Roundup · Co-op / multiplayer
The games parents on Reddit actually play with their kids
If you have a kid roughly five to twelve and you want a parent-tested list of co-op games to play together. Less useful if you came in looking for picks for teenagers, because most of the answers in this thread are about younger kids, which is its own interesting signal.
The thread was straightforward. A parent looking for games to play with his friend's teenage boys, ages thirteen and fifteen, both with a PS5 and an Xbox Series X. What came back was almost three hundred replies, most of them about playing games with much younger kids.
That gap is worth pausing on. The Reddit hive mind on co-op with your kid lives somewhere around ages five through ten. The games that get named over and over are not the obvious teen-leaning shooters. They are chaos co-op, builder games, and a small group of titles by one studio that have basically become a genre of their own. The fifteen-year-old gaming PC adjacent multi-platform demographic the original poster asked about is largely absent from this thread, which is its own answer.
What follows is the list of games parents kept coming back to, with the patterns that came along with them.
The list
- 01 Review coming 01
Split Fiction (and It Takes Two)
Review coming
The closest thing the thread has to a consensus pick. Veteran gamers and brand-new ones both showed up calling Hazelight Studios' co-op games some of the most creative they have ever played, with several parents finishing It Takes Two with kids as young as five.
Playing together· Two-player only, story-driven, mandatory co-op. Built so two very different players can both contribute, with the kid sometimes helping the adult through a section instead of the other way around. It Takes Two is the older entry point; Split Fiction is the newer one.
- 02
Astro Bot
Ages · 3 and up with adult help on the harder bosses. Same gentle range as Playroom, with a few boss spikes that may need a parent.On · playstationThe top single-game answer in the thread, by upvotes. One parent claimed they had beaten it five to seven times with their toddler. The closest thing PlayStation has to a modern Mario, and parents talk about it that way.
Playing together· Single-player at the controller, but the appeal in this thread was younger kids being able to actually play, or sitting in a lap and grabbing the controller during a hard section. PS5 exclusive, which matters for the half of the audience that owns one.
- 03 Review coming 03
Lego Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga (or any Lego game)
Review coming
One commenter called any Lego game "the objectively correct answer," and most of the rest of the thread did not disagree. The full catalog (Marvel, Batman, Star Wars, Dimensions) works like a co-op canon for younger kids who can read a little but not a lot.
Playing together· Two-player split screen across the catalog. Levels are forgiving enough that a seven-year-old can contribute, and the free-roam space between missions lets a kid mess around without pressure. One thread comment flagged it as a steady favorite for his son on the autism spectrum.
- 04 Review coming 04
Untitled Goose Game
Review coming
Short, weird, mean in a cartoon way, and apparently very effective for kids who think it is hilarious to watch a parent narrate the goose in escalating frustration. A frequent top-five answer.
Playing together· Single-player at the controller, multi-player in the room. Reads less like "we played together" and more like "we did the goose together." One mom admitted her swearing got worse during play sessions and her eight-year-old loved it, which press reviews will not tell you.
- 05
Minecraft
Ages · 7+ in single-player with sensible defaults, younger with parent co-play. Multiplayer is setup-dependent.On · pc-mac, ios, android, xbox, playstation, nintendo-switchThe most-named game in the thread by a wide margin. Parents bring it up across every age band, often as a long-running family server that everyone has worked on for years.
Playing together· Split screen on Xbox, cross-platform on everything else. One parent admitted "every time I play it now, I die inside," which fairly captures being the adult on a world your kid has been expanding without you since they were six. Still the most reliable answer in the thread.
- 06 Review coming 06
Rayman Legends
Review coming
Multiple parents pulled this out as a couch co-op staple, often for kids who are too young for the more demanding platformers but old enough to handle some real challenge.
Playing together· Local multiplayer, up to four players, low reading load, runs on basically anything still in the house. The kind of game that has aged unusually well without anyone making noise about it.
- 07
Overcooked 2
Ages · 6 and up in couch co-op. Early levels are gentle; later levels frustrate younger kids in mixed-ability play.On · pc-mac, nintendo-switch, xbox, playstationRecommended often and warned about almost as often. The thread had a recurring exchange where one parent recommends it and the next one replies that Overcooked has been formally banned in their house due to yelling.
Playing together· Four-player chaos co-op. Better for families that can laugh through bad communication, worse for families where "where is the meat" is a fight waiting to happen. Knowing which family you are running matters more than the game does.
- 08
Stardew Valley
Ages · 8 and up. Reading fluency is the real gate. Younger kids find the menus and dialogue overwhelming.On · pc-mac, nintendo-switch, xbox, playstation, ios, androidShowed up as the chill family pick more often than almost any other game. Cross-platform, shared farm between accounts, very low pressure. Several parents play it with kids as young as five.
Playing together· The catch is that Stardew is calm for some players and stressful for others. One parent admitted the day-night cycle "brings out the min maxer in me" and called the game "the opposite of chill." Worth playing solo first before you hand it to a kid expecting relaxation.
- 09 Review coming 09
Castle Crashers
Review coming
An older title that keeps surviving every generational cycle as a four-player beat-em-up that just works. Parents mentioned starting their kids on it as young as four.
Playing together· Local co-op, simple controls, real arcade-style progression. A few parents in the thread are openly campaigning for a Castle Crashers 2 they may never get.
- 10
Mario Kart 8 Deluxe
Ages · 4 and up with smart steering. Online lobbies skew older and faster, but stay anonymous.On · nintendo-switchMentioned constantly, the way you would mention the kitchen sink. The assist features (auto-steer, auto-accelerate) get specifically called out by parents of younger kids, which is the real reason it deserves the spot rather than just the brand.
Playing together· Switch-only, which makes it a non-answer if your house is on Xbox or PlayStation. But for the Switch-owning half of the audience, it is the default and parents seem to know it.
Didn't make the cut
Honorable mentions, and why they sat just outside the list.
- Hollow Knight Silksong
One parent reported their five-to-eight year olds love it. Worth flagging because difficulty assumptions about kids are often wrong, but for most kids this game will still be brutal.
- Cult of the Lamb
One parent called it "wholesome family fun with a little of everything: torture, indoctrination, manipulation, subjugation, coercion, and exploitation. And funny animals." The honesty is great; calibrate accordingly.
- Portal and Portal 2
Multiple parents called these the ultimate co-op picks for kids old enough to think in puzzles. Older now, which kept them off the main list, but they remain on the all-time short list.
Quietly showed up several times as a multiplayer platformer that holds up. Worth a closer Recon Review when one of these mentions is ready to graduate.
- Goat Simulator 3
The chaos pick. Recommended by parents whose kids think bad goat physics is the funniest thing ever invented. Calibrate accordingly.
One thing that comes through reading the whole thread is how rarely parents seem to play their own games with their kids. The list above is overwhelmingly co-op games designed to be played together, not parents bringing kids into the games they already love. The exceptions exist. A parent who let their twelve-year-old try Red Dead Redemption. A dad teaching a daughter Final Fantasy VII. A kid getting handed Borderlands at ten and not quite ready for what the gun says when it reloads. Those stories were rare in the thread, and they read as memorable in part because they are rare.
For most families, the games on this list are deliberate meeting points. They are designed to be the place where a parent who plays a lot and a kid who is just starting can both actually contribute. That is a small but real category, and the names that came back over and over are mostly the same ones serious parents kept arriving at independently.
If you came in looking for picks for a fifteen-year-old, the thread does not have a good answer. That is its own data.