Ask Lemmy

Pampas and selene: the maze of demons seems fun

WRT Secret of Mana - maybe play the first little bit yourself until you unlock a second character, then save and you two can start from there. Trust me.

Also, I know it's a side scroller, but Castle Crashers is great fun if you haven't tried it yet.

Pretty much any of the SNES era arcade ports: TMNT, Knights of the Round, Sunset Riders... Though maybe not all of them in one sitting.

That's all I've got off the top of my head. Happy gaming!

Golf With Your Friends literally brings my family together

Untitled Goose Game — Surprised it wasn’t mentioned.

Rayman Legends. My literal childhood on the Xbox One.

• Cult of the Lamb
• Ship of Fools

Quite surprised these are not on here yet.

My mandatory Sky: Children of the Light mention.

Lots of exploring and cooperating with irl co-players (E: you'd have to play on different devices, but one could play on a big screen, and the other can join and use their handheld mostly as a controller) and strangers, some puzzles/quests, some mild scary/dangerous parts, lots of lore, incredible graphics and good soundtrack. It's an open ended game (though some features only become available after your first complete run through) and there is an aspect of grinding if you want to get IGC for cosmetics but you're doing it flying through this gorgeous landscape, and there is a daily cap so you can be pretty chill about it, and IAP are pretty easy to avoid (for me anyway) and are never necessary for gameplay.

There are some issues with bugs, and the company growing and decisions clearly being made by shareholders rather then developers, but at this point it is still absolutely worth playing.

A friend and I had a little fun with Ultimate Chicken Horse. It's a goofy little Mario Maker type of game where you create levels and challenge each other to complete them but I think you can also run through them cooperatively.

My kids and I have loved these:

Coop:

• Kingdom Two Crowns
• Wizard of Legend

Competitive:

• Stick Fight
• Bopl Battle
• Wand Wars

What the Golf? is lot of wacky fun. It's not really golf and has like 500 different levels, some wildly creative.

On xbox there’s a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles game that’s fun for co-op

Most of my suggestions that I've been playing with my brother are already posted, so I'll just add 3 more I haven't seen yet:

• Human Fall Flat
• Enter the gungeon
• Vampire survivors

9 Parchments - Surprising gem with some depth and a lot of replay value. Reminds me a lot of the Harry Potter universe. We fire this up almost every weekend. I recommend setting friendly fire to 'self' instead, as it encourages actual cooperative play.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Shredder's Revenge - this is just a hack n slash quarter eater, but it's mindless fun.

I’d like to add for switch: Snipperclips, Yoshi‘s crafted world and Pode

Have you tried Broforce? It seems like a run and gun, but the key is thinking how to get out of situations.

Some retro suggestions:

• Super Mario Galaxy 1/2 - it sounds like your cousin is probably too old for this but this has one of the best "younger sibling" modes. They help collect and shoot bits. Which ultimately doesn't matter much
• The Legend of Zelda 4 Swords Adventure - It's basically multi-player Link to the Past! Bonus points if you dig up a GameCube, link cables, and GBAs
• Kirby Super Star - a mix of competitive and coop games
• Super Mario World (any) - you take turns but if you don't go 6 levels without dying to his one it can be fun
• Halo 1-3 + ODST - Great classic shooters, the campaigns are customizable for difficulty, and a little kid probably loves alien shooters
• Borderlands 1/2 - Looter shooters with a sense of irreverance
• Dead Rising 2/Off the Record and 3 - Zombie hoard murdering with combo weapons
• The Simpsons '91, Battletoads, TMNT, Streets of Rage, etc - Beat Em Ups are great for multi-player

My list of coop games

• Baldur's Gate 3
• Broforce
• Castle Crashers
• Children of Morta
• Divinity Original Sin 2
• For the King
• "FORCED: Slightly Better Edition"
• Helldivers 1
• Lovers in a Dangerous Spacetime
• Rocket League

^ All of these are on Steam.

I've been playing Broforce with my buddy recently. Lots of shooting and blowing shit up platformer but pretty funny if you're into the classic action movies like Rambo, Commando, etc.

Gears of War if you want to branch into 3rd person cover shooter. (Gears 5 is the only one on steam I think.)

The Lego games usually have couch co-op I think and I've enjoyed those a lot with younger people.

My family loves:

• Spelunky (sidescroller Indiana-Jones-themed platformer action-roguelite)

• Pikmin 3 (3D silly minion-bossing treasure hunting)

• River City Girls (sidescrolling beat-em-up with amazing soundtrack)

• Moving Out (3D "goofy physics" furniture-moving obstacle course)

• Kirby and the Lost World (3D action adventure)

• Stardew Valley (isometric farm sim)

All of these are fully coöp from the beginning.

Borderlands and Full Metal Furies spring to mind.

Don't Starve: Together

Beyond all the other great suggestions, you can use the games browser on co-optimus to help narrow things down.

If you wanna go retro at all you should check out UFO50. 50 very old school style games, many of which have 2 player modes.

+1 for a tentative Overcooked suggestion but only if you think you and your cousin won't strangle each other in a high stress scenario. I can't play the game with my wife because she's too goofy and I'm too serious.

Bread and Fred looks like a lot of fun but I haven't actually played it yet.

Diablo 3 was fun playing couch co-op and reminded me more than a little bit of playing Gauntlet in the good old days.

• Moving Out
• Lovers in a dangerous Spacetime
• A way out (sensible topics though, violence/jail)

Phogs - simple puzzle platformer where you play an end of a 2 headed snake dog.

Lovers in a dangerous space time - share control of your spaceship to rescue cute animals. Take turns driving, manning the weapons or shields. Top down camera

Overcooked 1 and 2 - flammable chaotic cooking adventures. Top down camera.

Trine 1-4 are all pretty decent for some side scrolling puzzle action platforming.

Diablo 3 (on console as pc doesn't have local for some stupid reason) is a great action RPG.

Smash Brothers

It takes Two

Portal 2

Mario kart

TMNT: Shredder's Revenge

I think Stardew Valley has a Co-op mode? I'm not entirely sure

• Castle Crashers
• Party Animals
• Overcooked (be ready to hate everyone you are playing with)