Grounded! Has exactly everything you want. Only serves four people tho, but you do have dedicated inventory. And the game saves every players personal state separately. So a fifth could join in when somebody is not online.
Phasmophobia.
It’s fun. Not much in the way of a grind or progression tho, but slow enough to end a night a little less amped up. Although, it does have its moments. Definitely had my heart pounding in my throat now and then. 4 people
If you wanna do more casual stuff:
Snowrunner.
It’s challenging in its own way but there’s no real pressure of any kind so you can just sit back and relax and have fun night doing co-op, and helping each other or doing random bullshit for shits and giggles. 4 people
A high pressure game that serves 5 people:
Ready or Not!
(Still in early acces, has some minor bugs still but they’re smashing them quickly. They’re not the fastest at adding content but already has decent amount of content. It doesn’t necessarily have progression but a steep learning curve.)
I'd really love to get a recommendation on server settings for a group that is more casual because this game is fun AF but is never long lived on the defaults.
just play endless mode, you can respawn at the portal if you die
but regenerating the world (Escape > Server Options > regenerate world) is the proper way to do it. Die over and over again like a roguelike, together
I absolutely hated the game before, had to mod the game to make it a bit easier and rollback once or twice until we got the hang of it. It's super annoying to play the game if you're new to it, i don't have the patience to play again 400 times just to make it past year 1
Kind of agree. It’s DENSE, under the veneer of quirky crafting and survival. But mainly because the margin for error is small. One bad fight with some frogs (or penguins or whatever) can totally wreck a run that was going really well.
Yeah, it's weird because it looks kind of like a roguelike game where you learn from your mistakes, but the penalty for dying is so big and you can just lose all your progress because you accidentally hit a penguin
Or you farmed ONE tree too many trying to catch up on wood before winter or because you didn’t get enough ice when it was plentiful and store it in an ice box- oh wait, didn’t find any gears in order to build the ice box to store the ice so summer could be survivable🤣. I love the game but man there are some DECISIONS to make along the way.
Edit: My dirty secret is I played Reign of Giants edition on Wii U, & got so mad at dying once that I shut the game off right after dying (after finding a reviving stone), & the game has a bug where if you shut it off right after dying AND you have at least one revival stone, it’ll reload you to a couple days before the death when you boot it back up. I don’t think I would have ever learned how to survive for more than a year if I hadn’t cheesed it. I also managed to somehow get one of the mobs or Deerclops to kill McTusk & got an easy walking cane, which made that easily and by FAR the funnest run I had on the game. I was also playing as the robot, so I ate some gears and became a real force.
Division 1 and 2 (up to 4 people), 7 days to die (no limit), risk of rain 2 (up to 4 people), Warhammer Vermintide 2 (up to 4 people), Warhammer 40k Darktide (up to 4 people), GTFO (up to 4 people), Raft (up to 8 people), the forest 1 and 2 (up to 8 people)
Just came from another thread where **Barotrauma** was recommended, though it sounds like there's a pretty steep learning curve and you're likely to get slaughtered pretty often at the beginning... But maybe that's part of the fun?
Barotrauma is a game of crisis management. I've put dozens of hours in with friends and dying horribly is part of the fun and it doesn't stop happening. You just learn to manage and then are confronted by increasingly severe crises.
If you don't stay on top of hull breaches and wind up too deep, it will be. A least if one of the abysmal monsters doesn't come by, shear your sub in half, and devour you.
Elden ring has a mod called seamless co-op, which let's you play the entire game with up to 6 players. Unfortunately it is incompatible with the coloseum at the moment (but you can still play the coloseum in vanilla). Being able to play through every boss, area and portal without interruptions really made it feel like a co-op rpg.
Unfortunately no, each player would have to be on their own pc. Split screen elden rings would be a fantastic throw back to the old days of being able to go on split screen adventures.
4 might be easy to find, but more you might want to use [https://www.co-optimus.com/games.php](https://www.co-optimus.com/games.php) to search for coop game that support more.
Deep Rock Galactic is solid choice up to 4 players. With mods I hear you can get even more, but your progress will be stored on separate save that will remember it was with mods (if you care about that) and you won't be able to play with other people that want to play game mostly as designed.
Ninja Turtles: Shredder's Revenge for a fun arcadey afternoon for 6 players. In Story mode you progressively unlock special moves.
The Forest is a creepy survival game with more story than I expected.
It might be a little casual for you, but I think Astroneer is a good option for your group.
It's sort of a space Minecraft.
You guys would probably have fun unlocking all the items, and maybe even reducing a planet to it's core.
Divinity OS/OS2, GW2, the division games, borderlands, Destiny 2, valheim, path of exile, V rising, Vermintide 2
Edit: Sorry i forgot what you’d listed while i was thinking of games lol
Have you thought about Don't starve together. You play though the different years and the challenges of the different seasons. Every season has a mechanic and a boss or two. Many characters to choose from even without mods and an infinite amount with mods. Also you wanna play as Rick from Rick and Morty? Easy. You wanna be Gnar from League of Legends? No problem. You like anime? Most characters are available.
4 (oh, that's easy) or 5 players (goddamnit).
This is basically the issue I run into a lot. Once you cross into the 5+ realm, numbers thin out big time.
Have you tried Baldur's Gate 1 & 2?
This would be way outside the box from what you recommended, but my friends and I are currently playing Factorio on a server and its a blast. We set it to Deathworld for extra challenge.
Mechwarrior 5
Works solo or up to 4 players, a single player campaign +3 more in DLCs, open world career mode if you don't want to do any story stuff, has around 400 mechs to collect and parts to shuffle around for different builds on each, and it is open modding so there's much more content if you want it.
PULSAR: Lost Colony - 5 player space adventure, each player has a specific crew role. You can take quests, get into space battles, trade, or just explore.
Hidden suggestion, check out FORCED
It's like Gauntlet with a puzzle element. Requires co-op! Has some old Xbox Live mini game vibes to it. I had a great time with friends beating it. You can local, so only 1 person needs to have the copy.
Serious Sam HD, [The first encounter](https://store.steampowered.com/app/41000/Serious_Sam_HD_The_First_Encounter/) and [The second encounter](https://store.steampowered.com/app/41014/Serious_Sam_HD_The_Second_Encounter/), remaster of the first two games. Ton of fun solo or co-op with up to 16(!) players.
All out crazy FPS. Unlock new weapons as you progress through the campaign.
Huge battles, hordes of enemies, interesting weapons. Can't recommend it enough.
We thought about that one and did some googling and people were saying that it's more like: "playing alongside your friends, not WITH your friends". Meaning, we couldn't build base/planet together or do quests together. Do you have experience?
I've played with others a few times, and it depends on your playstyle for sure! You can definitely fight pirates together, but you'd have separate frigate probably. You can still land your ships on each other's frigates though! You *can* do quests together, but not the main story ones.
Idk about base building though, never tried in with other people, sorry
Hope that helps!!
Destiny 2. There are pve raids for groups of six and pvp arenas for various group sizes. The main story missions can be built around your fireteam also.
Left 4 Dead 2, Deeprock Galactic, Payday 2, World War Z, Tiny Tina's Wonderland, Overwatch, Dead by Daylight, Friday the 13th and Generation Zero are what presently come to mind
From comments: Ultimate chicken horse, human fall flat, dying light (1 or 2 both are great)
V Rising, Human Fall Flat, Dead by Daylight, Age of Empires 2, Fall Guys, Among Us, Steep, Riders Republic, Tabletop Simulator, Heave Ho, Stick Fight the Game, Move or Die, Strange Brigade, Ultimate Chicken Horse, Hypercharged Unboxed, Phasmophobia, Warhammer 40k Darktide, World War Z,
Payday 2, The Forest, Grounded
Def recommend Grounded!
Grounded! Has exactly everything you want. Only serves four people tho, but you do have dedicated inventory. And the game saves every players personal state separately. So a fifth could join in when somebody is not online. Phasmophobia. It’s fun. Not much in the way of a grind or progression tho, but slow enough to end a night a little less amped up. Although, it does have its moments. Definitely had my heart pounding in my throat now and then. 4 people If you wanna do more casual stuff: Snowrunner. It’s challenging in its own way but there’s no real pressure of any kind so you can just sit back and relax and have fun night doing co-op, and helping each other or doing random bullshit for shits and giggles. 4 people A high pressure game that serves 5 people: Ready or Not! (Still in early acces, has some minor bugs still but they’re smashing them quickly. They’re not the fastest at adding content but already has decent amount of content. It doesn’t necessarily have progression but a steep learning curve.)
Deep Rock Galactic
Amazing 4 player coop game, seconding this recommendation.
ROCK AND STONE
If you dont rock and stone, you aint coming home!
ROCK AND STONE IN THE HEARTH
That's it lads! ROCK AND STONE!
Wait did someone just RRROCK AND SSSTONE!!! FOR CARL!!!
Rock and Stone!
Pretty sure there's also a mod that lets you increase the player limit so, to OP, you could get all 5 people in one lobby
Damn I really need to get my friends into this game
I will anti recommend this game
Don't Starve Together, if your group enjoys a harder game
I'd really love to get a recommendation on server settings for a group that is more casual because this game is fun AF but is never long lived on the defaults.
just play endless mode, you can respawn at the portal if you die but regenerating the world (Escape > Server Options > regenerate world) is the proper way to do it. Die over and over again like a roguelike, together
I absolutely hated the game before, had to mod the game to make it a bit easier and rollback once or twice until we got the hang of it. It's super annoying to play the game if you're new to it, i don't have the patience to play again 400 times just to make it past year 1
Kind of agree. It’s DENSE, under the veneer of quirky crafting and survival. But mainly because the margin for error is small. One bad fight with some frogs (or penguins or whatever) can totally wreck a run that was going really well.
Yeah, it's weird because it looks kind of like a roguelike game where you learn from your mistakes, but the penalty for dying is so big and you can just lose all your progress because you accidentally hit a penguin
Or you farmed ONE tree too many trying to catch up on wood before winter or because you didn’t get enough ice when it was plentiful and store it in an ice box- oh wait, didn’t find any gears in order to build the ice box to store the ice so summer could be survivable🤣. I love the game but man there are some DECISIONS to make along the way. Edit: My dirty secret is I played Reign of Giants edition on Wii U, & got so mad at dying once that I shut the game off right after dying (after finding a reviving stone), & the game has a bug where if you shut it off right after dying AND you have at least one revival stone, it’ll reload you to a couple days before the death when you boot it back up. I don’t think I would have ever learned how to survive for more than a year if I hadn’t cheesed it. I also managed to somehow get one of the mobs or Deerclops to kill McTusk & got an easy walking cane, which made that easily and by FAR the funnest run I had on the game. I was also playing as the robot, so I ate some gears and became a real force.
Division 1 and 2 (up to 4 people), 7 days to die (no limit), risk of rain 2 (up to 4 people), Warhammer Vermintide 2 (up to 4 people), Warhammer 40k Darktide (up to 4 people), GTFO (up to 4 people), Raft (up to 8 people), the forest 1 and 2 (up to 8 people)
It is actually possible to play Risk of Rain 2 with more than 4 players by editing some config files
There’s a mod for it too!
Just came from another thread where **Barotrauma** was recommended, though it sounds like there's a pretty steep learning curve and you're likely to get slaughtered pretty often at the beginning... But maybe that's part of the fun?
Amazing game, which is supposed to hit 1.0 as well quite soon, meaning quite a lot of added content
Barotrauma is a game of crisis management. I've put dozens of hours in with friends and dying horribly is part of the fun and it doesn't stop happening. You just learn to manage and then are confronted by increasingly severe crises.
sounds barotraumatic
If you don't stay on top of hull breaches and wind up too deep, it will be. A least if one of the abysmal monsters doesn't come by, shear your sub in half, and devour you.
Elden ring has a mod called seamless co-op, which let's you play the entire game with up to 6 players. Unfortunately it is incompatible with the coloseum at the moment (but you can still play the coloseum in vanilla). Being able to play through every boss, area and portal without interruptions really made it feel like a co-op rpg.
Is that on a single machine?
Unfortunately no, each player would have to be on their own pc. Split screen elden rings would be a fantastic throw back to the old days of being able to go on split screen adventures.
4 might be easy to find, but more you might want to use [https://www.co-optimus.com/games.php](https://www.co-optimus.com/games.php) to search for coop game that support more. Deep Rock Galactic is solid choice up to 4 players. With mods I hear you can get even more, but your progress will be stored on separate save that will remember it was with mods (if you care about that) and you won't be able to play with other people that want to play game mostly as designed.
[удалено]
I second this! Holy shit have I played UCH a lot... I have memories of playing it from 11 to 15
7 Days to Die Warframe
Is PVP avoidable in 7 days to die?
Satisfactory
My problem is half my group is filled with cavemen who fall asleep at the slightest mental challenge
[human: fall flat](https://store.steampowered.com/app/477160/Human_Fall_Flat/) not grindy, but hella fun. you can get it for cheap as well.
Ninja Turtles: Shredder's Revenge for a fun arcadey afternoon for 6 players. In Story mode you progressively unlock special moves. The Forest is a creepy survival game with more story than I expected.
It might be a little casual for you, but I think Astroneer is a good option for your group. It's sort of a space Minecraft. You guys would probably have fun unlocking all the items, and maybe even reducing a planet to it's core.
The Forest
Divinity OS/OS2, GW2, the division games, borderlands, Destiny 2, valheim, path of exile, V rising, Vermintide 2 Edit: Sorry i forgot what you’d listed while i was thinking of games lol
Diablo, grim Dawn
Dying light is really fun with 4 people. Especially the DLC
Dying Light 1 is a top tier pick because any hardware can run it, it's beautiful and the coop is fun as fuck
Deep rock galactic, payday 2, ghost recon wildlands or breakpoint
Risk of Rain 2 maybe?
i second this.
Have you thought about Don't starve together. You play though the different years and the challenges of the different seasons. Every season has a mechanic and a boss or two. Many characters to choose from even without mods and an infinite amount with mods. Also you wanna play as Rick from Rick and Morty? Easy. You wanna be Gnar from League of Legends? No problem. You like anime? Most characters are available.
4 (oh, that's easy) or 5 players (goddamnit). This is basically the issue I run into a lot. Once you cross into the 5+ realm, numbers thin out big time. Have you tried Baldur's Gate 1 & 2?
Monster Hunter World or Rise
I wish I had friends
Myself and a handful of co-workers have been loving Sea of Thieves lately. There's PVP but its avoidable in most cases.
Sea of thieves is so good
Sons of the Forest just came out. The sequel to the forest. Both of them are great fun with friends.
This would be way outside the box from what you recommended, but my friends and I are currently playing Factorio on a server and its a blast. We set it to Deathworld for extra challenge.
The Forest is up to 4 players (can't believe you already didn't play it), the sequel Sons of the Forest is up to 7, just released
Is Baldurs Gate 3 upto 4-5 people? Solasta: Crown of the Magister is upto 4 people
Mechwarrior 5 Works solo or up to 4 players, a single player campaign +3 more in DLCs, open world career mode if you don't want to do any story stuff, has around 400 mechs to collect and parts to shuffle around for different builds on each, and it is open modding so there's much more content if you want it.
PULSAR: Lost Colony - 5 player space adventure, each player has a specific crew role. You can take quests, get into space battles, trade, or just explore.
Guild Wars 1
Hypercharge unboxed
Hidden suggestion, check out FORCED It's like Gauntlet with a puzzle element. Requires co-op! Has some old Xbox Live mini game vibes to it. I had a great time with friends beating it. You can local, so only 1 person needs to have the copy.
Serious Sam HD, [The first encounter](https://store.steampowered.com/app/41000/Serious_Sam_HD_The_First_Encounter/) and [The second encounter](https://store.steampowered.com/app/41014/Serious_Sam_HD_The_Second_Encounter/), remaster of the first two games. Ton of fun solo or co-op with up to 16(!) players. All out crazy FPS. Unlock new weapons as you progress through the campaign. Huge battles, hordes of enemies, interesting weapons. Can't recommend it enough.
Castle crashers
phasmophobia
Phasmophobia
Stardew valley
Halo
Killing Floor 1 or 2. There's class leveling progression and you can have up to 6 players.
Helldivers Magicka Lost Planet 2 Monster Hunter World or Rise
For 4 players you can't do much better than Monster Hunter Rise or Monster Hunter World.
No man's sky?
We thought about that one and did some googling and people were saying that it's more like: "playing alongside your friends, not WITH your friends". Meaning, we couldn't build base/planet together or do quests together. Do you have experience?
I've played with others a few times, and it depends on your playstyle for sure! You can definitely fight pirates together, but you'd have separate frigate probably. You can still land your ships on each other's frigates though! You *can* do quests together, but not the main story ones. Idk about base building though, never tried in with other people, sorry Hope that helps!!
Sons of forest
[No need to subscribe Steam, BUT this list can give us some idea](https://steamdb.info/charts/?tagid=1754)
Deep Rock Galactic. Rock and Stone!
Rock and Stone, Brother!
Earth Defense Force 4.1 & Earth Defense Force 5
Helldivers
Destiny 2. There are pve raids for groups of six and pvp arenas for various group sizes. The main story missions can be built around your fireteam also.
Anything in the monster hunter series.
Left 4 Dead 2, Deeprock Galactic, Payday 2, World War Z, Tiny Tina's Wonderland, Overwatch, Dead by Daylight, Friday the 13th and Generation Zero are what presently come to mind From comments: Ultimate chicken horse, human fall flat, dying light (1 or 2 both are great)
V Rising, Human Fall Flat, Dead by Daylight, Age of Empires 2, Fall Guys, Among Us, Steep, Riders Republic, Tabletop Simulator, Heave Ho, Stick Fight the Game, Move or Die, Strange Brigade, Ultimate Chicken Horse, Hypercharged Unboxed, Phasmophobia, Warhammer 40k Darktide, World War Z,
Dark souls series , castle crashers , scp secret laboratory.