The co-op games that kept our group of three playing
Three is an awkward number for co-op. Plenty of games are built for exactly two players, and plenty of four-player games feel like they’re missing someone when you’re one short. Our group is three friends playing online, and these are the games that worked best for us.
Factorio: the factory always needs another pair of hands
Factorio is about landing on an alien planet and building a factory: mining ore by hand at first, then automating everything until belts and robot arms do the work while you plan the next expansion. In single player it’s a puzzle. In co-op it becomes a group project.
It works so well for three because there’s always more than one job to do. Someone can sort out power while someone else fixes the iron supply and the third person scouts for new ore patches or deals with the locals. You drift apart to work on your own part of the base, then come back together when a problem needs everyone. There’s no player cap to worry about, and you can drop in and out of the same save.
It’s one of the more expensive games here and it doesn’t go on sale much, but few games give you more hours per dollar.
Risk of Rain 2, then Gunfire Reborn
Risk of Rain 2 is a third-person roguelike for up to four players. Each run you pick a survivor, land on an alien world and stack up items until your build is either absurdly powerful or about to fall over. Runs are short enough for an evening, and something ridiculous seems to happen every time: an item combination nobody expected, or a teammate saving the run at the last second.
We’ve played it both as it comes and with mods. The modding scene is big (most people get their mods from Thunderstore (opens in a new tab), using its mod manager), and new survivors, items and tweaks make it feel new again once you’ve unlocked everything.
When we wanted the same feeling in first person, Gunfire Reborn filled the gap. It’s also a roguelite for up to four: you pick a hero with their own abilities, fight through stages and build up weapons and upgrades along the way. It’s lighter and more colourful than Risk of Rain 2, but the loop of “one more run” is just as strong.
One honourable mention: Roboquest is a hidden gem, a fast, stylish roguelite shooter. Its one big drawback for us is that co-op is two players only, so the three of us couldn’t play it together. If your group is two, don’t miss it.
Green Hell: knowledge is power
Green Hell drops you in the Amazon rainforest with almost nothing. You have to watch your food, water, health and sanity, and the jungle is very good at killing you if you don’t know what you’re doing. It supports up to four players.
What made it special for us was how much it rewards learning. Early on everything is dangerous and confusing. A few sessions later you know which plants to eat, how to build shelter quickly and what to avoid, and the same jungle feels completely different.
We found that out in a way we didn’t plan. A few sessions into our first playthrough, a bug made a quest item vanish and we couldn’t progress. So we started again from scratch, and in the next session we got further than we’d managed before. Everything we’d learned the first time carried over, even though our save didn’t. It’s the best illustration we’ve had of a game where the progress is in your head.
Peak and Lethal Company: for nights when nobody wants homework
Not every game night needs a long-term save. Some nights someone’s tired, or only has an hour, and you want something you can pick up and play and laugh at.
PEAK is a co-op climbing game for up to four: get to the top of a mountain together, managing stamina and supplies, and helping each other up ledges you couldn’t climb alone. It’s cheap and simple, and it’s very funny when someone misjudges a jump.
Lethal Company has you and up to three friends scavenging scrap from abandoned moons to meet a quota for “the Company”. There are monsters, and proximity voice chat means you hear your friend’s screams fade as they wander off alone. It’s a horror game, but mostly it’s a comedy.
Finding more games for three
The hardest part of choosing a game for three is checking it supports three. Store pages don’t always say clearly. Our 3-player list only includes games whose player count we could confirm is three or more, best rated first. If you liked any of the games above, its “games like” page (linked from each name) shows newer co-op games its fans are likely to enjoy too.