10 Co-Op Games That Destroy Friendships

Cooperative games are a great way to have fun with friends, but that’s not always the end result of these games. Sometimes, a game is made that is challenging or designed in a way that one false move can negatively affect everyone. In these cases, you are likely to run into a situation where you and your partners might not leave with a positive mood. Here are ten cooperative video games that can destroy friendships.

Chained Together

In Chained Together, you and up to three of your friends are – you guessed it – chained together, and need to climb your way out of Hell. This is one of those games where everything is built around being difficult. You and your friends will need to coordinate your jumps and movements because just one wrong step can pull the whole team back down to the bottom. If you are planning on playing this, maybe keep the more volatile friends out of the party if you still want to be on speaking terms.

Heave Ho

Platforming with friends is a pretty common cooperative experience that leads to these kinds of confrontations between friends. In the case of Heave Ho, you play as a small head with arms, and the goal is for you and your friends to all reach the goal. This game is very focused on you climbing and using momentum to fling yourself across an area. With all of the growing challenging courses, you will have to eventually rely on your friends to deliver you across safely, but they can also be your downfall.

Helldivers 2

One of the biggest selling points of Helldivers 2 is the massive explosions and big firepower you will wield as you fight large armies of robots and bugs. Where things start to break into friend-ending arguments is when you constantly start to hit your fellow patriots with friendly fire. Whether you riddle them with enough bullets to make them swiss cheese or you drop a bomb on them that’s big enough to clear a city block, there will be plenty of moments where you start yelling at each other, but you should also have plenty of laughs in there as well.

Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes

Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes is one of the more unique video games you will ever play. One player has to focus on defusing a bomb that is sitting in front of them, but they won’t know how. Their safety is completely reliant on the other person’s ability to read a big, complicated manual that reveals how to shut down the various sections of the bomb. With that timer slowly ticking down, tensions will run high here, especially when a wrong solution is given to the defuser. Good luck staying calm and collected here.

Mario Party

This entry is a little bit of a stretch because, overall, Mario Party is not a cooperative game. All four players work independently of each other to get more stars and coins than their opposition. That being said, there are plenty of moments where players will team up. Whether that is in a mini-game or two that just randomly decide to work together, you can severely get people upset with the way you play (or potentially throw a game for them to lose).

Overcooked

Overcooked is easily one of the most notorious cooperative video games that makes friend groups fight each other. Under a time limit, the players will operate a kitchen in a ton of wacky situations and deliver food orders as quickly as they can. Constantly running around the place, preparing the food, washing dishes, and then accounting for what your teammates are doing and how the map changes makes things very stressful, and thus, ends in a lot of yelling at each other.

Paddle Paddle Paddle

Paddle Paddle Paddle tells you everything you need to know in its title. You and your co-op buddies sit in a boat, each with an oar, and need to work together to get through various obstacles. Who decides to paddle will alter your boat’s orientation, so communication and having a plan are essential to making it as far as possible. Just tapping one wall or spike will send you back, with someone bearing the blame for the mess up.

Pico Park

Pico Park is a game for up to eight people to play where you need to grab a key and get to the door at the end of the room. Simple concept, but the way it works is a little difficult. If anything is on top of your character, whether it’s an item or another player, you won’t be able to jump, so you constantly need to make sure you are in a position that you can safely reach the next spot. If just one person dies, the whole team has to try again, so, of course, people tend to gang up on the person who messed up.

Portal 2

Portal 2 may have its frustrations when you reach a puzzle you struggle with, but it genuinely is one of the best video games ever made, so we highly recommend it. In the co-op campaign, you and one friend play as robots Atlas and P-body, using portal guns to reach the end of various test rooms. There are plenty of situations where one has to rely on the other, which leaves a lot of room for some trolling, where you purposely let your friend be destroyed. It’s a great time for everyone.

We’re going to lump in a whole genre here because if you play one, you essentially will have the same experience as any other social deduction game. Whether it is Among Us, Goose Goose Duck, Lockdown Protocol, or any other of the dozens of games that have popped up in recent years, you will have an experience similar to the rest. Choosing to trust someone who ends up being the impostor (or whatever the particular game calls it) will truly leave some hard feelings between friends for a few rounds at least. Even more so when you accuse someone innocent and lead them to their death.