A friend of mine and I like to get together and play games online because we both have chaotic schedules. Usually it’s Civ, but what else would you recommend? We’ve found that we’re not the best at co-operating yet in a game like Grounded. Maybe something tactical (but not too gory or realistic)? Any suggestions are welcome.
Deep Rock Galactic is great.
Borderlands 2/3 are great fun co-op, if a shooter is acceptable.
Also Conan Exiles, which also offers a lot of co-op building opportunities.
Maybe Towerborne?
It’s lightweight, fun, slightly cartoony, with plenty of action, although it’s in early access (where I’m playing it).
It is and I also would recommend.
Maybe an online version of a board game like Gloomhaven? Tactical and playable in chunks as large as your schedules allow.
What does “a game like Grounded” mean? Do you not want shooters (which is what Deep Rock Galactic is, even though it’s wonderful)? Do you not want first-person games?
As for “tactical”, do you mean like military sims, or something strategic/puzzle based? Or are you specifically looking for something top-down instead of first-person/third-person?
Some random suggestions:
- Baldur’s Gate 3, one of the best-reviewed, highest-awarded games of all time. A D&D campaign with good storytelling and combat and lots of cutscenes and characters, playable entirely in co-op.
- A Way Out - Work together to break out of prison through a series of puzzle sequences
- It Takes Two - You are two parents shrunken down to tiny sizes and go through puzzles to escape
- We Were Here - Cooperative limited-information puzzle game where the two players are physically apart in the game world and can only talk to each other to help solve each other’s puzzles
- Tick Tock - Same thing, but in a point and click adventure and not first person
- Diablo IV - Standard action RPG playable in co-op, with a long campaign and open-world stuff. It’s improved a lot since launch, and the new season/expansion is launching this week.
- The Escapists 2 - Top-down sandbox game where you try to break out of prison
- Satisfactory - Build a complex factory and assembly line together
- Factorio - Same thing but top-down, the game that started the whole factory game genre
- Project Zomboid - Top down game where you try to survive the zombie apocalypse
- 7 Days to Die - Same thing, just first person
- Snowrunner - Drive heavy-duty vehicles through a variety of challenging terrain, with very cool snow/mud/ice physics simulations
- Age of Empires IV - Old-school RTS
There are a LOT of good co-op games. Here’s a review site for them, for example: https://www.co-optimus.com/
If you can provide more detail about the kind of games you like or don’t like, I’d be happy to suggest a few more…
The Planet Crafter is like a super mellow Grounded with no fighting. It has a pretty fast progression system and the progress is pretty satisfying.
I’ve watched a number of videos of Inkbound (a turn-based tactics game with co-op) and it seemed pretty entertaining.
Lord of the Rings Online. 
You play characters in Middle Earth and can visit all the places mentioned in the books (as well as meeting many characters.) There is combat, but it’s NOT a shoot-'em-up.
There are many ways to play (all valid):
- try to go up levels rapidly
- roleplay with like-minded players
- explore the World
- craft items for yourself and others
I’ve been playing it for over 15 years and still have not finished exploring!
These are excellent questions that need answers. By " Grounded" I meant a resource-gathering/base-building sort of game (though it may well just have been that game specifically). I’m open to trying others. “Tactical” means something like Call of Duty, though I may be using the term incorrectly.
I’d forgotten BG3 was co-op. Once he gets it, we can try it out (though one of us should probably finish the game first). I will check out the other ideas on your list-thanks very much! Maybe State of Decay as well, since he already has that one and we looked at it together once?
I’ll try to pin down more of what I like. We don’t get a lot of time to game together, so something you can pick up and put down works too. Hadn’t considered Diablo…
A lot of other good ideas that I’ll look at as well.
Besides @Reply’s excellent suggestions, I enjoyed Ark: Survival Evolved.
If you’re still not too sure yet which kind of games you would both enjoy, I might recommend trying a subscription service for a month or two. They aren’t too expensive (about $20/mo/person) and that way you can experiment with a ton of games and genres before buying any one title. Or you can just keep the subscription going until you’re done with that game. There’s no long-term commitment and cancellations are usually just a few clicks.
Most of the subscriptions have co-op games. For example:
Microsoft Gamepass has State of Decay, Diablo IV, A Way Out, Deep Rock Galactic, Gears of War, Generation Zero, It Takes Two, Halo, Orcs Must Die 3, Palworld, Techtonica, Unravel, Wasteland 3, Zombie Army 4, Wolfenstein Youngblood, Sniper Elite 5, Snowrunner, Remnant 1, A Plague Tale Requiem, Age of Empires, Anthem, Ark, Astroneer, Modern Warfare 3… all of which are co-op in some way or another.
Similarly, Ubisoft Plus has a bunch of co-op titles like the Far Cry & Ghost Recon Wildlands series, which might satisfy that tactical itch. The Division 1 & 2 are also great MMO co-op tactical-light shooters… it’s a mix of Diablo and Call of Duty, where it’s basically a loot-based ARPG at heart but with shooter mechanics. Some of the old Rainbow Six games (not Siege, but R6 Vegas and Lockdown or R6 3) are also great in co-op. Those are way more tactical than modern titles as you can customize your operators loadouts, and in the older games, even plan their attack routes in a floor plan editor. (BTW, if you like that sort of game, check out Ready or Not and Door Kickers, though those aren’t on Ubi.)
EA also has their own subscription thing, but I can’t remember which of those games have co-op. And a lot of those games are also available in Gamepass and/or Ubisoft Plus, so I’d probably choose one of the other subs instead (since they’re usually a superset of EA + other games).
Aha, thanks for explaining! That makes more sense… so you DO like shooters, but just don’t want to deal with all the resource gathering and crafting? In that case, you have a looooooooot of options 
- As mentioned above: Sniper Elite, Rainbow Six series, Ghost Recon series, The Division
- The ARMA series is very “realistic” but very tedious to play. It feels like you’re piloting a soldier like an airplane… by that, I mean you’re sitting inside their head and operating their body like it was Microsoft Flight Simulator. It’s the opposite of an arcade shooter. There are some die-hard fans of that series, but I always found it too clunky to really be a “game”.
- Ground Branch was made by one of the original R6 and Ghost Recon devs, and looks similar to Ready or Not. These sorts of truly “tactical” games used to be very common in the 90s and 2000s, but became less popular after the simplified gameplay of Call of Duty and Counterstrike took over the genre. But the indie market is making a few titles here and there.
- The Payday series (2 is probably the best one, 3 has mixed reviews) has you shooting and heisting, and is great for casual play. It’s a series of repeatable missions rather than a true campaign.
- For more arcade-y shooter feels, Gears of War has a co-op campaign, as does Halo, Anthem, Wolfenstein Youngblood, etc.
- Deep Rock Galactic does deserve its own re-mention… although it’s not really “tactical”, it’s just a hell lot of fun and one of the best co-op games to have come out in decades.
- If you like looter/shooters, the Borderlands series is worth playing through in co-op
If I had to personally choose just one or two tactical-ish games to play through with a friend, it’d probably be R6 Vegas 1 & 2 or The Division 2. They offer a good mix of shooting mechanics, loadout customizability (do you want to be a shield-wielding, heavily-armored operator or the sniper on the perimeter), and good plain fun. R6 Vegas is a traditional campaign, with missions and stories and everything. The Division is an open-world MMO with a storyline and open areas and some instanced levels. Both are great. Though, really, most of the above titles are excellent in their own ways… just depends on which particular itch you want to scratch first
Yeah, most of those look interesting except for RON. The active shooter level in the college was a little too realistic for me.
Oh wow, I only ever played it as random missions in online matchmaking, and never came across that level. That probably hits too close to home for many people 
Good update. I’m glad I didn’t mention the other early-ish access game I’m involved in co-op with, Valheim, because resource gathering and management is a major element!
Good recommendations so far. I would add Snowrunner to the list. Not the typical driving game. Lots of beautiful scenery and exploring, and having a partner along makes it more fun, not to mention having a buddy who can help winch you out if the mud!
If you would like driving hundreds of cars on a big detailed open-world map, Forza Horizon 4 or 5.
I discovered those two games back-to-back and always thought it would be cool if there were a crossover, GTA-style You see people racing around and rallying, but one gets stuck in a mud pit, so you drive over in your old Soviet logging truck to help winch them out. Meanwhile the MS Flight Sim guy in a helicopter is hovering nearby watching it all.
Ah, if only games worked like that…
That would be awesome. I’ve often wished the off-road parts of Forza Horizon’s map were more like Snowrunner where you have to actually watch for rocks and trees instead of just bounding over the landscape like an antelope.