Mechs Vs. minions might be the most amazing game no other groups I know have played.

Jaws of lion

Gloomhaven

I have to think hard about which of my games are co-op.

MvM was the first corporative one I got and it's great. Beside that I think I only have Spirit Island, Tiny Epic Dungeons and Dice Throne Adventures.

But I do have 2 outstanding Kickstarter projects I'm waiting for. Valor and Villainy and Tidal Blades 2.

Since I already tried TB2 + V&V on tabletop simulator i think I can already rank them.

So:

1. TB2
2. Valor and Villainy
3. Mechs vs Minions
4. Tiny Epic Dungeons
5. Dice Throne Adventures
6. Spirit Island

1. Arkham Horror LCG: A perfect mix of narrative and mechanics. Just enough RPG to be fun, but not so obsessed with stats and inventory as to be fiddly (*ahem* Gloomhaven).
2. Forbidden Desert: This is my go-to for introducing someone to co-op games. It's simple enough to grasp quickly, but the game can still be quite challenging. Funny that this game de-throned Pandemic from this spot, considering they are both designed by the same person (Matt Leacock).
3. Burgle Bros: Probably the closest a board game has ever felt like a video game (probably because it is inspired by a video game). Theme and mechanics are married beautifully, and the art and whimsy are very unique.

1. Spirit Island
2. Arkham Horror LCG
3. Aeon's End

Honourable mention: Sentinels of the Multiverse, Marvel Champions, Pandemic, Flash Point, and The Crew.

The original Legacy of Aeon's end is very easy. For me it was perfect as it was my very first "real" board game, but I wouldn't recommend starting there if you have more experience with co-op deck builders.

Legacy of Gravehold (second legacy box) is a lot harder. So maybe one of the boxes that offer campaign options but that aren't legacy boxes.

You play as a member of an academy whose given a mech, your teacher sends you out on missions to go use the mech to fight little minions.

The most amazing mechanic to the game is you have programming cards that you use to program your mech to “move forward” “attack” “turn” “jump” that kinda thing… but how those little shitty minions damage you is by messing up your program… so as the game goes on and you take damage you might be running into walls, or turning the wrong way and attacking your friend, or whatever. So that becomes kind of hilarious.

The minions all have low health but high spawn rates, so you usually get the feel like you can clear out 5-6 enemies at once, but those pesky break down or corruptions of your mech make it insanely frustrating when “I just needed to turn left and I woulda killed 10 guys Ahhh now my mech is running into a lava pit.”

The text and language for each mission is hilarious and sets a tone for a teacher who keeps getting their students into insanely dangerous lessons/missions

But the best part… the game doesn’t use cardboard for any of the characters or minions, it’s all little figures and it’s insanely well designed and produced. When you plow into a row of minions you can use your mech to take out real little figures. It’s great.

Only cavet- you gotta play with people who are okay with a plan going to complete shit. Each missions is like oh this will be easy just March forward and murder all these little guys and somehow the design of the game and your breakdowns just can make you wanna pull your hair out. But I’m almost bald now it doesn’t matter.

Eldritch Horror, Arkham Horror LCG, Too Many Bones

Honourable Mention: LOTR LCG

Second The Crew. Such a great co-op game.

Also worth mentioning The Lord of the Rings, the Fellowship of the Ring: Trick-Taking Game (TLotRtFotR:TTG), though it has a lower player count than The Crew.

The concern you have is “play by committee” games. These games also lend themselves to “the quarterbacking problem”, where one person, often the “smartest” (read: loudest) player plays the game, and everyone else is just set dressing.

There are three ways to solve this problem (that I’ve seen, anyway): limited communication, limited time, and sufficient complexity.

Limited communication games have strict rules on what can be said at any time. Good options in this category are Hanabi, The Crew, and possibly The Gang.

Limited time games don’t let you discuss ad nauseum. You simply do not have the time. Games like Space Alert and Magic Maze (also limited communication) do this very well.

Finally, games that have sufficient complexity simply have too much going on for each player to be able to focus on other players’ stuff. Spirit Island, Mage Knight: the board game, and Gloomhaven (also limited communication) are good examples here.

Dixit is a party game and isn’t cooperative.

Maybe try a co-op game with limited communication/hidden information, the crew, sky team, hanabi, tranquility, all are games where you can't talk to people about what the plan is so everyone has to think through their own turn independently

I got into coop because my wife doesn't like losing (she doesn't read reddit, I think I am safe). So Pandemic et al are great because we either all win or all lose.

Eventually, we got on to other games because there is no 'attacking' in them. Classics like Orleans, Agricola and more recently Ark Nova. Team games also work great, like Codenames that you mentioned, but for us it's Decrypto.

Terminology varies, but for some circles, if there's a hidden traitor, then you're no longer playing a coop game. Others may make the distinction between "semi-coop game" to show there's a hidden traitor, but you're still working in teams, need to rely on your own teammates to pool progress, and also win and lose together (Bang the Dice Game, vs. I guess vs. "co-petitive" like Dead of Winter). That as opposed to "fully co-operative" like Pandemic The Cure, Forbidden Island, etc.

Mysterium is great for families too! When the kids won't stop bickering at game time, we'll play and split them up by making one the ghost heheh

I'd say the crew would be a great filler and it's really a great game to have in the collection and can very well work as a "let's play this so this guy's happy and then we can move to something else".

But while i do like it it is in the end a simple card game that doesn't quite scratch the "boardgame" itch because of the poor table/tactile feel

Aiegis defenders

Deep Rock Galactic and Remnant: From The Ashes

if you're fine with a hardcore shooter, GTFO

• 10 miles to safety

• The Wild Eight

• Trine

• Lovers in a dangerous spacetime

This is a niche oldie that might not fit the bill, but maybe Artemis spaceship bridge simulator? I only played it once a decade ago, but some people got pretty into it.

Best cooperative game in my opinion: Werewolf, also know as Mafia! If you don't know it, you're missing out a bunch. It's a social-deductive game. A little plug if I may, I developed an app that helps out tremendously the narrator of the game and you don't even need to have the cards to play it: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/werewolf-mafia-offline-game/id6738326023?platform=iphone

Even if you're not using the app, try-out the game it's my favorite social game!

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Lords of Waterdeep

Strip poker

Sky Team is great! Also splendour duel. Both are pretty easy to pick up. I think Sky Team meets your brief better though

The forbidden series and pandemic are pretty good at 2 as well, but after a number of years I’ve gotten a bit bored of the player1 takes 4 actions, board takes x actions, player2 takes 4 actions, board takes x actions thing. My partner and I played them a lot when we first got together though :)

My favourite coop at 2 player is Spirit Island but it has a very steep learning curve and my partner didn’t enjoy it at first because he took a while to learn how to play effectively.

As every one else, Spirit Island is fantastic, but I'll try to give some other co-ops some love

Arkham Horror The card game is fantastic. It is almost endlessly expendable and gets better the more content you get, it is crunchy, brutally difficult, has engaging stories and an almost rpg lite character progression feel. It's my favorite game for a reason.

Robinson Crusoe captures the spirit and feeling of surviving on a desolate island so well, and it's event mechanism can generate very dynamic stories, is a genius aspect of the design. Plus, it is the only game I've played that kinda feels like survival video games.

Gloomhaven is big and bold, but at its core has such a tight action selection mechanism which drive every turn, it truly makes the game in my opinion.

Spirit Island. Nothing comes close.

• Cool theme.

• Unique cards and powers.

• Hard to quarterback, but encourages collaboration.

• Easy to adjust difficulty.

• Scales well from 1 to 6 players.

Co-ops are my favorite. Spirit Island is in a category of its own and I won't reiterate all the praise below. Others I really enjoy:

Heavier: Ghost Stories. This game is brutal and has one of the best themes of any board game. The highs from banding together to vanquish ghosts are fabulous. Not for the faint of heart or for those who hate any implementation of luck.

Medium weight: Atlantis Rising 2E. Super tense luck mitigation, great asymmetry in player powers and in objectives every game. Also the best produced game I own, it's gorgeous.

Lighter weight: Horrified Really accessible/teachable, thematically rich. Only gripe is the end game can be a bit flat in some scenarios.

Endangered and the expansion Endangered: New Species. This game has a decent BGG rating of 7.7, but I hardly every hear it talked about it.

There are a lot of great things, from the production quality and art to the fantastic variety the expansion provides. It has some elements that are familiar in cooperative games- after every turn, bad stuff happens. Usually you are putting something out that hurts the species like oil spills or destroyed land. Or something that targets certain animals based on their location or proximity to each other. All that is fine.

One unique aspect is the win condition. You need to get enough votes to protect the species by influencing certain countries, but each one is different. Once you take an action to add influence you flip over a card and reveal which delegate it is, and sometimes what they want may be in competition with others. I can’t remember the specifics, but like one may have a threshold of ten influence to vote to save the species. You get the number by adding the influence cubes you put on them, plus the total of 2 6-sided dice rolls, but subtract how many animals are left. So they are more likely to vote yes when the animals are almost gone. Others will be cubes plus the amount of money players have, meaning you basically are bribing them. Others care about the environment, etc. you only have to get 5 yes votes out of 8 delegates, so you have to balance which one do we spend resources to put cubes on, which do we focus on raising their votes by board conditions, and which do we accept as no votes.

But THE best and most interesting part to me is how you take actions with worker/dice placement. At the beginning of the year (round) you roll two dice. Each action spot has either 1/2/3 slots. You put a dice on one and take that action, then a second one. The next player then does the same. But to put dice on a spot, it has to be greater than the other dice there. And the dice don’t reset- they only come off when it is your turn again. So if I put a 6, no one else can use that action until I take my next turn.

This would be frustrating except you get to pick turn order every year. So maybe we need one person to take a turn to get their dice off a space or roll a lower number, but we need another personal to take their turn early to use a special ability so more animals don’t die. This mechanic is what makes me love this game. There are always more actions I need to take but can’t, I want to do all of them, but I also don’t want to take a spot because no matter what I am blocking off possibilities. And sometimes it escalates where I need to do something but I only have a 5. The next person rolls a 6 and CAN do it, but if they do it’s really locked until we can both get our dice off. Plus you can add worker placement spaces that anyone can use, and wow the theme comes through so much.

Anyways, Endangered is amazing and I wish it got more love so even more species will Be released in the future.

Since it's my #1 game of all time, this is easy: Spirit Island. It's crunchy and delightful. The variety in spirits, events, adversaries, etc. make for so many wonderful puzzles to solve.

The game earns its weight rating through variety. So many unique cards, the spirits are all different, etc. The flow of the game isn't hard - prep stage, fast powers, invaders stage, slow powers, and the game on easiest difficulty is really easy to beat. But even at low difficulty you have information overload for your first play.

I'm not going to try and down play its weight. I'll just say that it's such a wonderful game that I'm really happy I put in the effort to learn it.

I could see that, not sure my gaming groups will ever get to that point. If so I have White Moon to throw in and change the game a bit. Appreciate your comment!

Tidal blades is really that good, I truly think it’s the best dungeon crawler I’ve from crawler out there. The story actually matters and each scenario is super fun

Thanks for the list of suggestions, I was just thinking of looking into these types of games to play with my wife.

Great list and a few games I’d like to try on there. A few suggestions for you to play:

1. Slay the Spire
2. Voidfall (it is complicated with a huge setup, but once you get past that the coop mode is simply amazing)

The thumbnail made me think aeons end made the list. I assume you've played. What did you dislike about it?

Any thoughts on Daybreak or any of the Pandemics?

You might want to look into Smells Like Teen Spirit Island. You and your wife can play as either Courtney Love or Kurt Cobain and you have to navigate 90s fame while defending yourselves against evil record execs, paparazzi, and drugs/alcohol. If you can destroy hair metal before it destroys itself, you win.

Only 1 option. The Campaign for North Africa: The Dessert war

Your partner and boy-/girlfriend will have hours of fun

Star wars rebellion os a good two player

What is this “working together”? You do not loudly proclaim the optimal strategy while your partner basks in the light of your magnificence?

Will her boyfriend be in the corner watching?

I'm not sure if it has online play, but the Trine series is very good co-op, if she can handle an "action" game. It's not overly demanding of reaction times, with simple, infrequent combat and infinitely repeatable platforming. Plus unlimited respawns. It's mostly a game of physics-based traversal puzzles that require players to work in tandem, set in a pretty charming world.

But also, you know about Tabletop Simulator, right? You can play just about any board/card came you like through that. Unless you're looking to branch out into videogames specifically.

In which case, I would highly recommend Snipperclips. It's a puzzle game where each player controls a little paper shape guy, and they trim each other into various shapes to solve unique problems like carrying objects or matching silhouettes.

For The King!
If you like rpg elements like what Dungeons and Dragons has then you'll absolutely love it. I've played the shit out of it at parties, with friends, with my family, with my girlfriend, I have yet to find anyone that couldn't get into it.

I'd also like to add that pandemic is available on Xbox and has online multiplayer (from what I recall)

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There is only one game that will fit your requirements: "The Campaign for North Africa: The Desert War 1940-43"

But you could have thought of that yourself as well. No wonder your friends prefer playing with your girlfriend.

2/10 low effort, even for this sub.