Best Cooperative Board Games of 2025 – 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

Gloomgaven is a board game of thematic and tactical combat wrapped in an amazing an immersive fantasy storytelling.

The game has caught the board gaming world by surprise to become the highest-rated board game of all times in a matter of months.

At the center of the map is the fantasy city of Gloomhaven surrounded by 95 locations, each representing a different scenario.

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?

Pandemic Legacy: Season 2 is the latest episode of the highly successful Pandemic Legacy series. The game features a full-cooperative experience where every player has an instrumental role in the overall success.

The term ‘Legacy’ implies that the physical game (cards, board, etc.) changes throughout the game sessions, creating a unique story. Characters might die, cities may fall, and cure may never be found.

During Season 1, multiple dramatic pandemic breakouts have put the World on its knees. Players had to fight viruses, find cures, and save cities.

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.

Following the massive success of the original Codenames game, Codenames Duet takes the same gameplay approach and adapts it for two players.

Most of the time, two-player board games are competitive, with players facing each other in a head to head encounter. 

Codenames Duet, however, takes a different approach creating a unique two-player collaborative experience where players win or lose together.

The board setup contains 25 randomly chosen cards that have one word written on each card. Those cards represent people who are either secret agents or assassins.

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.

Robinson Crusoe: Adventures on the Cursed Island draws inspiration from the eponym book written by Daniel Defoe and published in 1719.

Depending on the scenario, you will either build a bonfire, fight cannibals, run from lava, capture King Kong, or even build a family.

Not only do scenarios have different goals, but they also feature specific rules, actions, events, and weather. As a result, each scenario is unique and highly thematic.

At the start of a turn, an event gets triggered requiring players to make a decision.

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.

Well, for once, the game that says everything in its name!

Legendary: A Marvel Deck Building Game is a deck-building game of superheroes set in the Marvel universe.

The game is both cooperative and competitive at the same time.

Cooperative in a sense that all players win if they defeat the mastermind.

And competitive, since the player with the most points at the end of the game wins.

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.

Oooh, the thrills of Mansions of Madness! The panic, the despair! The perfect horror co-op experience!

Players take on roles of investigators who explore the Mansion (and sometimes the outdoors too), discover clues and fight monsters to uncover mysterious plots.

The game sets the scene in the Lovecraft horror universe created by H.P. Lovecraft in the early 20th century. Also known as Cthulhu Mythos, the universe features a set of monsters and gods that influence the World in a very unholy way.

The game features four unique scenarios that can be played standalone in no particular order.

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.

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.

T.I.M.E Stories is a fantastic game for playing narrative adventures as a team of investigators. As temporal agents from the future, you are sent back in time by the T.I.M.E agency to protect humanity. You get to take bodies of beings from various realities to complete missions. Your objective is to prevent paradoxes and temporal faults that threaten the very existence of our world. Prepare yourself for solving mysteries and stopping evil at all cost.  Failing is not an option as you get sent back in time to retry resolving the mission until you finally succeed.

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.

Forbidden Desert is an adventure game based on a hugely successful predecessor Forbidden Island.

Players are tasked to find four parts of the flying machine to be able to escape the desert.

Unfortunately, the desert storm is picking up and will make matters worse. It moves the locations (tiles) around and slows down players by placing sand everywhere.

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.

Zombicide: Green Horde is the latest addition to the immensely successful Zombicide board game family.

The game represents a survival challenge for up to six people and improves the gameplay compared to its predecessors in multiple ways.

Unlike other zombie board games, it features two major twists that make it unique.

Firstly, as you can tell from the box cover, the game sets its theme in medieval fantasy ages. Hence, you get all the thematic attributes to come with it – swords, magic, zombie orcs and much more. Well, it’s called Green Horde for a reason.

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.

At first, you may think that Mysterium is a twisted version of Clue. But in reality, it is much more than that.

You need to work as a team to solve a murder case. Part of the puzzle is to find the murderer, the location, and the weapon. In other words, full-on logical deduction engagement with your left part of the brain, mostly.

The twist is that the ghost of the victim is still floating around the house. It changes your discovery and solving approach as you need to use your intuition instead.

Let’s perhaps wait and see what our right part of the brain has to say.

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.

Fully Cooperative vs. Semi-Cooperative Board Games

Technically, there are two types of cooperative games, full-cooperative and semi-cooperative. The difference is that full-coop board games have all participants playing against the game and are more known as traditional cooperative games.

On the other hand, semi-cooperative board games are not as straightforward. Most of the time, they represent two or more teams playing against each other or one team playing against one bad guy (played by one of the participants). In addition, some semi-coop games use secret identities and traitors where players don’t know each other’s side. This naturally, creates a sense of suspicion and paranoia drastically different from the team spirit of a traditional full-coop board game. 

What is Deck Building?

Deck building is a mechanism used in game design. It implies that each player starts the game with a small deck made of fairly basic cards. As the game progresses, each player will have opportunities to buy stronger cards and add them to her deck. Which means that once the deck is empty and the discard pile gets re-shuffled, players will be able to draw and play much more powerful cards and actions.

What is a Dungeon Crawler?

A Dungeon Crawler is a game where a team of adventurers gets to explore a dungeon, fight monsters and loot treasure. So the name originally comes from a fantasy role-playing game world, typically Dungeons&Dragons. Those days, the boundaries have evolved, and it is not necessarily limited to fantasy, neither it has to be in a dungeon!!! Typically, Mansions of Madness qualifies as a dungeon crawler, even though you are “crawling” in a house and it has a horror theme, not fantasy!

Full Vs. Semi Cooperative Board Games

In Full Cooperative board game, players play purely against the game.

Conversely, in semi co-op board games a couple of variations may be introduced, such as:

• On top of the team objectives, players also have personal hidden objectives
• One of the players plays as a dungeon master against all other players
• One or more players may convert to traitors throughout the game and have their objectives changed

Additional Benefits of Coop Tabletop Games

According to the Team Building Kits, there are a number of benefits that cooperative play brings to the table:

• Improved Human Interaction
• Team building
• Fun, enjoyable and productive family
• Increased happiness
• Reduced stress
• Health improvement
• Practicing goal setting and patience