the kids i played this with picked it up fairly quickly.
Another good coop game is Unrailed, but it is more stressful and might be more frustrating.
Our most played game is ultimate chicken horse though, but its versus and does not really provide guardrails so you can kind of deadlock your match quite easily
Overcooked (4-player)
Lovers in a dangerous space time (4-player)
Death squared (2-4 player)
Toybox Turbos (4-player)
Trine (3-player)
Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes (infinite player)
Magicka (4-player)
The various Jackbox Party Packs (players depends on which game. Most support 4 players, some up to 100 players, each player must have a phone to play on)
Worms W.M.D (6-player)
Untitled Goose Game (2-player)
Love in a Dangerous Space Time is a great co-op game that is actually cooperative.
Overcooked 2, Conduct Together/Deluxe. Both are tough but fair, and they’ll have to communicate effectively to do well.
Ultimate Chicken Horse is a bit more chill, more of a party game.
Check out Armed and Gelatinous on steam. Up to four players can battle each other. It’s an Indie game and it’s a lot of fun.
- Shredder’s revenge
- It takes two
- Gang beasts
- Rivals of aether
- Screen cheat
Screen Cheat is so damn underrated. Love that game
I know, right!? I haven’t played it in a long time, but had tons of fun with it when I was. Great party game and especially great for people who remember what it was like playing split screen back in the day 😅
I always search steam sales for local multiplayer games. I have not tested all of these yet, so I’m going to categorize them here.
Games I already played with someone (e.g. “tested”)
- Boomerang Fu
- Brawlhalla
- Castle Crashers
- Gang Beasts
- Guacamelee - Super Turbo Championship Edition
- Helldivers
- Lovers in a Dangerous Spacetime
- Regular Human Basketball
- Just Shapes and Beats
- Lethal League Blaze
- MageQuit
- Magicka / Magicka 2
- Make Way
- Overcooked
- Road Redemption
- Speedrunners
- Towerfall Ascension
- Tricky Towers
- Ultimate Chicken Horse
- Wobbly Life
Games for future play sessions (not yet tested)
- Barony
- Beat Me
- Chained Together
- Fling to the finish
- Geometry Wars 3
- Goat Simulator
- Party Club
- Pummel Party
- Screencheat
- Sonic Segal All Stars Racing
- Stick Fight the Game
- Treadnauts
- Unrailed
Have fun :)
Dude…I knew/had only a few in this list. And most of the rest look amazing. This is a long list of very promising games, thanks so much!
You’re welcome, I’m glad to spread the old-school pre-internet local couch coop fun :)
My personal favourites are
MageQuit
This is the most addicting of all the played games. I bought this with a “fun little magic-based pvp-only game for now and then” mindest. I thought “super smash brothers but magic”. I started playing it with my friend on his TV “just for an hour” and suddenly, it was dark outside and time to go home.
The next meeting we planned on playing MageQuit for a round or two and then move on to one of the other, yet unplayed, games. The moving on part never happened, MageQuit was just too much fun.
Lovers in a Dangerous Spacetime
This is the game for the whole family. You (up to 4 players) are in a spaceship. The spaceship has different buttons and levers in different places to control different things like acceleration, changing direction, aiming / firing weapon, directing partial shield or countermeasure etc. and you need to rescue your bunny-friends.
They are scattered around the levels, sometimes hidden, sometimes locked up, sometimes guarded etc and you need to work together with your teammates to direct the spaceship. You get quite a few different weapons and shields / countermeasures, which can also be combined, you upgrades for the ship, can buy different ships etc.
It looks and sounds adorable, but if you don’t work together, it’s way harder then it looks. This is a game with a campaign and story.
Regular Human Basketball
Think basketball, but stupid and fun. The regular humans are actually motionless robots which need to be moved by using switches and levers inside it, which is what your job is. You even have a jet-boost at some parts of your regular-human body. We laughed our asses off.
It is similar to Lovers in a Dangerous Spacetime in the sense that, you need to work together to control a bigger machine. This is just a pvp only game, no story or campaign.
Ultimate Chicken Horse
Race each other to the finish of an obstacle course. After each round, everyone picks a new obstacle to place and expands the course. Seldomly have I ever seen such bullshittery as my friends and me created in this game and then had to go through.
I can confirm that Barony is a fun couch coop experience for two on a steam deck, so long as you are prepared to die and have to start over a lot. It might be tricky with four players, as there is a lot of inventory menuing. You might need a really large screen.
Good to know, thank you!
We always play on someones TV anyway. These are typically 46" ore bigger and have at least FullHD resolution. Would this be manageable?
I’m sure it’s sufficient for two players, but I don’t know how the game rearranges the interface with four. It might be a little crowded.
avoid Magicka 1 for multiplayer if you can. The final update they pushed before abandoning it turned multiplayer into a buggy, crashy mess
Edit: it might be fine for local couch multiplayer actually
Mount Your Friends is an Xbox 360 era go-to for me. Very easy to get into and gets people competitive (in a good way). The only downside is it’s probably not the most appropriate game to play with kids for your situation
Stardew Valley, a lot of Nintendo games using emulators(seriously just pick a game)
If you like roguelites ember knights is awesome as a group of 4
Moving Out and Overcooked are my favorite co-op games right now. Both have more than 1 title in the series, and, so far, none of them have been bad.
One of my favorite in-person MP games of all time is Towerfall Ascension. My family and I used to spend so much time laughing out loud while playing that game. So many ridiculous trick shots with all the power ups. I haven’t tried it on Steam Deck, but I don’t see any reason why it wouldn’t work, assuming you can get multiple controllers connected.
