Cooperative games are pure fun to play with friends and family because they allow you to compete together against the board. It's all about teamwork and problem-solving as a team.
Here is our list of 10 of the best cooperative board games ever made. This list is made based on our experiences and user feedback.
10. Mechs vs. Minions
This League of Legends board game is a fully cooperative story-driven tabletop game of programmed movement and action that sees for 2-4 players blowing up hundreds of adorable little League minions. There are 10 missions and each mission takes about 60-90 minutes to play.
Players take on the roles of 4 Yordles (Heimerdinger, Tristana, Corki, and Ziggs) who join forces to face off against armies of marauding minions. The game is fun and quick, even setup.
9. Too Many Bones
You start your journey as a Gearloc in the town of Obenda. Your homeland has been invaded by 7 Tyrants, and the Gearloc Council has summoned you to defeat them.
The goal is to earn enough Progress points by completing daily battles/encounters to reach the Boss Tyrant and trigger the final battle. You must achieve this within a set number of days shown on that tyrant. You discover powerful loot and trove loot to help you on your way.
You will build your character and unlock new dice to roll as you take down unique Baddies, each with their own special abilities and traits. Every Encounter card and the choices within can change from one game to the next due to how enemies are introduced into your battles.
8. Mansions of Madness
Mansions of madness second edition is a fully cooperative Lovecraftian board game for 1-5 players that takes place in the same universe as Arkham, eldritch horror and elder sign. The game requires an companion app (iOS, Android, Windows). The game features 4 campaigns and over 500 detailed components.
The game offers a number of thrilling and confounding scenarios, each with a unique and unpredictable map, bloodthirsty fighting monsters, weapons, tools, complex puzzles, insanity, and Death. This offers a high replay value and you will never play the same game twice.
Guide your investigator across dozens of double-sided map tiles to confront sculpted monster minis.
7. Aeons End
Aeon's End is a cooperative deck building game similar to Sentinels of the Multiverse and One Deck Dungeon, but it adds a number of innovative mechanisms, including a variable turn order system that simulates the chaos of an attack, and deck management rules that require careful planning with every discarded card.
You begin a game of Aeon's End with a basic deck and gradually improve it with new cards as you play. Randomized turn order simulates the chaos of battle, and deck management rules invite careful planning of every discarded card.
Players will struggle to defend Grave hold from The Nameless and their hordes using unique abilities, powerful spells, and, most importantly of all, their collective wits.
6. Eldritch Horror
Eldritch Horror is a fast-paced, deeply thematic, story-driven cooperative game for 1-8 players, based on the fiction of H.P. Lovecraft and inspired by the classic board game Arkham Horror.
Players take the roles of globetrotting investigators working to solve mysteries, gather clues, and protect Earth from an Ancient One - an elder being intent on destroying our world.
Each Ancient One comes with its own unique decks of Mystery and Research cards, which draw you deeper into the lore surrounding each creature. The end draws near. Do you have the courage to prevent global destruction?
With 4 different Ancient Ones, 12 investigators, numerous monsters, and hundreds of possible encounters, every game provides a high replay value.
5. Betrayal at House on the Hill
Betrayal at House on the Hill is a tile game that allows players to build their own haunted house room by room, tile by tile, creating a new thrilling game board every time. The game is designed for 3-6 players, each of whom plays one of six possible characters.
The game starts fairly innocently, but quickly builds suspense and excitement as players explore a haunted mansion and gather up items. About halfway through the game, one haunt event is triggered and one of the players secretly betrays the group. Then, the game is about stopping the traitor and escaping the mansion alive.
The game appeal to any player who enjoys a fun, suspenseful, and strategic game. The game offers also 50 different scenarios and a survival guide.
4. Spirit Island
In Spirit Island you control a powerful spirit trying to protect an isolated island and its natives, known as the dahan, from invading settlers.
These would-be colonists are taking over the land and upsetting the natural balance, destroying the presence of spirits as they go. As spirits, you must grow in power and work together to drive the invaders from your Island.
The game is complex, definitely high strategy and pure brain burner, but once you get past how the invaders behave, you can start anticipating what you should do next. Spirit Island has a high replay values as each spirit plays different and powers are gained randomly.
3. Mysterium
Mysterium is a cooperative deduction board game that look like a twisted version of Clue, but it's much more than that.
A horrible crime has been committed on the grounds of Warwick Manor. One player is a ghost, the other players take on roles of mediums who are trying to interpret messages from the ghost. They try to discover who was behind a decades-old murder.
The ghost player must tell players what happened to them using nothing but cards with surrealist illustration cards.
The players are on a clock to to solve the murder case. The game is not only a fantastic co-op game, but also a great hilarious party game that generates in-jokes and memes every time.
2. Pandemic
Pandemic is a truly cooperative game for 2-4 players where you all win or you all lose. Four diseases have broken out in the world and the goal of the game is to get a team of specialists in various fields to find cures for these diseases before mankind is wiped out.
Players must work together playing to their characters' strengths and planning their strategy of eradication before the diseases overwhelm the world with ever-increasing outbreaks. For example the Operation Specialist can build research stations which are needed to find cures for the diseases.
The Scientist needs only 4 cards of a particular disease to cure it instead of the normal 5. But the diseases are out breaking fast and time is running out: the team must try to stem the tide of infection in diseased areas while also towards cures.
1. Gloomhaven
Gloomhaven is an Euro-inspired tactical combat game taking place in a persistent world of shifting motives. Players will take on the role of a adventurer with their own special set of skills. They will fight against automated monsters using an innovative card system to determine the order of play and what a player does on their turn.
Players must work together out of necessity to clear out menacing dungeons and forgotten ruins. In the process they will enhance their abilities with experience and loot, discover new locations to explore and plunder, and expand an ever-branching story fueled by the decisions they make.
This is a legacy game with a persistent and changing world that is ideally played over many game sessions. After a scenario, players will make decisions on what to do, which will determine how the story continues.
Continue Reading