Picture this: It’s Thursday at 7:42 p.m. You finally have two friends in the same voice call. Someone’s cat is walking across their keyboard, and a third friend is still stuck in a meeting, but you’re here, and you’re ready to game. There’s a problem, though: Many of today’s most popular co-op games ask a lot of their players. And often, you simply don’t have a lot of time or headspace to give. You need a co-op game that fits the time and energy you and your squad actually have.
Good news: Plenty of those exist. These 10 co-op games for people with real-life schedules run from lunch-break pick-me-ups to month-long game-night commitments. The only boss fight left is making sure nobody reschedules at the last minute.
10
Overcooked! All You Can Eat
Time to beat: 22.5 hours
Four cooks, one cramped workspace, and a plate nobody remembered to wash: If you’re looking for catharsis outside of your own kitchen, put this game on the menu. Overcooked! All You Can Eat bundles both of the original games along with extra content — delivering 191 campaign and Kevin levels, plus 17 Versus levels, so you can clear one kitchen or a dozen and stop whenever real life calls. Up to four players can cook together locally or online. Expect your team’s communication skills to fall apart around the first conveyor belt, and plan on whoever drops the plates buying the next round of snacks.
9
Deep Rock Galactic
Time to beat: 43 hours
Looking for a co-op game with no campaign to fall behind on? Deep Rock Galactic has you covered. You play a dwarf miner dropped into procedurally generated caves alongside up to three friends. You mine what you came for, then race back to the escape pod while the cave fights back. Missions come in three lengths, so a weeknight can mean a short run and a free weekend can mean a longer session. The four classes available in this game — Gunner, Scout, Driller, and Engineer — give everyone a job. Six hazard levels let you match the difficulty to however tired everyone is. And, if nobody’s free to join, you can hone your skills by doing a solo run with a drone named Bosco. Leave no dwarf behind, at least until the escape pod is full.
8
We Were Here Forever
Time to beat: 11.5 hours
What if you and your co-op partner want to play together, but still have your own screens and little tasks to focus on? We Were Here Forever builds a game around that question. In it, two players escape a castle while mostly separated, each holding different clues and sharing them over push-to-talk radios, so you win by describing what you see and listening to your partner. This setup works very well for friends in different cities or for people who would rather not stress out over a busy screen. If your partner bails, in-game matchmaking can pair you with a stranger, though you’ll lose the opportunity for inside jokes and familiar banter.
7
Orbitals
Time to beat: 6 hours
Orbitals sends Maki and Omura far into space to save their home in a co-op adventure styled after early ’90s anime. About half the game is platforming and puzzles on foot, and the rest happens on their ship, where one player pilots while the other mans the turrets.
Each player wields one tool at a time, and the puzzles make you talk things out…which, for better or for funnier, does make this game double as a test of how well you and your partner communicate under pressure. It’s co-op only, so you never have to decide whether to play solo, and it can be short enough to finish in a single long sitting.
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6
Lovers in a Dangerous Spacetime
Time to beat: 5.5 hours
The shield is down. Someone’s manning the wrong cannon. A kidnapped space bunny needs rescuing. Wait, what? Lovers in a Dangerous Spacetime puts you and up to three friends in charge of a neon battleship in a galaxy menaced by the forces of Anti-Love. The ship has eight rooms with different jobs — so get ready for an evening of yelling about who’s on which station with your crew. Each randomly generated level has you rescuing imprisoned animals or surviving waves of increasingly dangerous enemies. Every section gives you a boss battle. This one doesn’t have network support, so save it for local matches with partners, roommates, and siblings home for the holidays.
5
A Way Out
Time to beat: 6 hours
A Way Out hands you one half of a prison break, and gives the other half to your partner. You each play one of two convicts in an adventure that unfolds across 37 chapters and five acts — making this one easy to pause whenever you need to take a break. Even better: the Friend’s Pass system lets you invite a friend to play even if they don’t own it. (Both players do need to be on the same type of platform, and console players will need an active PlayStation Plus or Game Pass Core subscription for online functionality, so make a note to check that before game night.) While this can be a six to eight hour experience, the game does feature decisions and alternate routes that may stretch gameplay to about 10 hours, so plan your prison break for a night when nobody has to leave at nine.
4
Cat Quest 2
Time to beat: 7.5 hours
Cat Quest 2 pairs a cat and a dog for an open-world adventure. Fancy exploring dangerous caves and ruins? Whacking monsters alongside a partner who covers your back? Chasing down side quests the map has already marked for you? While you can play this solo by swapping between the canine and feline heroes, in local co-op things feel a bit more manageable: You and a friend each control one animal. (The flexibility is nice, though: If your partner has to leave mid-session, you can wrap up a quest yourself.) Quick pro tip to make this a better experience for the both of you: Grab nearby quests before you enter a dungeon, since many dungeons have quests attached. When you’re short on time, you won’t want to have to deal with backtracking.
3
Split Fiction
Time to beat: 13.5 hours
Ever wanted to step right inside a story you’re actively writing? Split Fiction drops two writers into the sci-fi and fantasy worlds of their stories. You and your partner play Mio and Zoe, a sci-fi author and a fantasy author lured to a publisher by a book deal that goes sideways, which gives each of you a turn as the genre expert. The only way out of the simulation they’re trapped in is to work together. Only one of you needs to own the game, since the second player can play the whole game with a free Friend’s Pass. Bring the friend who annotates their paperbacks.
2
It Takes Two
Time to beat: 13 hours
Cody and May are headed for divorce…but then they wake up as dolls in their own backyard, where a talking relationship book named Dr. Hakim sends them on a quest to fix their marriage. It’s an unconventional take on couple’s therapy. Will it work? It Takes Two turns that setup into a campaign where the couple has to work together. Each chapter hands you new abilities, from throwable nails and a swinging hammer to opposite-polarity magnets and rewinding time, so the mechanics keep shifting under your feet. Each chapter works as its own evening — one week, you’ll be wandering around a garden tree where talking squirrels are at war with wasps; another, you’ll be storming a toy space station guarded by a plush space baboon. Like Split Fiction and A Way Out, you only need one copy: The second player can grab a free Friend’s Pass.
1
Gears of War: E-Day
Time to beat: 14 hours
If your friend group can protect one night a week, this is the campaign to spend it on. Gears of War: E-Day is the longest campaign The Coalition has built. In it, Marcus Fenix and Dom Santiago are on the front lines of a desperate fight for survival as the Locust Horde erupts from underground, fourteen years before the original Gears of War. You can play solo, in two-player split-screen on console, or online with up to four players. Online co-op requires a Game Pass subscription that includes online multiplayer, so check everyone’s account before the first night. If your squad can’t commit to fourteen hours, the game also has a wave-survival mode called Horde Siege that gives your team another option. Block the calendar now, and send the invite before the Locust do.
