Sometimes, you just want to play a co-op game with your friends on Steam where you work together to achieve a goal. There are all kinds of ways to work together, such as making it across a threat-ridden path relatively unscathed or building a village for you all to live in peacefully. However, that sense of accomplishment when you all reach that milestone that would never have been possible to accomplish on your own is a feeling like no other.
This list of multiplayer games features a wide variety of different genres, and chances are that there’s at least a handful that are new to you. So if you feel like a spell of jolly cooperation with your best friend, or wish to take on a monumental task with a whole bunch of like-minded individuals, these are some of the very best co-op games you can play right now on Steam. For a broader range of platforms, be sure to also check out our picks for the best co-op games overall.
Peak
- Developer: Team Peak
- Genre: Action-adventure
- Release date: June 16, 2025
Peak is a hit indie game that tasks you and your friends with making it through a perilous climb across several hazard-filled environments after your plane crashes on a deserted island. With its proximity-based voice chat enabled, you can shout out to your buddy who’s further up the mountain to see if they’re okay and if it’s safe to make the ascent. You can even use a dedicated button to reach out to grab another player to rescue them from an untimely demise.
New biomes with unique obstacles are being added, such as the Mesa and its sweltering heat, providing new reasons to keep coming back. On top of that, the mountain changes daily, giving players a fresh new level every day. Modifiers can tweak the challenge to add increased difficulty to a run, such as increasing the rate at which hunger develops or damage taken from falls. As one of the cheaper games on this list, it’s an intense co-op experience that won’t break the bank.
REPO
- Developer: Semiwork
- Genre: Survival Horror
- Release date: February 26, 2025
Another co-op game featuring proximity-based voice chat, REPO has you and a team of robot scavengers salvage trinkets and doodads from haunted houses, abandoned bases, and derelict museums. The aim is to recover as much of it as possible and deposit it into extraction points. Some of these gizmos and treasures will affect you when you pick them up, from messing with your movement and camera controls to distorting how you sound when you talk and where it comes from. It can be easy to get distracted from the mission, and in REPO, that can prove to be fatal.
If you decide to gather your buddies and venture into the treasure-filled levels within, just make sure you have one person on the lookout while the rest plunder the chests and drawers within. That’s because, rather obviously, you’re not alone! This is a horror game after all, and the monsters lurking in the dark range wildly from the mildly inconvenient gnomes to the terror-inducing humming of the blind man armed with a shotgun. Even something so innocent as a duck will turn into a snarling beast if you try to pick it up for snuggles. Once you’ve sunk your teeth into the core mechanics, there’s a plethora of REPO mods you can install to mess with your teammates.
It Takes Two
- Developer: Hazelight Studios
- Genres: Action-adventure, Platformer
- Release date: March 25, 2021
While Split Fiction is the more recent release from Hazelight Studios, there’s something special about the journey of It Takes Two. This two-player-only game follows the story of Cody and May, a couple on the brink of divorce, who suddenly find themselves trapped inside dolls made by their daughter Rose when her tears land on them. The two must now work together to restore themselves to their human forms by working on repairing their fractured marriage.
What follows is a series of platforming challenges, combined with third-person shooting and frequently shifting game mechanics, which are tailor-made for its split-screen perspective. There are moments where one player has to step on a series of switches, while the other leaps over hazardous canyons. Weapon choices are also fixed, with one isometric dungeon-crawling section having the couple assume the roles of a wizard and a warrior. Provided you have at least one other person willing to play the entire story with you, you’re both in for a rather unforgettable experience.
Monster Hunter World Iceborne
- Developer: Capcom
- Genres: Action, RPG
- Release date: January 9, 2020
Ever since the Monster Hunter games debuted on PC, they’ve become one of the cornerstones of the most-played games on Steam. There’s a decent argument for Monster Hunter Wilds being the best of the three currently available games on Steam due to the cross-platform support and its returning fan-favorite monsters to hunt in massive biomes that are consistently in a state of flux. However, if you want the most feature-complete game with the best performance, you can’t go wrong with Monster Hunter World and its Iceborne expansion.
A team of up to four hunters can go after one monster, sharing the same life pool. Each one ideally will have equipment carved from prior conquests, wielding one of up to 14 weapon types and tailoring their builds to give them the edge over the currently hunted beast. When there’s a whole group, it becomes easier to activate traps, pinning the monster and leaving it vulnerable to the rest of your party’s vicious attacks. It is the hardest of the three MH games on PC to get used to, thanks to a more limited moveset, but we do have some Monster Hunter World Iceborne tips to get you started. Still, there’s just something particularly satisfying about bonking a Rathalos in the face with a well-timed hammer blow or spinning with the dual blades across the back of an Anjanath.
Baldur’s Gate 3
- Developer: Larian Studios
- Genre: RPG
- Release date: August 3, 2023
Dungeons & Dragons is the most recognizable tabletop role-playing game of all time, but it’s heavily reliant on someone taking the helm as the Dungeon Master. Say you don’t fancy the thankless task of reading and understanding many, many rulebooks to craft your own adventure. If that’s the case, you can simply join with up to three other players online or locally on PC to play Baldur’s Gate 3, one of the best PC RPGs ever. As if that wasn’t enough, it’s more widely playable than ever now that cross-play is here. While your adventure begins with all of you having mind-controlling worms implanted inside your brains, what happens beyond that is largely up to you and your band of adventurers.
You can play this quite comfortably on your own, and it’s well worth experiencing the many twists and turns your choices will lead you down. However, if you treat Baldur’s Gate 3 like a tabletop DnD RPG session, you’re in for dozens of hours of role-playing perfection. With memorable characters, tough fights, and enough flexibility for you and your party’s skills to overcome any challenge, this may take a lot of commitment on everyone’s part. That said, we think Larian’s adventure is a great starting point for those interested in starting a tabletop RPG group. Even if you’ve played it before, there are new Baldur’s Gate 3 subclasses for you to try, such as the Way of the Drunken Master Monk or Hexblade Warlock.
Diablo 4
- Developer: Blizzard Entertainment Inc.
- Genres: RPG
- Release date: October 17, 2023
The latest in Blizzard’s RPG series, Diablo 4, is a phenomenal achievement. It’s a massive open-world adventure with dungeons to explore, each with a wide variety of demons to smite, including crazed cannibals and herds of goatmen armed with long axes. The best bit is that, aside from a couple of very early quests, you and up to three friends can journey together to annihilate all that stands in your way, as you need to track down and permanently end the daughter of Mephisto herself, Lilith, before her plan comes to fruition.
Take on one of several Diablo 4 classes as you roam the land, casting spells and swinging swords, or letting your minions handle the dirty work in the case of the Necromancer. When you’re done with the campaign, the World Tiers keep the endgame engaging, while the Vessels of Hatred expansion and seasonal content continue the adventure for as long as you keep smashing demon skulls.
Helldivers 2
- Developer: Arrowhead Game Studios
- Genre: Third-person Shooter
- Release date: February 8, 2024
Well, recruit, it looks like democracy is under threat from alien scum, and it’s up to you to show them who’s boss. In Helldivers 2, you are Super Earth’s last line of defense against the swarming threat of the Terminids and the constantly rebuilding Terminator-like Automaton army. Its many guns, ordinances, and thrilling missions make it one of the best shooters you can play right now, with up to three other squadmates, no matter what platform they choose.
Wearing its Starship Troopers influence on its sleeve from the video package that plays whenever you boot it up, Helldivers 2 is not a game that takes itself seriously. It knows from the fist-bumping and liberal use of nukes that it only needs high-octane action to thrive in the current gaming space. Thanks to the Heart of Democracy update, which adds the Illuminate faction to the list of threats to mankind, the player count is stabilizing at healthier numbers. Should you lace up those boots and complete mission objectives, you can earn points towards unlocking progress in Warbonds that unlock new weapons, armor, and ordinances to spread managed democracy across the galaxy. It’s by no means an easy task, but someone’s got to get their hands dirty, and you are just who Super Earth needs. Cross-play is supported with PS5 and the new Xbox Series X|S version.
Portal 2
- Developer: Valve Corporation
- Genre: Puzzle-platform
- Release date: April 19, 2011
As a single-player game, Portal 2 is a continuation of everything great about the original. As a multiplayer experience, this co-op puzzler will test even the strongest of friendships. Despite the occasionally precise timing required to solve its most fiendishly difficult chambers, its expansion of the core concept feels natural.
While some rooms are impossible to navigate with one chain of portals to fling yourself through, having a second player use your portals to position themselves better to deploy their own is such a cool way to get around an obstacle. It also uses the concept of having one player unlock progress for their partner who’s in the same room. If you’ve not experienced it before, it’s still one of the best puzzle games ever created and will test the skills of even the most diehard physics buffs out there.
Grand Theft Auto Online
- Developer: Rockstar North
- Genre: Action-adventure
- Release date: October 1, 2013
The wait for GTA 6’s release is a long one, that’s for sure, but with the recent enhanced version of Grand Theft Auto V and GTA Online updating the city of Los Santos for more modern platforms, there’s no better time to make your mark. You can engage in shootouts throughout the city, race with other players, or even form a gang to build up cash to get the swankiest property on the market.
The standout feature in GTA Online is the heists: multi-stage missions where you grab the necessary gear before concocting an elaborate plan of attack. Your choice of disguise, weapons, and getaway vehicles is vital, especially if you try to play with other gangs in the same server, who can stop you in your tracks. Of course, your criminal empire needs funding from the best businesses in GTA Online, but there are plenty of other ways to make money fast so you can afford the hottest wheels, boats, and planes in the game.
Left 4 Dead 2
- Developer: Valve Corporation
- Genres: First-person Shooter, Survival Horror
- Release date: November 17, 2009
This may be the oldest game on the list, but Left 4 Dead 2 is the greatest multiplayer zombie game ever made. Sure, it’s showing its age a little bit now, but there’s a good reason it still boasts a relatively high player count to this day: It’s almost endlessly replayable. In every set of levels, teams of up to four people need to fight their way through undead hordes, while keeping a sharp eye out for the more exotic variants that could easily wipe out the team with the right combination of circumstances.
Since its release, the full Left 4 Dead 1 campaign has now been added, along with years of fixes, custom campaigns, and a thriving modding scene. And if it’s not awesome enough, you can team up with other players in multiplayer modes, including a full run of the campaign where you and your buddies are the unique zombies shoving a wrench into the survivor’s plans by springing ambushes. It’s regularly on sale for mere pennies at this point, so nothing is stopping you from firing up a campaign and having hours of zombie-killing bliss.
Risk of Rain 2
- Developer: Hopoo Games
- Genres: Third-person Shooter, Roguelite
- Release date: August 11, 2020
Risk of Rain 2 is the 3D sequel of the thoroughly entertaining 2D roguelike game from Hopoo Games. Taking down the near-endless waves of aliens and robots by finding chests and activating relics to power up. While you start with a small amount of stuff to discover in the randomly generated levels, every milestone you reach can unlock a myriad of buffs and new characters that wield wildly different weapon types.
With more than 100 different upgrades available, as well as an ever-changing planet full of hazards, teaming up with up to three friends to master one of the 11 different survivor types and escape the planet is going to be one hell of a challenge. The best bit is that, even if someone is ahead of everyone in the game’s overall progression, the others are still competitive and can potentially win a run.
Satisfactory
- Developer: Coffee Stain Studios
- Genre: Sandbox, Factory Simulation
- Release date: September 10, 2024
They say that many hands make short work, and Satisfactory best exemplifies that notion. If you’re a huge fan of games that will let you craft automated facilities that help harvest materials both familiar and unique, especially ones where having a friend to help is a godsend, then this is one not to miss out on. As a pioneer dropped onto an unknown planet, it’s your job to construct a base of operations. Start in one of four different areas, rich in minerals to harvest and a whole menagerie of weird beasts, including gigantic quadrupeds with comically tiny heads and feral kookaburra-like birds, among many others.
As you can probably tell, the tone of this survival game is rather silly, but this offsets the rather deliberately stressful logistical nightmare that you need to sort out along the way. Thankfully, with someone else playing, you can troubleshoot where the blockage is in your automated processes and adjust accordingly. With a vast open world to explore on top of all that, promising a great deal of adventure should you feel comfortable leaving your base unattended for a spell, this is pretty much the complete package.
Overcooked: All You Can Eat
- Developer: Ghost Town Games
- Genre: Cooking Simulation
- Release date: November 10, 2020
Why have a mere sample of the main course when you can have the entire meal and a luxury dessert? If you already own the previous games, then there’s little reason to upgrade to Overcooked: All You Can Eat beyond a handful of bonus features. However, if you are new to this rather chaotic series, absolutely get this combo deal rather than the individual items.
All these cooking games you get as part of this meal are an absolute blast for local co-op, tasking you in each level to meet a quota of dishes. To make them in time, you need to work together, assigning each other positions in the line where you process the ingredients, before assembling them into one complete plate of food. Deliver the food with great haste in order to score enough points. With over 200 individual levels to master, each with wild kitchens full of hazards to get in your way, the culinary fun never stops.
