What is what2coop.com?

This site is a hobby project and serves several purposes. It is on the one hand a kind of gaming diary to keep track of what we played and liked over the years and on the other hand it is supposed to be useful for like-minded coop-players, who are looking for inspiration on what cooperative games are worthwhile. The idea for this project came from a reddit post where we shared our opinions on a bunch of games and people were really appreciative and suggested to us doing a website. So we did. We had to self-teach us web design and are still learning but here we are. 

Another thing we really hope this site will do is encourage other to share their opinions and – very selfishly – their game recommendations, so we will not run out of ideas on what to play. 

Since this is all very new to us we are thankful for every constructive feedback and helpful input. 

How you might use what2coop.com?

We as a group are always looking for fun and original games to play together. It is hard enough to find good info on what coop games there are and even harder to find out if they are really good. We imagine like-minded coop-players face similar problems. So if you are looking for inspiration on what cooperative game you might play next a good use of what2coop.com would be to search for a coop game you liked and see what tags and awards it was given by us. See if these capture the aspect of the what you liked about the game and find games that we have the same tags and awards. 

Tags

Tags are some properties and characteristics that we think might come up more than once and are able to group games for similarities. We added them as tags so you can find similar games with the characteristic described in the tag. They are vague and not every time the described feature is implemented in a comparable way in different games but they give you an idea what tagged games are aiming for. Please click  here   to see the ever growing list of tags.

Awards

Games that we gave an award stick out from the crowd for having done especially well in a specific or sometimes few regards that we think are of great value in games. These games impressed us and are often well remembered for a specific thing. These things that make games noteworthy and unforgettable are pointed out by awards. We always try to explain how and why games qualify for an award. Awards are split in categories and these are: 

The Puzzle Award

The Puzzle Award is given to games that have integrated a puzzle element very well. All coop players have to think about possible solutions and if they work together well it ideally becomes something like a hive mind affair and the right solution is a real community achievement.

The Team Award

The Team Award is given to games that are somewhat of a team building exercise. The Team is only as strong as the weakest part and all players have to think with the team in mind. Players take on roles that are for the best of the team. Ideally optimizing the best team composition or team strategy becomes a game on its own. 

The Communication Award

The Communication Award is given to games that forces players to share information amongst one another. It might be communicating a plan or strategy clearly so that everyone knows what to do or describing what one player sees on their screen (i.e. Symbols or Maps). Often these games make you develop a form of shortcode to optimize communication and make you sound like crazy people. 

The Style Award

The Style Award is given to games that have a striking look or soundscape or are very atmospheric. The use of Music or Pixelart can be so nice that the game becomes something special and sometimes even elevate the game above gameplay and mechanics. 

The Party Award

The Party Award is given to games that create that special laugh out loud atmosphere  were insults and love declarations are thrown around and people are generally more “on fire” than concentrated. Often these games lend themselves for more people than there are controllers. 

The Learning Award

The Learning Award is given to games that have an element that we really learned to appreciate over the years which is that the the team has to find out things and learn mechanics or systems way after the initial tutorial phase. Learning new things and revelations are accompanying the playtime throughout the game. Ideally a game becomes a little bit like deciphering a code together which makes for a great coop experience.

The Creativity Award

The Creativity Award is given to games that are able to surprise us with something great were we say that this is very original and that we have never seen done in that way. Some games feel really unique and we love when games broaden the range of coop gaming nowadays.

Who is behind what2coop.com?

We are a bunch of friends who really like to play coop games. Finding these games is difficult and we always looked for a site that gives us recommendations and points us to special games and hidden gems and we never found a really good source. So we just decided to make a website ourselves in case any other coop groups are looking for recommendations. Maybe other groups will not only get inspired by our experiences but also want to get in touch with us and recommend games we have not yet played or heard about.

We are playing online with a whole group of other friends and family on several platforms weekly and also try to do “Daddel-Wochenenden” – physical meet ups over long weekends – to play couch coop games. Since we are and always have been scattered across the planet we really appreciate an online coop option though we agree that the ideal setup is playing locally. We tend to be platform agnostic since we go were the games go. Regarding online coop we favor Nitendo Switch and PS4 since these are the systems that most of our friends and coop players have. We know there are a lot of great things on PC but we never had the situation that enough people have good enough gaming PCs or PCs that do not quit out randomly of games and spoil the fun. 

Since we are doing this for almost two decades now we are quite experienced and played a lot of games. So when a reddit post about our recommendations took flight and many people were incredibly nice and appreciated our opinions we thought that creating what2coop.com might really help others. While thinking about the website we quickly agreed that the site should also be a tool to find other likeminded people and also get their opinions and insights to get even more great games for our group. This means this site is designed to encourage you to get in touch and let us know what games you recommend, what features you like to see and any other feedback. 

A little disclaimer: we are gamers but not web designers. This is a very makeshift endeavour and we are learning to deal with wordpress and elementor while doing. We also had a few features in mind we did not integrate because we are not yet smart enough – when time and talent allows we will build in new features someday.

Glossary

We like to make some distinctions here that are often not made clearly when people speak about coop games. First of all we do not think that all games that have a 2 Player mode are really cooperative. If you mainly play alongside each other and one players action only slightly affect the other player(s) then this is a multiplayer game but not really a cooperative one. We really like to see cooperative elements and mechanics that add something to the solo experience. We try to explain why we consider something a good coop game and also have a slider in game profiles to signify how paramount the cooperative aspect of a game is. 

Also we do not really consider competetive games that have some 2 vs X aspect to be real coop games. So games like Mario Kart or Fighting games are mostly left out of the coop game lists. If there is a good reason to list a game like this as a real coop game we will do it and explain why we think it qualifies. 

We welcome your thoughts on this, so please use the forum. 

How you can support what2coop.com

For the moment we try to keep the site ad free, so this site is generating no revenue at all. But it costs us money to run it: from webhosting costs to wordpress plugins we have to spent quite a bit of money every year on it. If you feel generous and want to support this or even would like to see us do more with this site, we would be very thankful if you can spare a few coins and support us via our paypal link. 

Paypal:             paypal.me/what2coop

Of course if you are a developer and would like to see your coop game on here we would also greatly appreciate game codes but we will neither guarantee that we will spent much time on it nor a favorable review since we do this first and foremost for our own amusement. 

Thanks

We would really like to voice our thanks to several people here.

  • We thank the team from Cooptimus.com. Most of our games we found through their database and they do a terrific job. We link to them because they have listed all the features for all the versions. This site was always considered to be an extension of what they are doing. Have a look here: https://www.co-optimus.com/
  • We also would like to thank Michael Fairley of dekudeals.com. This site saved us a lot of money and also managed to somewhat help with game decisions since sales help to choose games from our whislists. Have a look here:  https://www.dekudeals.com/
  • Last but not least we want to thank the Nintendo Switch Subreddit. A post there with all the nice and appreciative comments and the kind recognition of the moderators sparked the idea for this. You can visit them here:  https://www.reddit.com/r/NintendoSwitch/
  • Also we thank all the people that helped making this fun project!