The Best Co-op Games to Play Online With Friends
Co-op has moved online
Couch co-op used to mean everyone crammed on a sofa passing controllers. Now most of us play from our own homes, on our own screens, talking over Discord. The games that work best for this aren't always the ones that show up in "best co-op" lists, because those lists don't filter for online play.
A lot of games that say "co-op" mean local co-op only. You're sharing a screen and a keyboard. That's great if you're in the same room, but useless for a group spread across three different cities.
What to look for
For online co-op specifically, you need:
- Online multiplayer support - Not just local. Sounds obvious, but read the fine print.
- Enough player slots - Many co-op games cap at 2. If your group is 4, that's a problem.
- Platform availability - Does it run on what everyone owns?
- Crossplay - If one friend is on PC and another on PS5, can they actually connect?
We track all of this for every game in our database. The co-op games list is filtered to online multiplayer and ranked by rating.
The sweet spot: 4-player online co-op
Four players is the magic number for co-op. Big enough to feel like a team, small enough that everyone has a role. Most co-op games are designed around this group size.
If your group is bigger than 4, it gets harder. You either need a game that supports 5+ players (less common for pure co-op) or you split into teams and play something competitive.
Browse co-op games filtered by platform at:
The "just one more run" games
The best online co-op games are the ones where every session feels different. Roguelikes, survival games, and extraction games nail this. You fail, you laugh about it, you go again. Nobody's watching a cutscene for the third time.
These are the games that turn a "let's play for an hour" into a 3am "one more run."
When your group can't agree
The reason we built PickThe.Games is that co-op game selection is harder than competitive. In a competitive game, everyone's doing the same thing. In co-op, everyone has different tolerance for difficulty, horror, complexity, and time commitment.
Having everyone swipe independently solves this. One person might hate survival games. Another won't play anything with horror elements. The overlapping yeses are the games that'll actually work for your specific group.
Create a board and use the Co-op filter in the swipe view to focus on cooperative games specifically.Browse co-op games by platform: PC, PS5, Xbox. Or check if your group's platforms support crossplay.