20+ Cooperative Board Games for your next Game Night
We’re all pretty competitive in our household, but sometimes we just want to work together with a good ol’ cooperative game.
Instead of going head to head against your family, now you’re teaming up towards a common goal!
These games can be great for players who feel more comfortable playing on a team where the weight of the strategy decisions are shared amongst the group. (Just make sure to let everyone have a voice and make their own choices too!)
There are tons of cooperative options in nearly every category of board games available. The below games are just some of our favorites!
5 Minute Dungeon / 5 Minute Marvel
We have the Marvel version of this game and love it! Everyone frantically working together against the timer, playing cards as quick as they can from their hands — never fails to get your heart racing. With each game taking only five minutes, you’ll want to shuffle up and play again!
The Adventures of Robin Hood
This family campaign game thrusts you into the story of Robin Hood. We love how the game walks you through each new element you encounter, making learning the rules a breeze and part of the game itself. 2-4 Players
Burgle Bros
Pull of a heist together in this clever board game. We love playing it online on Board Game Arena! 1-4 players
Castle Panic
Defend the castle from the horde of monsters looking to tear it down. Castle Panic is a fun tactical game where your ability to plan and cooperate together will be the key to your success. 1-6 players
Chronicles of Avel
We love how Chronicles of Avel immerses you into the theme! You’ll explore the land on the modular board, encounter monsters to fight, and end the game with a head to head battle against the big boss! 1-4 players.
Codenames Duet
For a cooperative date night, we love Codenames Duet. It takes the fun of the party game and makes a fun and surprisingly difficult challenge for two! We’ve only ever won a handful of games but keep coming back for more! 2 players
The Crew: Mission Deep Sea
If you love trick-taking card games, then you’ll love The Crew. Work through progressively more challenging scenarios to complete missions with limited communication and careful planning. It’s also one of our favorite two player challenges as well! Mission Deep Sea is the second in The Crew series. We love and recommend the first one as well. 2-5 players
Read our review of the original The Crew here.
Escape: Curse of the Temple
Roll dice as quick as you can Escape before the time runs out! We’ve had this game for years, so long in fact it came with a CD and we actually had a CD player to use it with! It’s one of our most loved family favorites. 1-5 players
Flash Point: Fire Rescue
One of our first cooperative games we ever bought and still one of our favorites! Help rescue people from a burning building and get them to safety before the building collapses. Each game always comes down to the wire and gets our blood pumping. 2-6 players
Forbidden Series: Forbidden Island; Forbidden Desert
I love these for players new to cooperative games. They’re easy to learn yet challenging to play — you won’t win every time, even when you’re working great together! You’re a team trying to survive a sinking island or the blistering desert. Coordinate with your teammates to locate the items you need and then get the heck out of dodge before you’re lost! Forbidden Island is slightly easier than Desert but Desert is our favorite! 2-4 and 2-5 players respectively.
The Game
They dug deep on the title of this one! But don’t let it’s creativity fool you, it’s a fun cooperative card game where you’ll try to play your numbered cards into ascending and deceasing piles for as long as you can without sharing what cards you have. It’s simple yet challenging which makes for an addicting combo. (Great for fans of The Mind — see below!)
Hanabi
This card game never fails to delight! Work together to put on an excellent firework show by playing your cards in the right order. The catch? You can only see the other players’ cards and can only give them hints about what cards they’re holding. 2-5 players
Harry Potter Hogwarts Battle
If you have ever dreamed of playing through all 7 books of Harry Potter, well now is your chance! We love this campaign game! Learn magic, defeat villains, and defeat Hogwarts from Lord Voldemort! This is an excellent beginner deck building game for kids or adults. 2-4 players
Horrified
You can catch us playing Horrified all October long! This game has you teaming up against classic movie monsters. Our kids love getting to move all around the board to pick up and deliver the items they need to the right spot. The monsters all have unique challenges and difficulty levels so you can make the game as easy or hard as you’d like depending on your group’s preference. 1-5 players
Just One
My favorite party game! This is a clever and chill cooperative game where you’ll try to get one member of your team to guess a word by writing a single word on your board. However, if you write the same word as another teammate, your words are erased and can’t be used to help! You’ll play this game for hours! 3-7 players
The Loop
I love the quirky art and theme of The Loop! You’ll travel through time to stop Dr. Faux and his army of duplicates! We love just how much you need to cooperate with this game. It’s impossible to win if you aren’t planning and working together which makes it all the more satisfying when your team is jiving and making things happen! 1-4 players
Marvel Champions
And now we’ll enter our Marvel portion of this list! Marvel Champions is a living card game (like a collectible card game but without the blind-buy purchase model) In this game you’ll build your deck before you begin playing and then use it to battle a villain! Play solo or team up! 1-4 players. Best for teens and older.
Marvel Legendary
Our favorite Marvel game! This is a deck building game which means everyone starts with the same cards at the beginning of the game, then during the game will use them to recruit new heroes (cards) to add into their deck. Over the course of the game, everyone’s deck grows to consist of unique heroes with their own abilities that they can use to fight henchmen, villains, and the game’s main mastermind! 1-5 players (we think its best with 1-3) Best with teens and older.
Read our full review here
Marvel United
For the family friendly version of saving the world, we absolutely love Marvel United. Everyone chooses their favorite super hero and then works together to fight villains like Ultron or Red Skull! Each hero and villain operates in a unique way giving you a huge amount of customization and replayability! You can add expansions to bring even more heroes and villains to the mix! 1-4 players
Read our full review of Marvel United here.
Mass Transit
Card games like Mass Transit will always have my heart! Work together, play cards from your hand, and create transit lines to help commuters get home after a long day at work. This one is so relaxing to me and perfect for a Saturday morning. 1-4 players
Read our full review of Mass Transit here.
Miller Zoo
I love how this cooperative game features a family friendly campaign. You work together to manage the zoo by receiving new animals and taking care of any problems that arise. Players can take their actions in any order and work together with the cards everyone has to solve each problem. When you win, you are able to unlock new animals to play with for your next challenge, add stickers to the back of the board to track your progress, and upgrade your characters. It’s excellent!
The Mind
After years of playing, I still can’t decide if this is a game, but that doesn’t matter because it sure is fun! You have a deck of numbers cards, 1-100, from which you’ll deal players a specific number. Then collectively without saying which cards you hold in your hand, you must play them in order from the smallest to the largest. You can only just look around at each other and feel for when the time is right for you to play your card. 1-4 players
Pandemic Series
The mother of all coops! Pandemic is perhaps one of the most popular modern cooperative games and has given birth to an entire series of Pandemic games. Be it the classic game, legacy, real time, or even the dice game. We’ve yet to play a pandemic game that we haven’t enjoyed.
Quirky Circuits
Program the movement of cute robots to complete challenges! This game is a fun experiment in the unique ways players think through problems and the challenge of working together with limited communications. I love the adorable miniatures and the innovative spiral book that you flip to get different board designs. 2-4 players
Space Invaders
Bring the fun of the arcade home! The thrill you’ll get when launching a disk and hitting your target! This is the silly fun that games are all about.
Star Wars The Clone Wars
Using the Pandemic model, Star Wars the Clone Wars is an excellent game, whether you enjoy Star Wars or not! This is not just Pandemic re-themed. This is an immersive tactical strategy game where you’ll move around the planets, combat droids, complete missions, and use your special Jedi abilities to stop the main villain! 1-5 players
That should be plenty to get your started! Let me know on Instagram if you’d like to see a round up of cooperative games for kids!
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