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Top 10 Best Upcoming Cooperative Games for Multiplayer Fans

Though gamers value the calm solitude of an RPG or the excitement of a competitive shooter, nothing compares to the delight of playing games together with friends. Cooperative games turn simple moments into unforgettable stories, whether it’s overcoming impossible odds or just goofing around with friends.

Yet, for all the demand, choosing a suitable co-op title is not always simple. Everyone has to own it, appreciate it, and, most importantly, have time to play. Its worth is indisputable. Top cooperative games like It Takes Two, Baldur’s Gate 3, and Diablo IV prove that co-op gaming isn’t just fun—it sells.
cooperative video game Baldur's Gate 3
Source: https://www.pcgamer.com/i-started-baldurs-gate-3-over-from-scratch-after-20-hours-and-i-have-no-regrets/

Still, co-op gaming has a bright future ahead. With so many exciting releases on the horizon, it can be tough to know which ones are worth the wait. Covering extreme action, immersive role-playing, tactical experiences, and casual pleasure for every kind of player, we have compiled a list of the best upcoming cooperative games.

Why Cooperative Games Are More Exciting Than Ever

Co-op gaming is a full-fledged trend rather than only a niche these days. More gamers choose squad-based mayhem for solo journeys with live-service titles, survival sandboxes, and story-driven adventures embracing multiplayer. The numbers and Reddit’s or Steam’s comments prove this. Games like Baldur's Gate 3 and Helldivers 2 have broken expectations and shown that players yearn for experiences they can share.

What’s driving this surge? A few key things:
  • online infrastructure is better than ever, making seamless drop-in/drop-out co-op the norm;
  • more studios are designing games around teamwork rather than just adding co-op as an afterthought;
  • cross-play is shattering platform restrictions and allowing PC, console, and cloud gamers to squad up hassle-free;
  • the rise of streaming and social gaming means more people want to share their experiences in real-time.

Developers are making cooperative games better. Instead of simple “play with a friend” modes, studios are crafting mechanics that demand coordination, reward synergy, and create moments of pure, unfiltered chaos.

What to Expect from Co-Op Gaming

Fast growing cooperative video games have a future loaded with new mechanics, smarter AI, and increasingly deeper team-based experiences. Studios are all in, creating worlds where cooperation is the major attraction. So, what’s next for cooperative multiplayer games?

  1. Asymmetrical roles: Games like It Takes Two and Deep Rock Galactic push players into unusual roles to ensure everyone makes a different contribution.
  2. AI-powered adaptability: Enemy scaling and dynamic difficulty adjustments make sure the play stays balanced.
  3. Seamless cross-platform play: PC cooperative games no longer lock players into their ecosystems, letting them team up across consoles and even mobile. Anticipate much faster lobby connections, even more seamless matchmaking, and fewer technological barriers separating friends from playing together.
  4. Persistent shared worlds: Games like Valheim and Ark: Survival Ascended let users create, explore, and fight alongside each other in changing player-driven settings.
  5. Deeper narrative and story-driven co-op: Future titles will have stories focused on multiplayer with dynamic dialogue, branching narratives, and cutscenes adapted according to player decisions. Expect more games in line with Baldur's Gate 3 and A Way Out, where the narrative feels like a shared experience.
It Takes Two best cooperative online game
Source: https://store.steampowered.com/app/1426210/It_Takes_Two/

With 2025 shaping up to be a massive year for cooperative video games, it’s clear the genre is thriving. And the best part is that some of the most exciting experiences are still on the way.

Top 10 Best Upcoming Cooperative Games in 2025

Borderlands 4

Multiplayer: 4-player online co-op multiplayer
Platform(s): PC, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S
Release: September 23, 2025
Developer(s): Gearbox Software
Publisher: 2K

Borderlands 4 is taking the looter-shooter genre to a whole new frontier—literally. You are walking onto Kairos, a planet governed by the merciless Timekeeper, leaving Pandora behind for the first time in the series. The anarchy is more widespread. The loot is more lethal. And the action is more explosive than ever. Whether you're wreaking havoc with three buddies or storming enemy strongholds, this game excels in unpredictability. With billions of weapons, advanced movement techniques, and rich skill trees, every combat feels like a playground for devastation.
 Borderlands 4 pc cooperative game
Source: https://store.steampowered.com/app/1285190/Borderlands_4/

Since we're talking about combat, it becomes faster and with abilities being more dynamic. The RPG elements give you real control over your Vault Hunter’s playstyle. We cannot forget about gravity-bending effects and reality-warping bullets, therefore, expect sharper AI, more verticality in combat, and weapons that do far more than just shoot. Though the world is darker with a resistance narrative that makes every conflict seem like a war for survival, the humor is still here, as keen as ever.

Borderlands 4 - Official Launch Date Trailer

Brutal Cube

Multiplayer: Online co-op
Platform(s): PC
Release: TBA
Developer(s): Woziva
Publisher: Woziva

Brutal Cube is survival in its rawest form. It has the frigid, unforgiving walls of a continually shifting box without a sprawling open world or safe zones. You could be searching a poorly lit corridor for supplies. Suddenly, the whole layout bends, closing off exits and forcing you to rethink your course.
Brutal Cube best cooperative online game
Source: https://store.steampowered.com/app/3409010/Brutal_Cube/

Inside, the cube is a maze of mechanical traps, environmental hazards, and strange abnormalities, seemingly studying you just as much as you're attempting to understand them. Outside, the landscape provides resources and possible rescue, but it also brings wandering predators and erratic weather that make every trip a measured risk.

Brutal Cube - 2025 Coop Game | Official Trailer

When existence depends on snap judgments and limited resources, trust is a luxury. While cooperation could prolong your life, desperation has a tendency to turn friends into opportunists. Would you share your findings or keep them for yourself? Knowing that larger benefits carry more risks, would you venture farther into uncharted territory? Brutal Cube lets the cube itself control your fate, changing and reacting as you try to withstand anything it throws at you.

Commandos: Origins

Multiplayer: 2-player co-op mode, available online or via local split-screen ​
Platform(s): Microsoft Windows, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S
Release: April 9, 2025
Developer(s): Claymore Game Studios​
Publisher: Kalypso Media

Commandos: Origins revives the fabled real-time tactics franchise. With this release, you teleport into high-risk WWII missions where stealth, strategy, and precision rule everything. Playing as Jack O'Hara and his elite team, you will sneak into enemy bases, destroy important targets, and carry out audacious rescues over Europe, Africa, and the Arctic. Every commando has a different set of skills—from the physical might of the Green Beret to the Spy's deception, which forces you to carefully plan every action. Everything occurs in real-time, unlike traditional turn-based strategies. One bad step may so destroy your whole plan.
Commandos: Origins co-op video game
Source: https://store.steampowered.com/app/1479730/Commandos_Origins/

True to its origins, the game welcomes extreme difficulty without auto-saves with a steep learning curve that rewards endurance and wise judgment. Missions are like complex puzzles where creative use of skills results in the most fulfilling successes. To make the experience more accessible without sacrificing its hard-earned charm, Claymore Game Studios has polished controls, enhanced pacing, and included modern UI components. Whether you’re a returning fan or new to the series, Commandos: Origins proves that tactical stealth games still have a place in today’s gaming landscape.

Commandos: Origins - Official Gameplay Trailer | gamescom 2024

ELDEN RING NIGHTREIGN

Multiplayer: 3-player co-op mode, available online
Platform(s): PlayStation 5, PlayStation 4, Xbox Series X and Series S, Xbox One, Microsoft Windows
Release: May 30, 2025
Developer(s): FromSoftware, Inc.
Publisher: FromSoftware, Inc., Bandai Namco Entertainment

Nightreign is one of the best cooperative strategy games waiting for its release. It uses the DNA of Elden Ring to create a high-stakes, roguelike-infused action RPG. Now Limveld, a fractured, nightmarish rendition of familiar territory, the Lands Between. Movement is faster; traversal is more fluid with spirit birds and wall-climbing, the whole experience is planned around constant action and strategic co-op.
ELDEN RING NIGHTREIGN cooperative multiplayer game
Source: https://store.steampowered.com/app/2622380/ELDEN_RING_NIGHTREIGN/

Though combat is as harsh as it has ever been, now you have Nightfarers—pre-built archetypes with special powers that feel more like hero shooters than classic Souls classes. Wylder fights foes for brutal combos, Duchess rewinds damage for double devastation, Guardian knocks enemies sky-high, and Recluse precisely manipulates magic. Unlike the classic Elden Ring experience, any class can use any weapon. Hence, loot drops are more of an improvisation than rigid builds. Nightreign swaps the open-ended exploration of its predecessor for extreme, unpredictable survival gameplay between the randomized boss bouts, changing landscapes, and a punishing fog wall necessitating continual movement. It’s still Elden Ring, it just turned into something significantly more chaotic.

ELDEN RING NIGHTREIGN – REVEAL GAMEPLAY TRAILER

Gears of War: E-Day

Multiplayer: 2-player online co-op
Platform(s): Xbox Series X and Series S, Microsoft Windows
Release: TBA
Developer(s): The Coalition
Publisher: XBox Game Studios

Fourteen years before Gears of War, humanity had no idea what was coming. Marcus Fenix and Dom Santiago come home from war expecting peace but walk into a waking nightmare instead. The ground splits open, and the Locust pour out—ravenous, relentless, and wiping out entire cities before anyone can react. There’s no time to prepare, no strategy. Gears of War: E-Day throws you into the tumult of humanity's worst hour, where every gunshot counts, and every movement can be your last.
Gears of War cooperative strategy game
Source: https://store.steampowered.com/app/3010850/Gears_of_War_EDay/

E-Day, in its most basic form, is a hefty, visceral combat with devastating close-quarters battles and the unmistakable chainsaw bayonet cutting through flesh like it's 2006 all over. But this is more than just nostalgia; it's an opportunity for Gears to go back to its action-horror origins with a campaign trading the high-tech war machines of later games for desperate, improvised survival. E-Day has the potential to be the best thing the series has seen in years, with rumors of a Beast Mode 2.0 allowing players to operate a larger spectrum of Locust monstrosities and a multiplayer experience that might bring back the gritty intensity of Gears 1's execution-based firefights. If Gears 4 and Gears 5 leaned too far into slow-burning narratives, E-Day is shaping up to be the opposite—a relentless, cinematic warzone where you fight not for victory but just to make it out alive.

Gears of War: E-Day | Official Announce Trailer (In-Engine) - Xbox Games Showcase 2024

Little Nightmares III

Multiplayer: 2-player online co-op
Platform(s): Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Microsoft Windows, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S
Release: 2025
Developer(s):Supermassive Games
Publisher: Bandai Namco Entertainment

Little Nightmares III puts you into a waking torture. Two children lost in the twisted world of the Nowhere, Low and Alone, are searching for an escape through some of the most unnerving sites that the series has ever captured. Dodge a huge, baby-faced monstrosity crushing everything in its path, sneak through a hideous candy factory staffed by hanging, dead workers, and wade over a desert of submerged ruins and skeletal bones. Every corridor and every chamber seems unfriendly, with murmurs of someone watching from the dark.
Little Nightmares III best upcoming cooperative game
Source: https://store.steampowered.com/app/1392860/Little_Nightmares_III/

The biggest shake-up this time is a co-op, which lets you and a friend deal with this living nightmare together. Still, the AI partner is strangely adept, even if you are performing solo. The challenges are as much about instinct as knowledge; occasionally, there is no beautiful answer but only a last-minute dodge beneath a rusty cabinet.

Little Nightmares III – Announcement Trailer

Supermassive Games has mastered the art of quiet terror. The sound of rain tapping against shattered windows, the terrible squelch of walking on a bloated rat, the way shadows move just a bit too much in the corner of your eye—all of this points toward a continual fear. Sure, the lack of local co-op stings, and certain experiences feel familiar, but they don't lessen the pure cinematic dread of being little and imprisoned in a universe that seeks to break you.

Primal Planet

Multiplayer: 2-player co-op mode via local split-screen ​
Platform(s): PlayStation 5, Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, Xbox Series X and Series S, Microsoft Windows, Xbox One
Release: 2025
Developer(s): Seethingswarm
Publisher: Pretty Soon

Combining survival and craft with traditional Metroidvania action, Primal Planet teleports you to a world full of dinosaurs and sci-fi secrets. Being a lone cave dweller, you will battle to save your family, hunt for supplies, create weapons, and find the truth about an alien presence.
Primal Planet local split-screen game
Source: https://store.steampowered.com/app/2350270/Primal_Planet

Whether solo or in a local co-op, you are not alone. Anytime, as Sino, your swift and daring sinosauropteryx friend, a second player can drop. As Sino develops into a ferocious and devoted companion, cooperate to solve challenges, outsmart predators, traverse rugged terrain, and strengthen bonds. Primal Planet is an untamed adventure where survival is only the beginning, with exciting combat, extensive exploration, developing powers, and a world reacting to your choices.

Primal Planet - Official Reveal Trailer

Split Fiction

Multiplayer: 2-player co-op mode, available online or via local split-screen ​
Platform(s): PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X and Series S, GeForce Now, Microsoft Windows
Release: March 6, 2025
Developer(s): Hazelight Studios
Publisher: Electronic Arts

One dreams in sci-fi, the other in fantasy; Mio and Zoe are two struggling writers with nothing in common, but their worlds intersect in the most literal sense when a shadowy publisher's mind-stealing machine confines them inside their own unresolved stories. Suddenly, they are experiencing the adventure, moving between neon-drenched cyberpunk cities and vast, enchanted countries where their visions have turned against them.
Split Fiction 2 player co-op game
Source: https://store.steampowered.com/app/2001120/Split_Fiction/

Like with It Takes Two before it, Split Fiction's platforming is right on. With jump, double-jump, and air dash mechanics, it offers the same fluid aerial maneuverability Hazelight has mastered, making every movement feel precise yet exhilarating. The game's soft lock gently helps players onto ledges and rails without stripping away the challenge. Its rapid and responsive design lets players concentrate on momentum and innovative problem-solving instead of frustrating missteps. It provides just enough control to feel the surge without running the danger of derailment, much like a well-designed rollercoaster.

Split Fiction | Official Gameplay Reveal Trailer

This always-shifting journey never allows a concept to overrun its welcome. One level might have you piloting a mech suit, the next tossing explosive energy discs in a high-speed arena battle, and then abruptly careering through a disintegrating dreamscape in freefall. Split Fiction seems like a love letter to cooperative storytelling, gaming, and the wild delight of shared adventure, thanks in great part to its tremendous variety and inventiveness. Hazelight has been redefining cooperative experiences for a decade, but with this cooperative video game, they’ve raised the bar yet again.

Stage Fright

Multiplayer: 2-player co-op mode, available online or via local split-screen ​
Platform(s): PlayStation 5, Nintendo Switch, Xbox Series X and Series S, Microsoft Windows
Release: TBA
Developer(s): Ghost Town Games Ltd.
Publisher: Hello Games

Stage Fright takes the frantic, friendship-testing fun of Overcooked! and turns it into a spooky, puzzle-filled adventure where communication is everything. Before time runs out, you and a friend will address escape room-style problems, switching switches, pulling levers, and completing mind-bending puzzles instead of cutting onions and averting kitchen flames. Though there will be plenty of Overcooked-style anarchy, the beautiful, creepy atmosphere will combine elements of Luigi's Mansion with a playful ghost narrative.
Stage Frigh coopetarive game for ps5
Source: https://store.steampowered.com/app/3260750/Stage_Fright/

Ghost Town Games has fine-tuned gameplay to perfection, making this a pick-up-and-play experience that’s instantly engaging yet full of hidden depth. You’ll switch between characters, navigate two unique perspectives, and piece together a mysterious storyline in a world that feels alive with secrets. While the puzzles test your brains more than your reflexes, don’t expect a stress-free experience—miscommunication and sheer panic will still lead to plenty of laugh-out-loud failures.

Stage Fright - Official Reveal Trailer | The Game Awards 2024

Terminator: Survivors

Multiplayer: 2-player co-op mode, available online
Platform(s): PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X and Series S, Microsoft Windows
Release: 2025
Developer(s): Nacon Studio Milan
Publisher: Nacon

Terminator: Survivors first surfaced in 2022 when Nacon announced its new development label, Nacon Studio Milan. With a team stacked with industry veterans—including devs from RaceWard, the crew behind Rims Racing, and TT Isle of Man 3—the studio set out to craft a next-level survival experience in the Terminator universe.
Terminator: Survivors cooperative multiplayer game
Source: https://store.steampowered.com/app/2617340/Terminator_Survivors/

Fundamentally, Terminator: Survivors is an open-world survival game in which you will have to act fast, fight wisely, and remain one step ahead of Skynet's merciless machines. Whether working alone or as a team of three, survival relies on scavenging, building, and resource management to fend off both renegade humans and the always-looming Terminator threat. The key is base-building; it gives the opportunity to reinforce resistance strongholds and access fresh technologies to fight back.

Terminator Survivors - Official Cinematic Reveal Trailer

Details are still scarce, but early concept art hints at a gritty, high-stakes experience with modular weapons, stealth mechanics, and evolving bases. Food, fuel, and firepower all matter, and every choice could mean the difference between surviving another day or becoming just another pile of scrap metal. If it delivers on its promise, this could be one of the most intense survival cooperative multiplayer games of 2025.

A Bright Future for Cooperative Gaming

Future co-ops are looking to be some of the most engaging and creative games yet as developers push the boundaries of teamwork, strategy, and shared experiences. From survival-driven adventures like Terminal: Survivors to the genre-bending anarchy of Elden Ring: Nightreign, players can expect novel mechanics that change how we play together.

2025 promises many fascinating releases encouraging cooperation, communication, and high-stakes decision-making for those seeking the best cooperative online games. The release roster is growing in exciting new directions, whether your mission is creating bases in an open-world survival environment, defeating foes in a sci-fi dystopia, or traversing the rogue-like dungeon. Now is the ideal time to monitor what's next if you enjoy shared challenges and wonderful multiplayer interactions cooperative PC games bring. Of the upcoming titles, which one most excites you?

FAQ

Does the number of players affect the difficulty?

Yes, in many co-op games, enemy strength, spawn rate, or puzzle complexity scales with the number of players. This keeps the challenge balanced whether you're playing solo or with a full squad.

What is so asymmetrical about co-op?

Asymmetrical co-op means each player has different roles, abilities, or perspectives. One might solve puzzles while the other fights enemies. It’s not about doing the same thing—it’s about combining strengths to overcome obstacles together.

Is it difficult to implement a multiplayer component for co-op games?

It can be. Syncing gameplay across multiple players, handling lag, ensuring consistent state updates, and designing for both solo and group play takes time and technical finesse. But with the right team and tools, it’s absolutely doable.

If you want to play, you need a good co-op partner. If you want to build a game, you need the right team. Argentics has everything it takes to create a game that keeps players coming back—seasoned animators, skilled developers, and a passion for unforgettable experiences.

Let’s play and create together! Hopefully, in the worlds we build, there won’t be an evil publisher like in Split Fiction.
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