next »

[SirNiko]

My little bro and his wife love playing board games, especially cooperative board games. They've got a couple of them already, notably Pandemic and all the expansions, Zombies! and some expansions, a Werewolf/Mafia set and Castle Ravenloft. I'm looking for something new to give them for a Christmas present.

I've found a couple of online listings on Boardgame Geek and other sites, but I'd love to hear suggestions from TIGers, especially for some more obscure or unusual titles they might not find in their local game store.

[s0]

Not really obscure, but some faves are:

Mage Knight the Boardgame: the ultimate "adventure boardgame" as far im concerned. deep mechanics (there are very few "obvious" decisions in this game) + well realized theme. there are pvp variants, but coop/solo is where it's at. not for ppl who dont like complex rules and long game sessions tho.

Eldritch Horror: aka arkham horror without all the bullshit and w/ some vaguely pandemic-esque "threat management" mechanics thrown in.

Robinson Crusoe: Adventure on the Cursed Island another complex/long game. not really about robinson crusoe, just a generic island survival theme, which is very nicely realized. a sort of middle ground between "euro" and "thematic" games in a way. uses worker placement mechanics but plays rather differently from normal worker placement gams.

Red November: the inspiration for FTL's ship battles (as per the devs). you and your buddies play a bunch of drunk gnomes trying to pilot a rickety submarine. usues threat management mechanics and simulates both drunkenness and the flow of water. this is a bruno faidutti game, so expect randomness & chaos. it's not a total slot machine tho and is consistently winnable as far as i know.

Reiner Knizia's Lord of the Rings: game that started the co-op trend. some ppl claim this game hasn't "aged well" or is too abstract, i say fuck em. this is a good attempt at a "thematic euro" and while moving white cones across progress tracks might not be the thing ppl intuitively associate with lord of the rings, it makes a lot of thematic sense once you actually play the game.

Ghost Stories: another "threat management" type game. hard & brutal as piss (as in you can die very quickly if you fuck up). dice rolls can occasionally screw you over.


here's some card games too

Space Hulk Death Angel: this one is seriously underrated imo. manages to pack a lot of the original boardgame's "death around every corner" tension into a fast moving co-op card game. randomness exists and can screw you up but is usually manageable.

Hanabi: same designer as ghost stories. the only co-op game i know that isn't playable solo. very quick & easy to understand so playable with non-nerds, which is a plus.

[Türbo Bröther]

If you're going to look into Red November like CAS suggested you should definitely also check out Space Alert. You can read the rulebook to see if it's your thing but you really should get it anyway 'cause it rules.

[pelle]

Bought Mice & Mystics last weekend and took a first look inside today. Need to learn the rules,  but looks great. Looking forward to play.

[DavidDark]

Only Shadows Over Camelot comes to mind.

Played it only once, all the players play vs the 'boardgame'. Camelot is basically screwed in every possible way: siege at castle walls, black knight at the gates, 2 armies gathering to conquer your lands etc. Every player plays as one of the knights of the round table, every player has to make a decision if they gonna help defending against a siege, or try to find the Graal, or attack the black knight. Every decision matters, every decision has a consequence, getting out of one trouble gets you into another (like if you go on a quest you leave castle walls undefended, defend the castle walls but Graal is lost and thats not good news for the people, what you gonna do?). Whole game you feel like you not gonna make it out alive and Camelot will fall, players must work together to have any hope of winning the game.

Check it out.

[Jondog]

Only thing I can think of is Sentinels of The Multiverse which is a superhero themed card game where you play as a superhero up against a supervillain. http://sentinelsofthemultiverse.com/

[motorherp]

+1 for Eldritch Horror.  If they also like card games then "the Lord of the Rings" LCG by fantasy flight games is also a really enjoyable co-op game with loads of replay value and expansions.

[ViktorTheBoar]

Hanabi is my favorite, mostly because they finally found a mechanic to make a fully cooperative game that you must play with other people and work with them towards the greater good. Any other games that make something like that, usually use mechanics like timers and I hate those

I love playing Potion Making Practice as a co-op. Everyone still plays by themselves, but me and my friends and family have this irritating need to help each other out by playing. Mostly because it speeds the game up :D

[InfiniteStateMachine]

forbidden island

[oodavid]

I'm buying Escape From Colditz for christmas (if I can find a copy cheap enough)

It's got a great cooperative mechanic due to the way the game works - the prisoners all want to escape, but the first to escape wins, so trading is risky, but often necessary, then the prison guards can try to do deals to counter early escapes by playing the prisoners against each other. Loved this game as a kid!

[arrogant.gamer]

Zombicide Zombicide Zombicide. My close friends and I have been playing Zombicide for a few months, and it is really epic. Four to Six players is about right. The players are survivors in a zombie apocalypse, and the zombies move based on simple shortest-path rules. I've played a lot of boardgames, heck I even worked at a board-game shop for three years, and I can say with confidence that this is the best co-op boardgame I've ever played.

Also, since we are devs, you might be interested to note that Zombicide provides a level editor. It is a really easy to use tile-based map editor, so once you've played all the maps and gotten a hang of what your group enjoys... you can craft your own missions! So good.