Cooperative Board Games 101

Deep Rock Galactic board game in progress.

Today I will be exploring the world of cooperative board games including how they work, their advantages and disadvantages, and my recommendations for good games.

What are cooperative board games?

Cooperative games are usually simpler in nature and often less abstract than their heavier competitive counterparts. Cooperative board games often use player roles, action points, and event cards to simulate situations as if in real time and immerse players into the setting of the game. Cooperative games excel at creating tension, getting players talking, and making players think.

Common Cooperative Game Mechanics

Action Points

Action points are one of the fundamental mechanics of many cooperative games such as Forbidden Island and Pandemic. Each player is allowed a certain number of action points to spend on their turn. They can then choose from a list of available actions, either general to the game or specific to their role. In general each action requires one point to perform, but many games offer valuable actions that cost more than one action point or simple actions that require none. Action points are a great way to keep things simple and minimize the resources players have to manage. Action points also encourage team strategy, but they rarely leave a lot of space for individual strategy.

Event Cards

Cooperative games are known for pitting players against growing or changing challenges such as weather and enemies. To give the effect that these challenges have a mind of their own they are often controlled by a deck of event cards, drawn each turn or round. These events might add new obstacles, move enemies around on the board, or force players to exhaust resources. The event deck also gives a place for descriptions and art that help further immerse players into the story of the game.

Player Roles

One of the ways cooperative games increase replayability and help players get into character is by giving each player a role. These often come on cards with a picture and/or description of the role or character the player is taking on. Roles usually include specific abilities or benefits that the assigned player can use during the game.

Escalating Challenges

Cooperative board games often strive to generate tension and grow more difficult as time moves forward. One of the ways they do this is by presenting escalating challenges. The number of event cards drawn might increase or the enemies may grow more numerous. Obstacles in the game may create chain reactions as they multiply, such as the disease cubes in Pandemic. This gives players a more tangible source of tension than just a time limit.

Time Limit

Most cooperative games have some sort of time limit. Whether it’s counting down the rounds, running out of cards, or reaching the end of an important track. The time limit keeps players moving and forces them to be as efficient as possible. It creates the puzzle of figuring out how to accomplish everything they need to get done before time runs out.

Multiple Ways To Lose

One of the pinnacles of cooperative gaming is including multiple ways to lose. On top of the time limit, there are almost always two or more additional ways for a team to fail. These could include a character dying, running out of a particular resource or enemy, and many other possibilities. These various factors keep players on their toes and force them to manage multiple things at once. This a key contributor to the tension and excitement that cooperative games are designed to instill.

Difficulty Scaling

Almost every cooperative game has some type of difficulty setting for the game. The difficulty setting a group chooses may affect the time limit, the event cards, how quickly the game escalates, or many other game specific factors. New players can learn the game on easier levels, while experienced players can challenge themselves with higher difficulties. This is one of the driving factors of replayability in cooperative games.

Advantages of Cooperative Games

Cooperative games can be an incredible experience. They can produce great moments as you work together as a team and can build camaraderie in a group or family.

Non-Competitive Gameplay

Many people appreciate that cooperative games are non-competitive. You either all win together, or lose together. They don’t have to worry about losing to more experienced players or feeling bad if they hurt another player’s game. The non-competitive nature of cooperative games make them a great choice for families, couples, and less serious gamers.

Puzzle Solving

One of my favorite aspects of cooperative games is the puzzle they present. Figuring out how to best spend your actions and maneuver the board, planning ahead, and taking yours and other players abilities into account. You can create these wonderful concoctions of teamwork that leads to great moments as you succeed, often by the skin of your teeth. It has a very different feeling from many competitive strategy games.

Social Bonding

In my experience, cooperative games can be a great form of social bonding. Players can form strong connections as they work closely with other players to face challenges and solve problems.

Solo Experience

Cooperative games offer the special option of playing solo without having to manage any artificial opponent. While many games include a great solo mode, you can also just play with as many characters as you want, coordinating the team inside your own head. Playing this way is a unique experience and can help you master higher difficulties.

Disadvantages of Cooperative Games

Quarterbacking

After the last sections you were probably expecting a long list, but I really only have one complaint. My major qualm with cooperative games is what people call “quarterbacking”. In essence, ‘quarterbacking’ occurs when more experienced or more assertive players tend to take over a game; telling others what to do, planning others turns in advance, and leaving less opportunity for other players to contribute to the strategy. Nothing against these players, it often comes down to differences in personality or experience level, but it can make cooperative gaming a lot less fun for those who may be less assertive or new to the hobby. I’m the type that loves to figure things out for myself, I’m also not the assertive type, so this has hindered my cooperative experiences before. Some games have ways of combating this problem to a degree.

Variations on Cooperative Board Games

Traitor and 1 vs. Many Games

A popular sub category of cooperative games is traitor games or One vs. Many. In this type of game most players are working together against a single player, sometimes this single player becomes the enemy through some sort of betrayal mechanic or sometimes they are an opposing team from the beginning. This type of game seeks to capture sort of the best of both worlds, being a cooperative game, with a competitive aspect. These games often have unique themes and seek to tell an interesting story. Games in this category include Betrayal at House on the Hill and Nemesis.

Partially Cooperative Games

Some games are competitive but maintain a cooperative element. Players are working together to achieve their goal, but might have individual objectives. Or players might be able to deliberately choose to compete against the team for their own personal gain. In addition, some games are competitive but have a mechanic in place whereby all players may lose. So players have to help the whole group in order to ensure their own victory.

Recommended Cooperative Games

Here are some of my recommendations for cooperative games.

Forbidden Desert

Forbidden Desert is part of a three game series which all include variations on a similar theme. You have to work together to repair your ship in order to escape before a storm or some other disaster overtakes you. Forbidden Desert is my favorite of the three. It is easy to grasp and quick to play, and hits all the right cooperative game notes. It has strong character roles and interesting exploration mechanics that keep it interesting. It also has good difficulty settings that keep you coming back to it. My one qualm with Forbidden Desert and its counterparts is that it gives a player very little individual agency, which often lends itself to some degree of quarterbacking whenever I’ve played.

Pandemic

Pandemic is a classic cooperative game. In pandemic players are disease experts traveling the world, attempting to save it from several raging pandemics. Players must keep the disease at bay as they attempt to cure all of the diseases before any of several losing conditions are triggered. The game shines as a true exercise in teamwork, as players must be closely coordinated in order to win.

Deep Rock Galactic

Deep Rock Galactic is an amazing cooperative adventure game based on the video game of the same name. In Deep Rock Galactic players play as gun toting dwarves attempting to mine resources from dark caves before the time runs out, while battling off large bug-like aliens. To do so they’ll have to make efficient use of scant resources and manage every turn effectively. This game immerses you deep in your character and deep in the game's theme. Each role has unique strengths and weaknesses that make sure each player feels like a contributor.

Escape From Atalix

Here is my usual plug haha. Escape from Atalix is a Studio Ardia game, currently available for pre-order at the shop link at the top of this page. But in all seriousness Escape from Atalix is an excellent cooperative game that stands out in several ways from the usual formula. The game is a deck building game where each player manages a small deck of cards and uses those cards to take actions during their turns. Players play cards simultaneously at the start of the round so each player has to think carefully about their own turn with limited information from others. The strategy of building your deck and playing your cards before the round begins ensures each player has plenty of agency and individual strategy in their gameplay experience.

Spirit Island

Now I won’t lie, I haven’t played Spirit Island. But it is definitely high on my priority list of games to try. It has a unique theme and unique mechanics that I’m really interested in trying out! It is very highly rated and a must have experience for serious gamers.