I’m a person who usually plays single player games. It’s not that I don’t have friends, it’s that I just like taking things at my own pace and being able to fully sink myself into a game I’m playing and it’s really hard to do that in multiplayer games. Yet, in the last year or so, I’ve been playing a ton more games with my friends.
I know many people out there struggle to find enjoyable games to play with their friends so I’ve done a lot of experimenting with them (not like that) to find a lot of fun games to play and today I’m gonna go over them! These vary in intensity and chillness so I’m gonna separate them into 2 sections where I detail each game. Section 1 is “Attention Hogs” and Section 2 is “Conversation Havers”. Most also cap out at 4 players so keep that in mind if you manage to have more than 3 other friends who will play games with you. I’m also going to do 4 per section so as to limit them to the best ones for each. Okay. Onwards!
Important Note: there were games that I would include on here if not for one or more of our group not being able to play them because of technical issues or because of just not being a fan of the genre. There were also games that I’d love to have tried out but because I usually play as a group of 4 it kinda eliminates a lot of games that cap out at 3 per team (looking at Arc Raiders very directly and pointedly). And then there’s Big Walk which I just haven’t played yet so, while I know is amazing, I just can’t list here. I’ll do a review on it eventually.
This section is defined by games that take your attention entirely. Sometimes this is because of story, sometimes it’s because of simply the competition of it all, sometimes it’s because of the intensity of the gameplay itself; it just depends.
This one genuinely surprised me. I used to play a lot of Destiny, probably have 3000 hours in both games combined. Nothing had really given me that gameplay feeling since leaving though. Then I found Far Far West. The game is like a mix of Destiny and Helldivers 2. You get loaded into a map where you’ve got objectives and also secrets you can discover. Then after you’re done with those objectives you have a boss to kill then have to run to the extraction point while enemies swarm you. It’s filled with great gameplay, a surprisingly fun western theme, and actually earnable cosmetics. It’s a genuinely fantastic experience and I would recommend anyone who wants to scratch that Destiny itch all while staying indie check it out. Although, it is in early access on Steam so there will be a 1.0 one day and that might be the best point to sink a ton of time into it as a lot will have been added and fixed in the game. So at least add it to your wishlist so you and 3 of your friends can play it eventually.
This one can get a little testy. It’s exactly what it sounds like of course, you’re playing golf while also battling your friends. You’ve got power ups that can either help you or hinder your friends. Then you’re all just trying to be the first one done with that hole. It’s a lot of fun, but if one person starts to run away with it always, or it seems like there is consistent ganging up on people from game to game, or both, it can kinda sap the fun from it, making it much more into a competitive feeling game than a party game. The game has a high max player count so shit can get chaotic. Plus it seems like it’s gonna keep getting updated as recently it got a new city map that I haven’t had the chance to try out yet so I would definitely recommend playing the game so you can fuck around with your friends and then, if this get a little too competitive, maybe go to one of the games from the next section as a cool down.
The game that is sweeping the damn industry right now. You have two teams, the chameleons and the hunters. The chameleons hide themselves in the level by painting themselves to blend in and the Hunters try to find them and shoot them with shotguns. I first played this in a group of 7 and with that many it was a ton of fun. Finding that corner that is just out of the way enough that you’re able to paint yourself just well enough that nobody finds you even if 6 others Hunters are in the room is genuinely quite fun. I’ve become known as a very good chameleon in my group as I, true to my cat name, find some fantastic corners and narrow areas to hide in. All that said, with just 3-4 people the game goes from being a fun party game to an annoying experience. It’s not that it loses all fun, just that when there’s a big map with 1 or 2 Hunters and 2 or 3 chameleons, the game gets tedious. So this one is best with 5 or more players in my experience. And just so you know, you don’t have to paint super well like you might see streamers do, the game is just low graphic fidelity enough that even really poorly painted stuff can blend in super well. Especially from a distance. Again, I’m not a good painter (if it’s not an emotion filled painting) and my group now jokes that when people go unfound in corners or small areas they’re “pulling a cat”. You just gotta have fun with it.
Not a game that I ever expected to have as much fun with as I have ended up having. In it, you play a badass Hunter who wears kickass armor and fights with killer weapons against massive monsters. It’s got addictive gameplay, stuff to chase, and isn’t bogged down by something like a Season Pass. The game is genuinely fun. There are some janky parts when it comes to playing games with your friends, but when you’re fighting that dragon with your buds and everyone gets in sync there’s genuinely nothing like it. Even recently I had a moment where I had to sit forward a bit in my chair as my team and I were very close to failing our Hunt because that damn Monster was faster than we thought, but we got there and it felt fantastic to beat. The best part as well is being able to learn the Monster after you fight them the first time so when you fight them again you’re able to know what moves they have and what things you can do to counter them. It’s a great game that makes playing Hunting with friends a genuine blast, even if the jank does sometimes lead to downtime where there’s nothing to do except some barrel bowling.
The thing about playing games with friends is that sometimes you want to play a game together and really pay attention to it, and other times you just want to play something you can sorta pay attention to while you also chat about your day or whatever has been going on in your lives. This section is about the latter.
The ultimate cool off game. If you’ve ever had a hard day, or you just finished an experience of getting super competitive in another game, Flock around is a fantastic game for you. You literally just take pictures of birds on a map. Some are more rare than others, you can fill out your book with all the types of pictures it asks for, and your pictures will get rated giving you stars and money. Money allows you to buy upgrades for your gear and customizations while stars let you unlock the next area. The game caps out at 4 players, but damn is it fun. The biggest issue is mainly just that it’s not a big game. You can finish it in a handful of hours and, unless you just really like taking pics of birds, there’s not a lot of reasons to go back. But at least you got a chance to take pics and chat with your friends, that’s what matters most.
Gamling is fun, if there isn’t weight to it, and that’s mostly what Gamble with your Friends manages. You get to gamble, use powerups, buy customization stuff, and hope that at the end of the day you’ll be able to beat your needed money quota. This one is a little Rogue-y since you get as far as you can until you don’t meet your quota, unlocking new levels on the way. Once you don’t meet it though, you and your team get brought to a ditch where you all get shot. While the gambling might sometimes feel like it’s gonna take up all of your time, it’s honestly rather easy to get distracted talking to each other. Even to the point where you miss your quota because you got distracted. The game has a fun loop where it feels like you’re able to have fun conversations with your friends both about your lives, and about the game itself. The worst part is just that as the quota goes up so does the stress little by little. My team got to the second floor and as it was our first time there some of our hands got a little sweaty, but that’s probably more a thing about how it was our first time there. The game is still filled with laughs, even when you’re almost out of money and all of you go over to the dollar slots for the rest of the time in the day while you just slowly try to earn any amount of money. Sure there’s no point to doing it, but it’s still a ton of fun.
Peak is a bit more complicated for this classification. I think that, after playing it long enough you’re able to have a chill time with friends all while paying attention, but there’s also times when you’ve gotta dedicate all of your attention to what’s happening. I’ve had many moments where my group is able to chat about their day while playing, or we can talk about that movie we just saw, or about that camping trip we just went on, all while circling back to the gameplay every so often so we don’t lose track of each other in the game and die. I play on the easy or custom difficulties and that makes the game much more chill and easier to talk about stuff while playing. What’s most important for peak is you gotta communicate so even if you’re talking, having conversations about real life, if a tornado or fire storm is coming at your friend then you MUST interrupt and communicate that it’s time to move. The game does still have some stress in the last section but that’s not the majority of the game so I don’t want to classify it based on that. Best of all, they just released the last update for the game with the final two biomes! Now is literally the perfect time to get into the game so I highly recommend it! Just remember to play on tenderfoot if you want a more chill experience for you and up to 3 of your friends. Also, mods exist for it that make the game kinda wild and fun so I’d highly recommend checking those out too!
This is a sorta good game to just space out while playing with your friends. It’s not that it’s not a fun game, it’s just that the game isn’t super well designed for multiplayer. Yet, I still found myself having fun flying around with my friends, showing them cool stuff, making a whole solar system called “Food Court” with each of us having our own planet named after a restaurant you’d find either in a food court or in the parking lot at a mall. It’s genuinely a fun time. The game definitely is best designed for just chatting around with your friends during the whole thing as actually trying to make significant progress alongside them will actually lead to glitches upon glitches. If you’re wanting a game to just vibe with and chat with your friends during that also happens to have a decade of weird updates to it then this is the one for you.
There’s definitely some games that I play with my friends that I could have brought up but these were the ones that really jumped out of me, ones that I feel like are easiest to play with friends and, if in early access, already have a good loop going. What matters to me with these types of games is genuinely the vibes I get while playing, the amount of times my friends and I go back to the game. How many times we suggest the game as what we can play in our discord server or while on our chat. I mean, we played some games that just did not go well so never come up again, all of these games came up for a long while, or still do every so often. These games were and are great and I highly recommend giving each one of them a try.
But what about you? Do you have games that keep pulling you and your friends back into them? Games that make your ears perk up when you hear your friends mention them because it means you’re gonna start playing them again together? Or games that gave you some damn funny memories that will stick with you even after you’ve moved on from them? Or, even more, games you played that were really fun to play while having a conversation during? Please comment them down below, I would love to have more suggestions for my friends and I to play!
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