Hi guys!
Soon I’ll be traveling and visiting family. I’d like to be able to hook my Steam Deck to their TV and let their kids have a rip at couch multiplayer games allowing up to 4 simultaneous players. The good ole classic WiiU Mario Kart is there and been played until exhaustion by now, so I’d be happy if I had more titles (either SD-compatible or just plain emulated) at the ready if they wanted to try.
Thanks!
I always search steam sales for local multiplayer games. I have not tested all of these yet, so I’m going to categorize them here.
Games I already played with someone (e.g. “tested”)
Games for future play sessions (not yet tested)
Have fun :)
I can confirm that Barony is a fun couch coop experience for two on a steam deck, so long as you are prepared to die and have to start over a lot. It might be tricky with four players, as there is a lot of inventory menuing. You might need a really large screen.
avoid Magicka 1 for multiplayer if you can. The final update they pushed before abandoning it turned multiplayer into a buggy, crashy mess
Edit: it might be fine for local couch multiplayer actually
Dude…I knew/had only a few in this list. And most of the rest look amazing. This is a long list of very promising games, thanks so much!
You’re welcome, I’m glad to spread the old-school pre-internet local couch coop fun :)
My personal favourites are
MageQuit
This is the most addicting of all the played games. I bought this with a “fun little magic-based pvp-only game for now and then” mindest. I thought “super smash brothers but magic”. I started playing it with my friend on his TV “just for an hour” and suddenly, it was dark outside and time to go home.
The next meeting we planned on playing MageQuit for a round or two and then move on to one of the other, yet unplayed, games. The moving on part never happened, MageQuit was just too much fun.
Lovers in a Dangerous Spacetime
This is the game for the whole family. You (up to 4 players) are in a spaceship. The spaceship has different buttons and levers in different places to control different things like acceleration, changing direction, aiming / firing weapon, directing partial shield or countermeasure etc. and you need to rescue your bunny-friends.
They are scattered around the levels, sometimes hidden, sometimes locked up, sometimes guarded etc and you need to work together with your teammates to direct the spaceship. You get quite a few different weapons and shields / countermeasures, which can also be combined, you upgrades for the ship, can buy different ships etc.
It looks and sounds adorable, but if you don’t work together, it’s way harder then it looks. This is a game with a campaign and story.
Regular Human Basketball
Think basketball, but stupid and fun. The regular humans are actually motionless robots which need to be moved by using switches and levers inside it, which is what your job is. You even have a jet-boost at some parts of your regular-human body. We laughed our asses off.
It is similar to Lovers in a Dangerous Spacetime in the sense that, you need to work together to control a bigger machine. This is just a pvp only game, no story or campaign.
Ultimate Chicken Horse
Race each other to the finish of an obstacle course. After each round, everyone picks a new obstacle to place and expands the course. Seldomly have I ever seen such bullshittery as my friends and me created in this game and then had to go through.