Today is the International Day of Friendship, which is a fitting time to forge and strengthen relationships by playing some multiplayer games! According to the United Nations, this day celebrates friendship to encourage unity and a respect for diversity. The games below have co-op and multiplayer elements that can hopefully bolster your friendships with some collaborative play, so grab some friends and work together to overcome all sorts of virtual challenges!
Many of the recommendations are crossplay and/or cross-gen, meaning you can play online across different platforms or between different generations of consoles, respectively. The titles also range from light-hearted games to more intense ones intended for mature audiences, so take your picks as you see fit!
Have you ever watched those fast-paced reality TV shows about food and cooking? Well, if you want to emulate just a fragment of the stress that a restaurant chef likely endures, then Overcooked! All You Can Eat will have you and your friends rushing around the virtual kitchen to serve a variety of dishes in dynamic environments. This edition includes Overcooked! and Overcooked! 2, allowing you and your team to face a number of challenges across different settings (including cooking on two moving trucks as you try to hop on and off between the two). These are the sorts of games where I end up standing and yowling at my television whenever it gets overwhelming — as it almost constantly does.
I’m sure this is a familiar feeling for all the horror movie fanatics out there: You’re watching a slasher flick, and one of the characters is being pursued by the killer. Rather than doing the rational act of x, they decide to do y, which gets them caught. How silly! Why would they make that choice? In Dead by Daylight, play against a human-controlled killer who’s trying to take down your team of four Survivors. (Alternatively, you can be the slasher yourself to temporarily make foes out of your friends.) You’ll need lots of coordination and teamwork to make it out alive, so make sure you trust one another! Many of the characters are unique to the game, whereas others are DLCs of recognizable horror figures, such as Michael Myers (aka The Shape) from Halloween. Will you be quick enough to escape tense moments with an evil figure, or are you prone to slip-ups and the dangers of these high-pressure situations?
How quick are you? Slam the buzzer and give a swift answer to the questions in Family Feud, where you can test your wit against bots or other real players (either locally or online) to see who can rack up the most points to win virtual in-game prizes. Bragging rights is also nice, too. It can be quite fun to play the game like how they do it in the show, where you can’t share answers among your teammates as you take turns passing the controller and giving an answer to the question until you clear the board or accumulate three strikes. Or since those rules technically don’t necessarily have to be applied here, you can pool your ideas together to try to ensure that your family is the one that’s victorious. You can decide whether that’s cheating or not!
Blast through hordes of zombies in Back 4 Blood, created by the developers of the Left 4 Dead series. You’re one of four survivors who must navigate an undead-ridden world and make it into various saferooms. But be warned: you’ll likely also encounter mutated zombies who have special and unique abilities. Fight back with your own perks via Active Cards, which will hopefully tip the scales a little more in your favour. You’ll need strong teamwork and communication to survive — because running off on your own may cause the infected to pick you off, potentially causing you to be left for dead.
Sackboy: A Big Adventure is among the most addictive platforming games for the PlayStation, in my opinion. Slap, tumble, and roll through obstacles of Craftworld. Vex has enslaved the neighbours, also Sackpeople, of Sackboy, and it’s up to you and your friends to save them! You can customize your character, donning shiny (e.g. Clank from Ratchet and Clank), scary (e.g. Halloween Zombie), or silly (e.g. Sacknana) costumes and attires. Also, did I mention that the aforementioned examples are free DLCs available on the PlayStation Store?
When you’ve beaten the story, I challenge you to get the gold trophy for the dreaded 16th Knitted Knight Trial, which dauntingly combines the previous 15 trials and requires you to get through it all back-to-back in one run. Can you do it? Come find out!
For fans of arcade games, here’s Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Cowabunga Collection. It includes 13 retro games that’ll reignite the childhood nostalgia for those who grew up playing with arcade machines or 8-bit games. Plus, who doesn’t love hearing the TMNT theme and chippy electronic music of older decades? Side-scrolling beat-‘em-ups are fun, but even more engaging when you’re playing locally. Many games nowadays are restricted to online multiplayer, although I’m sure those who grew up playing split screen will appreciate the same-room and same-screen gameplay that fosters a more social experience. It’s a fun way to celebrate the Day of International Friendship!
Man of Medan is a thrilling narrative game with supernatural elements. Five protagonists stumble upon a WWII shipwreck with dark secrets, forcing you and a friend to try to navigate the horrors of the environment with hostile enemies around. Can you save the characters from demise? It’s dark, atmospheric, and immersive — the perfect qualities of a great horror story. Except it’s you in control, so make sure to pay attention during the quick-time events and pick up as many clues as you can to piece things together. If you liked Until Dawn and wish it was co-op, then Man of Medan will be up your alley. (By the way, both titles are made by Supermassive Games, so you’ll see the stylistic familiarities if you’ve played either game before.)
It Takes Two is a masterpiece. I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: it can get quite somber, but there are also lots of cozy, atmospheric scenes. You and another player are parents who are caught in a discordant relationship that, at first, seems to keep escalating, causing a crescendo in the friction that’s already been building up. It also affects their daughter, who the parents must try to reach after they have somehow been transformed into tiny dolls. Navigating household obstacles isn’t as easy as it sounds, so you and your partner must communicate with one another as you each will be in charge of certain abilities and areas that the other may not have access to. It Takes Two is truly the co-op staple!
Whether you’d prefer to team up to tackle waves of the undead or the player-versus-player Multiplayer mode, Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 can be played in a range of styles depending on your team’s preference. Your squad’s communication is crucial for multiplayer modes like Search & Destroy, where each member of your team gets one life to either defend two bomb sites or detonate one of the pair. Call of Duty in general is the classic, straightforward FPS that can get quite intense and fast-paced; if you play even just a few games, you’ll likely encounter a lot of situations where you must be quick on your toes in terms of making speedy decisions.
Rocket League, a free-to-play soccer-meets-cars video game, merges the best of two worlds with a unique and electrifying gameplay experience. And believe me, it isn’t an easy game to play. You’ll likely want your team to break off into different roles, such as having particular players on offensive roles and others on defense. It also depends on how many players your game will have, as you can play 2v2 or 4v4 games. Come up with your own strategies and see how you fare against bots or other real players online.
Dust off your Wii U (if you’re like me and haven’t touched it in a while) and indulge in New Super Mario Bros. U, a 2D game featuring one of the most loved and well-known characters in gaming history. The Switch 2 is awesome, but let’s not forget about these (relatively) older gems too! The levels can get quite challenging, especially near the end. Trying to grab all the coins in each level adds to the difficulty, although it’s a fun experience where you’ll have to be in sync with your teammates, since you don’t want somebody to be too far ahead, nor do you want anyone to lag too far behind. It’s certainly rewarding to beat a level that you’ve been stuck on for a while — bonus points if you get all the coins!
I hope these games will bring you and your friends closer together, and not apart since gaming can be quite stressful at times (especially with games like Overcooked!). If the recommendations above don’t suit your preferences, check out our catalogue for an extensive list of video games that you can borrow with your VPL membership!