Jump to:
Six Ways to Play on the Same Side
The first cooperative game I remember really connecting with was Pandemic. Four players, four character roles, four diseases spreading faster than we could travel. We lost. Then we lost again. By the third attempt we had started actually arguing about what to prioritise, which is somehow when it got genuinely fun. Winning felt earned in a way that very few competitive games can replicate.
That experience describes something very specific though: one particular type of cooperative design. Pandemic is a fully cooperative game with open information. That is one system. It is not the only one, and in some groups it might not even be the best one to start with.
Cooperative gaming has grown enormously over the past decade, and the range of systems designers use has grown with it. There are games where everyone wins or loses together, games where one player is secretly working against the group, games where players compete but share a common threat, games designed for a single player, and games where the cooperative experience is built around the absence of communication rather than its presence. These are not just different games. They are different systems, each producing a different experience at the table.
This post covers the six main cooperative systems, the design challenges each one creates, and the games that do each of them best. Examples of family and gateway games are included throughout.
What Is a Cooperative System?
BoardGameGeek defines the cooperative game mechanic as: players coordinate their actions to achieve a common win condition or conditions. Players all win or lose the game together.
That definition covers the most fundamental form. But it does not capture the full range of what cooperative design has become. A better framing is that a cooperative system is any game structure where players work together against a shared problem, even if what working together means, and what the shared problem is, varies considerably between systems.
The thing that makes cooperative games distinctively different from competitive ones is not just the winning condition. It is the relationship between players that the rules create. When you are all trying to win together, you behave differently than when you are trying to beat each other. Strategy becomes communication. Individual decisions have collective consequences. And the game itself becomes the opponent rather than the other players.
The Six Main Cooperative Systems
System 1: Fully Cooperative (Open Information)
The most common and most recognisable form. All players share the same objective, everyone wins or everyone loses, and all game information is visible to the whole group. Nothing is hidden between players.
The appeal is clear: the enemy is the game, not each other. Players build strategies together, share decisions, and celebrate or commiserate as a group. This system works particularly well for groups who are not comfortable with direct conflict, for mixed-experience groups where newer players benefit from guidance, and for anyone who finds losing to another person more frustrating than losing to the game itself.
The main design challenge is the alpha player problem. Meeple Mountain describes the quarterback as a player capable of reading the game state easily who begins enacting their plan by directing other players’ actions, treating everyone else like extensions of their own pieces. Good fully cooperative games fight back against this by giving each player a distinct role, creating situations where the right answer genuinely is not obvious, and adding time pressure so nobody can consider all options before acting.
Games for this system:
Pandemic (also Action Points): The foundational modern cooperative. Players are disease-fighting specialists, spending four actions per turn on a menu of six options to prevent outbreaks and find cures. The four-action system keeps everyone’s choices clear while the escalating disease spread creates constant pressure. Spiel des Jahres nominee 2009. Two to four players, forty-five minutes, ages eight and up.
Forbidden Island (also Action Points): Matt Leacock’s lighter sibling to Pandemic. Players work together to collect four treasures and escape a sinking island before it disappears beneath the water. Shorter, simpler, and quicker to teach than Pandemic while retaining the same urgency. Two to four players, thirty minutes, ages ten and up.
Spirit Island (also Area Control, Action Points): Players are nature spirits defending their island from colonial invaders, using powers with delayed effects that require careful coordination. One of the most satisfying fully cooperative designs ever made, with asymmetric spirits that force genuine collaboration. One to four players, ninety to one hundred and twenty minutes, ages thirteen and up.
The Crew: Quest for Planet Nine (also Trick Taking, Card Games): A cooperative trick-taking game where players work together to complete mission objectives across a ninety-mission campaign. Communication is restricted to a single token per mission, making every gesture significant. Kennerspiel des Jahres 2020. Two to five players, twenty minutes, ages ten and up.
Hanabi (also Card Games): Players hold their cards facing outwards, so everyone can see everyone else’s hand except their own. Players give and receive clues to play tiles in the right order without ever seeing their own cards. Small box, fifteen minutes, and a genuinely novel information structure. Two to five players, fifteen to twenty-five minutes, ages eight and up.
In my experience at our table, fully cooperative games with open information tend to work best when the group actively decides beforehand that everyone gets a genuine vote. The games that handle the alpha player problem best are ones with time pressure or hidden hands that force rapid individual decisions.
System 2: Cooperative with Hidden Information
A variation on the fully cooperative system where players are still working together toward a shared objective, but some game information is concealed between players. Each person knows something the others do not.
This is one of the most effective solutions to the alpha player problem because it makes complete knowledge impossible. If nobody can see the full picture, nobody can plan everything. Hanabi is the purest example, but many campaign dungeon crawlers and card games use this structure: your hand is yours, your hidden objectives are yours, and coordination requires actually communicating rather than one person instructing.
The design tension here is calibrating how much information stays hidden. Too much hidden information and players feel like they are playing alone next to each other. Too little and you are back to the alpha player problem. The best games in this system give players distinct areas of partial knowledge that overlap in interesting ways.
Games for this system:
The Crew: Mission Deep Sea (also Trick Taking, Card Games): The sequel to The Crew: Quest for Planet Nine, adding a more complex mission structure and deeper communication restrictions. Players work cooperatively through sixty missions, each introducing new constraints on what information can be shared. Two to five players, twenty minutes, ages ten and up.
Arkham Horror: The Card Game (also Deck Building, Legacy and Campaign Games): Players build personal investigator decks and run through scenarios where each player knows their own hand and abilities, creating a need for genuine communication about capabilities during play. One of the finest long-form cooperative games ever made. One to four players, sixty to one hundred and twenty minutes, ages fourteen and up.
Gloomhaven: Jaws of the Lion (also Action Points, Dungeon Crawl, Legacy and Campaign Games): Players choose two action cards from their private hand each round, playing the top of one and the bottom of the other. Because no one can see anyone else’s hand, coordination requires deliberate communication rather than assumption. The entry point to the Gloomhaven system with a built-in teaching campaign. One to four players, thirty to sixty minutes per scenario, ages fourteen and up.
In my experience at our table, the hidden-hand cooperative is the system that produces the most natural conversation. Nobody can solve the puzzle for the group because nobody has all the information. It creates a genuinely shared problem.
System 3: Semi-Cooperative (Individual Objectives with Shared Threat)
Players are working together against a shared threat or common failure condition, but each player also has their own individual objective. If the group fails, everyone loses. If the group succeeds, the player who best achieved their personal objective wins.
This is the system that produces the most interesting tension and the most controversy. The risk with this system is the kingmaker problem: a player who realises they cannot win their individual objective and decides to tank the shared objective rather than help someone else win. The best semi-cooperative games address this by making the individual objective possible to achieve quietly without obvious sabotage, or by making the penalty for failure genuinely collective.
Games for this system:
Dead of Winter (also Dice Games): Players are survivors in a zombie apocalypse trying to complete a shared colony objective. Each player also has a secret personal objective that may or may not align with the group’s. There may be a traitor. Figuring out whether the player making bad decisions is incompetent, playing to their personal goal, or actively sabotaging is the central tension. Two to five players, sixty to ninety minutes, ages fourteen and up.
Betrayal at House on the Hill (also Horror): The game starts fully cooperative: players explore a randomly constructed haunted house until a trigger event called the Haunt occurs. At that point, one player becomes the traitor with a hidden objective. There are fifty different Haunts, meaning every session tells a different story. In my experience at our table, Betrayal is one of the most memorable experiences the category can produce, partly because the haunt reveal is genuinely dramatic. Three to six players, sixty to ninety minutes, ages twelve and up.
Nemesis (also Horror): Players are stranded on a spaceship with alien creatures. There is a shared objective to repair the ship, but each player has a private mission that may require different decisions about who survives. Unlike Dead of Winter, Nemesis makes it clear from the start that everyone is acting in their own interests. Cooperation is always tentative and situational. One to five players, ninety to one hundred and eighty minutes, ages sixteen and up.
System 4: One vs Many (Cooperative versus One Opponent)
One player controls the threat, the rest cooperate against them. This is the oldest cooperative structure in board gaming, rooted directly in the dungeon-master tradition of tabletop RPGs. It gives one player an entirely different, often more complex experience while the rest cooperate.
The challenge is balance. The one player controlling the opposition has to be strong enough to threaten the group without being so powerful that cooperation becomes futile. Games in this system typically use asymmetric powers and carefully tuned scenario systems to manage this.
Games for this system:
HeroQuest (also Dungeon Crawl, Action Points): The 2021 reissue of the 1990 classic. One player is Zargon, controlling the dungeon and its monsters. Up to four players control heroes exploring it. The game that introduced dungeon-crawl cooperative gaming to a mainstream audience. Two to five players, sixty to ninety minutes, ages fourteen and up.
Descent: Journeys in the Dark (also Dungeon Crawl, Action Points): Fantasy Flight’s more complex dungeon-crawl system, with one player controlling the Overlord using a deck of cards and special powers. Significantly deeper than HeroQuest with a campaign mode and asymmetric hero powers. Two to five players, sixty to one hundred and twenty minutes, ages fourteen and up.
Mansions of Madness (also Horror, Dungeon Crawl): A second edition using a companion app to control the Overlord function, freeing the solo or group position while maintaining the one-vs-many dynamic. Players are investigators exploring a horror scenario while the app drives monster movement and story events. One to five players, two to three hours, ages fourteen and up.
In my experience at our table, the one vs many system is the most demanding on the solo player running the opposition. It suits someone who is confident with the rules and enjoys seeing the group face difficult problems more than playing to win personally.
System 5: Solo and Automa Play
Solo cooperative systems have become one of the most important design spaces in the hobby. Players control all characters themselves, working against either a printed scenario or an automa: a simulated opponent driven by a card deck.
The term automa was coined by designer Morten Monrad Pedersen while working on the solo mode for Viticulture. He founded Automa Factory, a company contracted to design solo systems for games. Punchboard.co.uk describes the philosophy: an automa should affect your play as human opponents would, but the thing itself need not play like a human to achieve that. A good automa deck runs quickly, creates genuine pressure, and gives the human player roughly the same decisions they would face with human opponents.
Games for this system:
Wingspan (also Engine Building, Set Collection, Tableau Building): The automa, designed by Automa Factory, simulates an opponent who takes food and eggs in escalating quantities, competes for end-of-round goals, and adjusts difficulty across five levels. The solo game is genuinely different from the multiplayer game but retains the same satisfying arc. One to five players (one in solo), forty-five to seventy minutes.
Scythe (also Engine Building, Area Control): The automa uses a card-driven system to deploy mechs, advance on tracks, and claim territories in a way that pressures the player without requiring complex calculations. Four difficulty settings and excellent component integration. One to five players (one in solo), ninety to one hundred and fifteen minutes.
Viticulture (also Worker Placement): The original Automa Factory game. Players build a wine estate in Tuscany, and the Automa simulates an opponent by claiming spaces and scoring points based on a card draw system. The gold standard for automa design. One to six players (one in solo), forty-five to ninety minutes. Also crosses into: Worker Placement.
Friday (also Deck Building): Designed from the ground up for solo play, Friday is a deck-building game where the player helps Robinson Crusoe build skills and survive an island. One of the few examples of a purposefully designed solo cooperative game rather than a retrofitted one. Strictly one player, twenty-five minutes, ages ten and up. Also crosses into: Deck Building.
In my experience at our table, the automa system rewards groups where one person wants to play and nobody else is available rather than replacing the full cooperative experience. The best solo games are ones where the automa’s turns are simple enough to run without constant rulebook checking.
System 6: Limited Communication Cooperative
Players are fully cooperating toward a shared goal, but the rules deliberately restrict how they can communicate. You cannot show your hand. You cannot say exactly what you hold. You cannot tell others what to play. The system creates a specific and unusual kind of cooperative challenge: working together without full information exchange.
This is the system that produces the most distinctive emotional experience in the category. When communication is limited, every word and gesture becomes loaded. Giving the right clue in Hanabi, placing the right token in The Crew, saying nothing when silence is the message are the moments that make this system unlike anything else in board gaming.
Games for this system:
The Crew: Quest for Planet Nine (also Trick Taking, Card Games): Players communicate exclusively through a single token placed on one of their cards once per mission, communicating that the card is highest, lowest, or only of that suit in the player’s hand. Everything else must be inferred from the play. The mission-based structure means restrictions escalate gradually. Two to five players, twenty minutes.
Hanabi (also Card Games): Players hold their cards facing outwards so everyone can see everyone else’s hand except their own. Others can tell you either the colour or the number of some of your tiles. Nothing else. Fifteen minutes and one of the most elegant information puzzles in the hobby. Two to five players, fifteen to twenty-five minutes.
Sky Team (2024, also Action Points): Players are the pilot and co-pilot of an aircraft trying to land safely. Both players secretly assign dice to different controls on a shared cockpit board. No communication is allowed after the placement phase. Each airport has different constraints, and miscommunication results in crashes. Sky Team won the Spiel des Jahres 2024 and is one of the cleanest designs this system has produced. Strictly two players, twenty minutes, ages twelve and up.
In my experience at our table, limited communication cooperative games are the ones that require the most trust between players. You have to accept that you will sometimes be wrong, that your partner will sometimes make choices that seem inexplicable, and that resolving that together is the point of the game.
The Alpha Player Problem: Every Cooperative System’s Biggest Challenge
Whatever system a cooperative game uses, the alpha player problem is its most persistent design challenge. A cooperative game where one person controls every decision is functionally a solo game with extras. Meeple Mountain describes the quarterback as capable of reading the game state easily, beginning to enact their plan by directing other players’ actions, treating everyone else like extensions of their own pieces.
Good cooperative design fights this structurally rather than socially. Hidden hands prevent complete knowledge. Distinct roles mean individual domains cannot be fully supervised. Communication restrictions make coordination inherently uncertain. Real-time pressure eliminates the opportunity for deliberation.
The question to ask when choosing a cooperative system is not just which games look good. It is which system fits the players you are bringing to the table. A group with one very experienced player and several newcomers will have a very different session in an open-information game versus a hidden-hand one.
Family and Gateway Cooperative Systems Games
For groups new to cooperative gaming, these are the starting points I would recommend regardless of which system you try first.
Pandemic (Fully Cooperative, also Action Points): The standard introduction. Simple rules, clear roles, and a difficulty level that scales well. The game can be won at easy settings, which is worth knowing for groups who find losing repeatedly discouraging. Two to four players, forty-five minutes, ages eight and up.
Forbidden Island (Fully Cooperative, also Action Points): Matt Leacock’s simpler Pandemic cousin, designed explicitly as a gateway game. Shorter, lighter, and cheaper. A good first cooperative experience before moving to Pandemic or Pandemic Legacy. Two to four players, thirty minutes, ages ten and up.
The Crew: Quest for Planet Nine (Limited Communication, also Trick Taking, Card Games): The best gateway game for the limited communication system because the trick-taking base is familiar and the restrictions are introduced gradually across ninety missions. Works brilliantly as a game that a group plays repeatedly over time. Two to five players, twenty minutes, ages ten and up.
Sky Team (Limited Communication, also Action Points): Strictly two players but one of the cleanest cooperative gateway games available at that count. Simple setup, twenty minutes, and the Spiel des Jahres 2024 winner. Two players, twenty minutes, ages twelve and up.
In my experience at our table, the gateway cooperative system that converts the most non-gamers is Pandemic, but the one that gets the most repeat plays is The Crew. There is something about the mission structure that makes people want to immediately try the next one.
Recently Released Cooperative Systems Games Worth Your Time
Sky Team (2024, System 6: Limited Communication, also Action Points): Designed by Luc Rémona, published by Scorpion Masque. Won the Spiel des Jahres 2024. Players are the pilot and co-pilot of a landing aircraft, secretly assigning dice to a shared cockpit display each round then resolving the results. No communication is permitted once placement begins. Each airport introduces new constraints. Plays in twenty minutes. Strictly two players, ages twelve and up.
Slay the Spire: The Board Game (2024, System 2: Cooperative with Hidden Information, also Deck Building): An adaptation of the popular roguelike video game, designed by Gary Dworetsky, Anthony Giovannetti, and Casey Yano. Players cooperate to ascend through increasingly difficult enemy encounters, each building their own card deck from their character class and shared relics. The hidden-hand structure means coordination requires communication rather than direction. Coopgestalt.com called it one of the most played games at their regular group in 2024, noting it worked equally well for players who had and had not played the original video game. Two to four players, sixty to one hundred and fifty minutes, ages fourteen and up. Also crosses into: Deck Building, Legacy and Campaign Games.
Things to Consider Before You Buy
Choosing a cooperative system is as important as choosing a game. The system shapes the social experience entirely.
If you have a group with mixed experience levels, fully cooperative open-information games work because more experienced players can coach. But watch for the alpha player problem; if one person starts directing everyone’s moves, the experience collapses for the rest of the group.
If you want to prevent any single player from dominating, choose hidden-hand or limited communication cooperative games. Nobody can steer what they cannot see.
If your group is competitive by nature and pure cooperation feels unsatisfying, semi-cooperative systems with individual objectives give people something to personally chase while keeping a shared threat active.
If you mostly play solo or have an unreliable group, look for games with well-regarded automa systems. Wingspan, Viticulture, Scythe, and Spirit Island all have excellent solo modes.