A friend and I don’t often get together physically just because of schedules and stuff, so we try to do so by playing cooperative games. We’re both Civilization fans, but it’s gotten a bit repetitive and we’d like to try something similar to those games. Do you have any suggestions? We tried Grounded and both got a little frustrated with each other so that kind of game doesn’t seem to work too well.
Humankind is a fun variation on Civilization. Similar enough in many ways to feel familiar, but different enough to be fresh.
I should mention here that my computer isn’t the newest, but I will still look up all the suggestions to see if I can play 'em. You never know!
What did you guys get frustrated about?
Valheim is very popular but might be a little too close to the basic strokes of Grounded.
Astroneer is similar but lacks the combat aspects so it’s really more just exploring, solving the overarching mystery and (to a lesser extend than other games) avoiding environmental hazards. Namely obnoxious plants. So there’s less emphasis on making a secure base or things like that. I’ve played it with my son (in his 20s) and it’s usually pretty casual and supports both actively working together and both sort of doing their own thing in a “parallel play” sort of thing.
We were both trying to survive and get supplies together while following different ideas of what to do-I suppose it was because we were new to that type of game. Like being in a two-person kayak and having different maps (which I’ve also done but that’s another story).
I think we also tried Astroneer but couldn’t hook up to play together for some reason. Might try that one again.
Now I’m trying to figure out what a 2-person Civ game would even look like.
Astroneer is a lot lighter on the survival aspects: No angry natives, hostile fauna, etc so your main concerns are keeping an oxygen line going, not falling into a deep hole and not getting into radius of obnoxious plant life. For the same reason, it supports two people doing their own thing pretty well; you’re not left getting killed by dinosaurs while your buddy is off dicking around in some cave. So it might be a less stressful “survival” game if you can work out the shared co-op game issue. If you already own it anyway, might be worth a twirl.
I play Civ 5 over t’Internet with a friend every week.
We ally against one computer opponent and play on Immortal level.
Great fun!
I’m not too familiar with “Grounded”, but Valheim is a great co-op multiplayer game, especially if you get a a server, so that your world is up 24/7, and you can play asynchronously.