My SO and I have been having a lot of fun playing co-op games on the Steam Deck connected to the TV. We recently finished Split Fiction and I’m looking for the next cool experience to try out. We enjoy casual co-op games, nothing too hard or violent. EDIT: pixel art is apparently a big turnoff for her so that’s out as well.
Games We Enjoyed:
- Split Fiction
- It takes two
- Untitled Goose Game
Games that flopped:
- Stardew Valley - She is open to “farming” games but doesn’t enjoy the energy management aspect of the game. It also gave her motion sickness, somehow
- Overcooked / Moving out - We enjoy these games but as they start to get more chaotic and hard, the enjoyment goes way down
- Ibb & Obb - A bit dull and samey
- Portal - Gives me serious motion sickness, completely unplayable
- Lego Lord of the Rings - I’m a lord of the rings fan but I hated the gameplay for this game, I found it to be so boring. We quit after an hour or so.
Broaden your horizons, start using emulators.
Star Wars: Jedi Power Battles
Kirby and the Forgotten Land
Super Mario Wonder
Any of the Warriors games (just don’t buy it, don’t reward them for releasing the same damn game 20+ times)
Legend of Mana (highly recommended, please don’t sleep on this)
Destroy All Humans 2
Ratchet: Deadlocked
Divinity: Original Sin
Resident Evil 6
Halo: Master Chief Collection
Lego Star Wars
The Tales games are long and go up to 4 players. I’d recommend them if you have more people to join.
Be prepared for a few roadbumps while you acclimate yourself to using emulators. It won’t be smooth at first, but it gets easier the more familiar you become with it.
Check out Kingdom Two Crowns. Absolutely brilliant
This one looks for me, actually :P
Ship of Fools is -60% on steam right now and I can’t recommend this game enough. It’s a rogue lite where you both need to protect a ship from monsters maning the cannons and it’s an absolute blast! It has good progression and it’s intense but not in annoying sort of way.
It looks sick, definitely something I’d enjoy playing. Unfortunately I feel like it would fall under the same umbrella as Overcooked or Moving Out. Too chaotic, I think.
Its much more approachable and not nearly as frustrating or difficult as those. We finished the game while being stoned if that tells you anything lol
If you like puzzle games, you might try a game that’s not technically multiplayer but that the two of you can work on solving together, which is what my wife and I do. Good candidates for that are Case/Rise of the Golden Idol, Lorelei and the Laser Eyes, and we’re currently playing Blue Prince.
Baba Is You belongs to the same category. One of my favorite puzzles.
I have Baba Is You! It’s a brilliant game, love it to pieces, but it’s not a good fit for my SO. She’d lose interest very fast, looking for something more chill and casual.
Blue Prince is definitely something I’ve been considering but I’m unsure if she’d enjoy games that are just puzzles. Pretty sure Lorelei is just too thinky for her to enjoy.
Definitely looking into more chill games to blow off some steam.
Cult of the Lamb maybe?
Blur…from archive.org
We enjoyed A Way Out. Gonna try Sea of stars soon.
Death Squared. Puzzle solving, each player controls two blocks on the map used to solve the puzzle.
Keep talking and nobody explodes could be a fun one, only needs 1 device and the other player needs the manual which can be on a phone or printed out. You could even play it over a phone call.
As I recall, the ‘campaign’ gets impossible to do with two players because of the inability to look up enough stuff in parallel. There are mods and custom bombs though.
Unravel 2 :) It’s a beautiful little co-op game with lots of puzzle-y problems to solve and some dynamic ones as well
It went on sale yesterday so I ended up buying it!
A way out. Two criminals escaping prison, made by the Same studio as it takes two and split fiction. Full of mini games along the way like the other two and my god the story made me laugh with it’s ridiculousness. it’s definitely not as good as it takes two or split fiction but well worth a go imo
The steam deck status is unfortunately unsupported. Otherwise it would be a great fit.
In case you’re comfortable trying a couple things out it does work for some on steam deck. ProtonDB link
Tinkering is fine, I’ll definitely check it out. Thanks!
A Way Out is marked as “Playable” by Valve, mainly because of Origin (or EA App nowadays?) and some quirks with the controls. Should play just fine though and once in-game controllers should be well supported.
Y’all both seem pretty prone to motion sickness. I would recommend making sure your game space is cool or if not an option put a fan up to blow in your direction to keep air circulating near you.
The various LEGO Star Wars games and such are probably a good idea as someone else mentioned.
If energy is the only complaint for SDV, there are mods for that.
I’ve had motion sickness ever since I remember. I just can’t play shooters, it’s physically impossible for me.
Somethings help like a TV instead of a monitor, zooming out as much as possible, moving as further from tv as possible, low camera speed. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t. It’s a struggle.
Very sorry to hear that. Have you had any success with higher frame rates?
I have not. I have a 144hz monitor and even at 144fps games games with heavy camera movement are unplayable.
Damn man that sucks.
Often it’s reported that a larger and/or brighter crosshair helps. Maybe try an overlay with a large neon pink crosshair or a piece of clear tape with a big dot of marker on it sometime? I get it’s probably not a problem that you are interested in putting time into solving any more though.
Some games don’t even have crosshairs… Another big offender was Spyro, for instance. Just the camera moving was enough to make me sick in the stomach.
My wife and I were having fun doing co-op on the Trine games. Coordinating your character switches to cross obstacles can be pretty fun. The Lego Star Wars games were also fun for us both to just mess around and cause chaos.
Trine sounds like a great idea, I already have the first two. Gonna give it a go.
We tried the lego lord of the rings game but it fell flat for us.
Lego Star Wars are quite bad for motion sickness, I find.
Split Fiction is peak, gonna be hard to beat. Too bad you can’t do ‘a way out’ it’s very well done. Might want to look into tweaks for those “unsupported” games, as many of them work fine. Unraveled 2 is a good example.
Otherwise, If this is something that is really becoming your thing, it might be time to hook your PC to the TV or invest in a console. If you go console, you additionally open up the world of games that require individual screens (crossplay games-you on steam deck screen and them on TV screen, but still sitting together OR you on pc and them on TV if same room).
Our couch coop at some points was me with my laptop on a stack of books on the coffee table while she was on a ps4. Played Aragami this way, for one.
Lovers in a Dangerous Space Time
Manage your malfunctioning space ship together while fending off waves of enemies.
Very fun.
