30 Outstanding Online Co-Op Games to Play With Faraway Friends

If you spent hours playing any of the Left 4 Dead games years ago, then there's a strong chance you'll thoroughly enjoy this modernized version from the same developers. The mechanics are similar—you work in a team of four and advance through a map while completing various objectives and fighting off zombie hordes until you reach a safe house. Each map you complete progresses the narrative. 

Back 4 Blood spices things up with a variety of special zombies that are terrifying, and downright near-impossible to kill without teamwork in Nightmare difficulty mode. There's also a system of cards you can collect and add to your deck to give your character and team certain perks and upgrades. The game might not be as addicting as the original series, but it'll for sure make you relive the glory days. 

Up to four players can take on the zombie hordes online.

Satisfying gunplay, versatile weaponry, and excellent multiplayer maps make the Call of Duty series a fun first-person shooter to play with friends. You get multiplayer modes like Invasion (team death match), Ground War (extra large domination), and Prisoner Rescue. The two-player Spec Ops cooperative missions offer different scenarios, throwing stealth, vehicles, and waves of enemies into the mix; it’s just a shame there are only three. But the first three-player co-op Raids mission just dropped, and more are in the works.

Up to 32 soldiers can enter the fray online.

Absolver is a meditative martial arts experience that teaches you to make friends through fisticuffs. You can team up with one or two pals to conquer the game's small open world and bonus dungeons, all of which encourage teamwork. And if you don't have friends to play with, you can meet other players in the open world and try to initiate spontaneous friendships through simple in-game hand gestures. Absolver is about communicating as much as it is fighting, and that makes it a cooperative adventure-brawler like no other.

2 to 3 players can team up online.

Teaming up with friends to hunt ghosts in spooky locations is a smart, original premise that will get your blood pumping. Phasmophobia is like being dropped into an episode of Ghost Adventures, but the phantoms and poltergeists here are all too real. You must investigate using classic paranormal gear from Spirit boxes to electromagnetic field readers, try and work out what you’re dealing with, and gather evidence. Communication is vital if you expect to make it out alive, but beware, because the ghosts are listening!

2 to 4 paranormal investigators can team up online.

Bursting with loot, this cel-shaded, action-packed roguelike hooks you into shooting and slashing your way to ultimate power. Leaving the 2D platforms of the original behind, this sequel is a third-person shooter with an elegant focus on loops of frantic combat. There’s a good mix of classes with distinct play styles and upgrade paths, interesting maps with secrets to uncover, and some seriously challenging boss battles.

2 to 4 players can blast aliens online.

Weave a rich medieval tapestry as you attempt to guide your dynasty to power and hold onto it for as long as possible in this grandest of strategy games. Characters, complete with personality traits and narrative arcs, are the heart of this game. Tinker with politics and religion to stay on top. Play with friends, and you can form alliances to conquer the world together. Multiplayer is also a good way to take new players under your wing, as the learning curve can be steep. 

Up to 12 players can fight for the throne online.

Warframe gives players things to shoot at and offers rewards once they've done enough shooting. That's the experience. It's simple but fun. Up to four players cooperatively gun down enemies, use superpowers, and parkour around a wide variety of exotic, interstellar maps, all in a quest to accrue more "stuff." It's easy to get lost in the game's hypnotic, grindy rhythm for hundreds of hours at a time, thanks to its well-executed mechanics and gameplay. It's also free.

2 to 4 players can team up online.

Chaotic and extremely silly, Gang Beasts is a melee brawler with wonky rag-doll physics. Set in a series of insanely hazardous locations across Beef City, you pile into brutal slapstick fights to the death. It is rough around the edges and shallow, but with the right group of friends facing off in gangs, it can be hilarious. I can tell when my 9-year-old daughter and her pals are playing this by the screams and laughter.

2 to 8 gelatinous characters can brawl online.

Scavenging abandoned moons to sell scrap to an evil corporation called “The Company" is all the setup you need for a fun co-op horror. Time is money, so you’ll need to pull together, strategize, and act fast if you want to bring home the bacon. Terrifying creatures and hidden traps can quickly reduce your best-laid plans to screaming chaos. The paper-thin premise and basic graphics detract somewhat from this Early Access game, but the monster variety and atmosphere lend it some depth, and it’s very moreish.

2 to 4 players can go scavenging online.

Hunting and slaying monsters is more fun with friends. An action RPG with a medieval Japanese feel, this game boasts some gorgeous monster-filled maps to explore. Each beast has its own set of behaviors, so you must do your homework, get the right weapons for the job, and work together to take them down. There's a bit of a learning curve, but once you get the hang of it, you'll be raring to get out there and hunt. Read our Monster Hunter Rise review for more.

Up to 4 monster hunters can team up online.

Motorheads will enjoy this open-world racing game set in a gorgeous, stylized Mexico. It features more than 500 customizable vehicles, rendered in all their shiny glory, with enough custom parts, modifications, and rims to satisfy any auto enthusiast. You can play all the campaign races in co-op mode, enlisting up to five pals to form a convoy. You can also design maps, try creations from other players, and tackle stunt-based challenges.

Up to 6 players can form a convoy online.

Mash Minecraft and Left 4 Dead together and throw in space dwarves intent on exploring procedurally generated destructible cave systems full of dangerous aliens, and you get Deep Rock Galactic. This first-person co-op shooter is exciting, funny, and creepy by turns. It takes some strategic planning and solid teamwork to beat each mission, and there’s a ton of guns, armor, and gear to upgrade as your coffers swell.

Up to 4 dwarves can mine and fight online.

Cast adrift on the ocean, Raft challenges you and up to seven friends to survive in shark-infested waters. You must find and catch food, gather flotsam and jetsam to craft useful tools, and improve your raft. Sharks are the chief concern, but other predators lurk on many of the islands you encounter. While an extra pair of hands can be helpful, every extra player is also another mouth to feed.

Up to 8 players can set sail in shark infested waters.

In Styx, you and a friend are put in the shoes of two mischievous, crass goblin assassins who must maneuver through a violent, twisted empire to steal trinkets and survive. The game employs all the usual stealth-genre tropes, including hiding enemies' dead bodies, staying in the shadows to be invisible, and dangling from precarious precipices to avoid detection. But its classical approach to the genre is a plus, making it that much easier to learn the ropes of the game and enjoy its old-school simplicity and difficulty as a team.

2 players can team up online.

Apex Legends tasks 60 players in teams of three to fight to the death inside one big, busy map. There are items to loot, opponents to shoot, and constantly shrinking map boundaries to outrun, and Apex Legends manages all these obligatory battle royale inclusions quite well. Unique skills for each character and the ability to revive teammates both make this free game a touch deeper and more engaging than most of its genre competitors, like Fortnite.

2 to 3 players can team up online.

Fancy a burst of super-gory melee hack-and-slash against an army of giant rat people? You can team up with three friends in this first-person action game and take on specialized roles, from Wizard to Witch Hunter. Battle through ruined cities and festering bogs, fighting enemy hordes that grow more formidable as you progress. You have to be on your toes and work closely to emerge victorious. Think Left 4 Dead but in the Warhammer universe, with some RPG elements thrown in. 

2 to 4 adventurers can fight online.

Up to four players can explore Dying Light's fictional city of Harran together, mowing down zombies. Unlike most zombie games, it doesn't emphasize shuffling around on ground level with the living corpses—it encourages players to hop over enemies' heads, run across rooftops, and use Harran as a city-sized jungle gym. Swords, guns, and grappling hooks are also present, so even if your friends want a vanilla zombie-slaying adventure instead of a crazy free-running jog across the heads of the undead, this co-op will probably fit the bill. 

Once you finish the game, hop on into Dying Light 2: Stay Human, which continues the co-op fun with a new cast of characters.

2 to 4 players can team up online.

Stardew Valley's online co-op doesn't add anything to the classic Harvest Moon formula besides extra players, but that single addition means everything. All the fun of farming, forming relationships with villagers, and engaging in good old-fashioned agrarian capitalism is doubled, tripled, and quadrupled with up to three other players present since the game has you all share in the risks and rewards of each other's actions. And as we all know, nothing helps plant the seeds of friendship like farming together.

2 to 4 players can operate a farm together.

With a colorful cast of characters and a gorgeously gothic cartoon art style, Don’t Starve Together is every bit as quirky and deliciously dark as it appears. Gather resources, explore the wilderness, and work together to slay monsters. Survival is a real challenge, but there’s fun to be had even in death, as your ghost can return to haunt your teammates.

Up to 4 players can survive together online.

Sea of Thieves is not a perfect game—not by any stretch of the word. The story feels both absent and convoluted, and for a game about the deep sea, it can feel shallow. Where it succeeds is in its core pirating gameplay. It's an absolute pleasure to get a crew of three to four people and man a ship together: one person steering, another on sails, another firing cannons, and another patching the boat (or bailing it out) when you encounter other ships full of players. It takes coordination, and there are hours of fun to be had goofing off on the high seas.

2 to 4 players can commandeer a pirate ship and sail together.

World War Z takes the smart, fast, anthill-forming zombies of the Brad Pitt movie and throws them into the anthology-style, globe-trotting format of the original book. That lets it showcase a lot of different regions and cultures through the lens of a particularly devastating zombie apocalypse. The game is somewhat light on content, but there are enough difficulty levels, character classes, and unlockables to keep the four-player cooperative undead-hunting fresh and lively for a good while.

2 to 4 players can team up online.

While you kick off on a familiar post-apocalyptic earth in this third-person shooter, you soon find yourself hopping through the multiverse, battling monster mash-ups that combine fantasy and sci-fi. Slick combat, procedurally generated worlds, buildcrafting options galore, and truly memorable boss fights make this looter-shooter a great Souls-like game to blast through with friends. The story isn’t great, but the puzzles and combat compensate. We liked Remnant: From the Ashes, but Remnant 2 surpasses it.

2 to 3 players can hop the multiverse together online.

This revamped collection of Halo games has been available for a while, and it features an epic campaign that is hugely enjoyable to play as a duo. You can get more strategic, mentor a newbie, or even play with your partner. Whether you want to relive the famous series' glory days or see what the hype was all about, this package makes it easy to inexpensively experience a half dozen Halo games.

2 to 4 players can team up online.

Visit mysterious alien worlds, harvest their natural resources, and build glorious optimized factories to smelt, refine, and manufacture. Often described as Factorio with a first-person view, Satisfactory is just as addictive, but the exotic environments are fun to explore, and there are bursts of combat. The perfect choice for management game fans who enjoy the endless pursuit of optimization, you can get lots more done by splitting tasks with friends.

Up to 4 players can build a factory online.

This is the fourth installment in the Darksiders franchise and continues its story about the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. It's a Diablo-esque dungeon crawler where you slash, shoot, jump, and ride cool horses. It's also the first game in the series that lets you play as Strife (the fourth horseman), so there's a built-in novelty to Genesis for series fans. And even for newcomers, there's something satisfying about blasting your way to big showdowns with scary, hellish bosses.

2 players can team up online.

God's Trigger is a top-down slasher-shooter starring a dapper angel and demon who must team up to fend off a lot of holy and demonic forces that are up to no good. The premise is simple, the presentation is stylish, and the gameplay is fast, furious, punishing, and addictive. There's a lot to love here. Be warned, though: The game is tough, so make sure you only enlist a co-op partner who's OK with dying repeatedly, and then dying again. Checkpoints are plentiful, but even so, this game is hard.

2 players can team up online.

If you can complete a series of twisted trials designed to test your endurance and sanity, then you may get to live. Creep through abandoned amusement parks and orphanages avoiding the horrifying creatures and deadly traps that lie in wait. There’s a touch of puzzle-solving and stealth is advisable, but much harder than it sounds, especially when your bumbling friends keep attracting the monsters. This chaotic, blood-spattered, horror game is one of those rare titles that works better as a co-op experience. You will laugh, scream, and die…a lot. This one is still Early Access at the time of writing, and it can get repetitive.

2 to 4 players can die together online.

Trapped in the mysterious medieval Castle Rock somewhere in the icy wastes of Antarctica, you have to work closely with a pal to solve puzzles and escape. These head-scratching conundrums will put your smarts to the test, not to mention your descriptive powers, as you relay information to your partner. The fourth installment, We Were Here Forever, is out for PC (included in the Steam bundle), but it won’t land on consoles for a while yet, so the PlayStation and Xbox bundles have just the first three games.

2 players can escape together online.