Best Cooperative Board Games of 2024 – Review and Comparison

If you are after the best cooperative board games, you must enjoy teamwork and collaborative effort. True coop board games pit all players against the game system itself rather than against each other as in ‘traditional’ competitive games.

It means that players have to form teams that collaborate, help, and support each other. At times, some may even need to sacrifice themselves for a team win. Usually, cooperative gameplay implies that everyone wins or loses together, but there are exceptions.

For the last ten years, coop board games have been rapidly increasing in popularity. It appeals to large audiences who enjoy the feel and thrill of team spirit and collaboration.

The list of the top 10 best-rated coop board games below includes full coop board games only. If you are after board games that feature traitors, we will cover them in one of our upcoming reviews.

Best Rated Cooperative Board Games – Top 10

1. Best Cooperative Board Game Ever – Gloomhaven

Each scenario is a separate story loaded with monsters and treasures. They feature objectives, special rules, and awesome dungeon crawler craziness! As you would expect from excellent fantasy RPG games, character classes in Gloomhaven are unique, with each one having a twist. There is a learning curve if you want to learn how to play them efficiently, but the process is quite enjoyable. At the start of a turn, players simultaneously choose two cards from their hands and execute them in initiative order. Since players are not allowed to discuss their actions and choices, it makes the gameplay and collaboration semi-secretive. Although the actions are straightforward for a skirmish game (move, attack, loot, heal, magic, etc.), hand management is relatively complex.

In addition, you have to coordinate your movements and attacks with other players without discussing which card you play. You are allowed to use general terms and express your intentions, but never anything detailed. Combat is resolved using attack decks which limit the luck factor compared to dice. Attack decks are highly customizable so you can build the one that matches your preferred combat style. Overall, session after session, you will find yourself hooked into leveling-up your hero, who will eventually retire to allow new characters of more powerful classes to enter the game. The city of Gloomhaven features a development path, as it also evolves together with players by introducing new rules progressively. Are you ready for the biggest gaming ride?

2. Best Legacy Cooperative Board Game – Pandemic Legacy: Season 2

The fight was not fair and not even. Barely anyone survived. The ones that did have managed to stay away from large cities but have lost contact with the world.

Now, in Pandemic Legacy: Season 2, players get a fresh start as scientists located in floating stations called ‘havens’ somewhere in the Atlantic Ocean. They have not been in touch with the rest of the World for over 70 years. It is time to go on a 12-month journey to re-discover the new world.

The gameplay is similar to the original Pandemic game and Season 1. Scenarios are stitched together to create a deep thematic campaign experience. Moreover, the decisions you make and the actions you take have a long-term or even permanent effect. In other words, you are shaping the world with permanent, irreversible changes. In addition, this time around, changes will get carried across to Season 3 when it comes out.

Each player takes on the role of a character that will accompany you throughout the whole campaign. Over time, the character grows on you, and you manage to build a deep connection. Mainly, because you get to develop and improve your character the way you want it.

In general, movement around the world is straightforward and is driven by lines connecting different locations. Players can hop from one city to another traveling by land or sea. Depending on the scenario you will find yourself visiting different areas of the world trying to prevent diseases, discovering cures, building infrastructure, or helping your teammates.

Overall, the Legacy mechanism of the ever-changing world adds another dimension to an already captivating theme and streamlined gameplay. Rules change partway through the game, and new components get added, forcing players to adapt their gameplay throughout the campaign.

3. Best Cooperative Game For 2 Players – Codenames Duet

You also get a small stand with a double-sided key card. Each player should only see one side of the card as it depicts agents and assassins positions amongst the 25 cards on the table. The objective of the game is to give each other clues to be able to uncover hiding secret agents. At the same time, you do not want to get this wrong as revealing assassins instead ends the game. On a turn, you have to give a clue to the other player by saying one word and one number. The other player needs to guess all cards on the table that relate to your hint. For example, if you say ‘3 milk’, then the board has three agents that can be uncovered, and they are somehow related to milk. The other player needs to figure out the relationship and pick the cards to reveal.

To win, you must find 15 secret agent cards in a limited number of turns (usually 9). Alternatively, failing to uncover agents in time or revealing an assassin instead ends the game in defeat. Overall, Codenames Duet features a very creative yet an extremely simple mechanism to discover clues. The tension the game manages to create is remarkable. You always find yourself juggling between trying to find as many agent cards as possible in one go versus staying clear of assassins.

4. Best Survival Co-op Board Game – Robinson Crusoe

The effects of choosing one thing over the other may seed consequences in later turns. As you play along, you need to check the morale from time to time. If the level is low, everything else in the game becomes slightly more difficult.

Additionally, you need to take care of producing food and wood. Food is required to keep players going and not to starve. Wood, however, is used for construction purposes.

The main phase of Robinson Crusoe is an action phase. Each player gets to place his pawn on one of seven action areas he/she wants to trigger. Some of the actions include hunting, exploration, gathering resources, arranging the camp and resting.

Once the pawns are in place, you get to execute the selected actions in a given sequence. And oh boy, things can go wrong here. For most actions, you need to roll three dice. One for success, one for injury and the last one for drawing an adventure card.

Hunting is both rewarding and dangerous. The only issue is that you do not know which animal you are going to meet in the wild. It could be a goat, or it could be a gorilla. If you are successful at hunting, you get rewarded with food and skin. The latter can be used to improve your camp and palisade.

Also, when building tools, you need to follow a tech tree. It defines the order you need to develop your tools in. For example, you need to learn how to make a fire before you can use the cooking pot.

Thankfully, for risk-averse, the game allows to play it safe. Every time you want to take less risk or guarantee the success of an action, you can place an additional pawn on a given action area.  At the same time, it is a balancing act as the second pawn could have performed an additional action instead.

Finally, at the end of the turn, you have to roll the weather dice. However, the weather roll can be punishing and deadly, especially if you are not ready for it. To prepare, you need to have the roof above your head to protect yourself from rain and snow. Additionally, building a palisade guards your hut against wild animal attacks.

Apart from Robinson Crusoe being one of the best co-op board games we have played, it also works well with almost any number of players. In fact, it has earned its place amongst the best single player board games out there in one of our solo player shootouts, check it out for more details.

5. Best Cooperative Card Game – Legendary: A Marvel Deck Building Game

The game plays equally well with any number of players from one to five. It is incredibly dynamic and only takes around 45 minutes to play. At the same time, it manages to pack a surprising amount of action into a relatively short game.

In Legendary, players take on roles of S.H.I.E.L.D agents who assemble a team to stop the evil mastermind.

The board game setup takes some time, despite it being a card game. You need to select a scenario (called schemes) to play and one mastermind to fight with. Lastly, you need to form the villain and hero decks.

Each player starts the game with a deck of 12 agents. The cards can be used to recruit superheroes or fight bad guys. As players progress in the game, they get to grow their deck by hiring superheroes. It provides for additional firepower, special abilities, and prepares agents to face the mastermind.

Once the game starts, the player turns are pretty straightforward. First, you need to draw one card from the Villain Deck. You can draw either a villain or an adverse event, both are bad. Next, the main action starts where players play cards from their hands. In essence, you either recruit a mighty hero to join the team or fight the baddies at various map locations. Additionally, some cards may represent supporting effects. For example, drawing more cards, increasing your fighting power, or moving some villains around. The best part of Legendary is that you can create devastating card combinations and chain reactions. Building an efficient card deck is essential to winning the game. It allows you to plan your attack upfront and deliver the strike consisting of multiple connected attacks dealing immense damage.

6. Best Horror Cooperative Game Mansions Of Madness: Second Edition

Before you and your board game friends plunge into the horror-action, you need to read the brief thematic introduction. It is short but does an excellent job at setting up the scene.

Next, you find yourself in a room together with other players. Without any clear directions, you need to start exploring the mansion to find items and clues. Most of the time clues lead you to other clues, but you need to pay attention to the text and your gut feel. The game is also good at deceiving you and forcing you to go down the wrong path.

As you advance your way through the mansion, you get to face monsters spawned by the mansion’s keeper. Pick your battles wisely as sometimes fleeing makes more sense than fighting.

The best part of the game for me is the fact that you never know the scenario objective up until the final stages. In other words, you need to search almost the entire house to discover the win condition and understand what on earth is going on.

The most innovative aspect of the game is the usage of an App. You can run it on a computer or a tablet, to take you through the specific setup of a scenario. In addition, the app will also manage events, resolve combats and keep track of monsters and stuff for you.

App support is where many board games have failed before, yet Mansions of Madness has managed to nail it. In fact, it may feature the best app integration experience out there. Component quality is another area where the game stands head and shoulders above many. It is packed with gorgeous miniatures, characters or monsters some of which are huge. The artwork on cards and the rulebook is beautiful and thematic. Room tiles and the map, are well thought out and feature even the smallest details. All components look and feel both aesthetically and thematically pleasant to create an immersive horror board game experience.

Lastly, the game features an incredibly interactive player experience as it pushes players’ teamwork and strategy to the next level. Every turn the game forces you to make critical decisions that may have long lasting effects for the length of the game. Should you split the group to encourage a faster investigation? Do you leave a slow companion behind when fleeing an unholy god? And much, much more.

7. Best Storytelling Coop Board Game – T.I.M.E Stories

To play T.I.M.E Stories, you need two parts, both contained in the base game:

• A scenario deck (or decks) that includes all the characters, special rules, setup, maps, locations, etc.
• Generic components required to play the scenario: board, dice, objective tokens, resources, player tokens, etc

Depending on the scenario, the resources may have specific meanings such as ammunition, money, magic, sanity, and so on.

T.I.M.E Stories comes with the Asylum scenario in the box. But it’s better if we don’t spoil it for you and you get to discover it yourself. That’s what this game is about: discovering an adventure, a mystery by exploring a deck of cards. We call this a “Decksploring”.

After playing Asylum, you are likely to want to buy one of the seven scenarios available at the moment. Every scenario plays on its own timeline and sometimes even a different universe. Also, each scenario features special rules and mechanisms, making it unique.

When starting a new T.I.M.E Stories scenario, you need to choose the character to host during the adventure.

Then your team will start exploring different locations, sometimes unlock new ones, encounter non-playable characters, fight them or make allies with them. And mostly gather information.

The bad news is you only have a limited time in your host and if you don’t complete the objective in time, it is likely that you will have to start over. You will most likely need several “runs” to finish a scenario, each time, a little more efficient, knowing what you learned from last time.

One really cool constraint in T.I.M.E Stories is that, if you’re the only one to visit a given card, you cannot show or read it to your companions. You’ll have to come up with your own description instead. Here comes a welcome touch of roleplay that is also fun.

8. Best Cooperative Board Game For Kids – Forbidden Desert

During the setup, you’ll form a board that consists of desert tiles laid out in a 5×5 grid. Next, players choose their characters, and you ready to go!

Turns consist of four actions that players can take in any order. For each action players can choose between moving, cleaning sand, excavating, picking up a part and sharing water.

Being in the desert, water is vital. If any player runs out of it, he dies, and everybody loses.

Before you can search for parts, you need to uncover a specific location that indicates the column and the row of a given piece. It represents a clever mechanism with an aspect of puzzle solving which fits the game and the theme perfectly.

Also, every turn, you have to draw some sandstorm cards that help the storm to advance and drop more sand on the map. Moreover, as the game progresses, the storm intensifies and causes more harm.

Overall, the feeling of tension and time running out is part of the game’s DNA. It forces players to take prompt decisions and coordinate their efforts efficiently. Making mistakes is generally not the end of the world, but given the circumstances, the game can be unforgiving.

9. Best Zombie Themed Coop – Zombicide: Green Horde

Secondly, the game represents the most refined board game in the series. It feels that designers have taken board gamers’ feedback on board and made the game more streamlined, balanced and fun. Zombicide: Green Horde is the finest version of any zombie board games you can buy today! One of the main changes introduced in the game is the concept of noise. The more noise you make, the more zombies you attract. Depending on the circumstances, it may be a good thing as you can use it to give you a tactical advantage. For example, you may make noise on purpose to distract zombies. In the meantime, other players could focus on scouting, searching or fighting other zombies.

Moreover, Zombicide: Green Horde features a fantastic leveling-up mechanism. As you kill zombies, you gain experience points that are used to attain new levels improving your stats and making you stronger. A very welcome addition, but nothing groundbreaking you may think. You are right, so far.

What is crazy, however, is that zombies get to level up also! In other words, when your character levels up and becomes tougher, so do zombies.

In fact, the level of zombie advance gets determined by the most advanced character in the team. This mechanic on its own uncovers additional tactical decisions your party needs to make. Who should level up first? When? Who should kill the next zombie? And many more.

10. Best Investigation Coop – Mysterium

In the game, players take on roles of mediums who are trying to interpret messages from the ghost. No pressure, but the team only has seven hours, or turns, to do so.

One of the players gets to take on the role of the ghost. The only way the ghost can communicate with other players is by using cards that have illustrations.

When the ghost takes its turn, some illustration cards are selected and get handed over to the mediums. Using those cards, the ghost tries to pass on a particular message to the mediums. But what is he trying to convey?

When mediums take their turn, they have to interpret the “supernatural messages” (the cards) and make intuitive decisions to discover the murderer, location and the weapon. The ghost can then indicated whether the mediums are on the right track on not. The game goes on until the mediums manage to solve the case or the time runs out.

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