Cooperative board games: how they work and where to start

Some evenings you do not feel like beating your friends. Playing together, yes; watching someone sulk after a loss, no. For those evenings there is a whole family of games: cooperative games. The idea fits in one sentence, and it completely changes the mood at the table.

The idea: everyone against the game

In a cooperative game, players form a single team, and the game itself plays against them: a spreading epidemic, a sinking island, a plane that has to land. At the end, everyone wins, or everyone loses.

That is not the same as a team game. In Codenames, for instance, two teams face each other: there are always winners and losers at the table. In a cooperative game, the opponent is the game.

Why they work so well

• Nobody loses alone. No one ends the night at the bottom of the ranking. You lost together, you laugh about it together, and you go again.
• You learn by playing. Experienced players help newcomers out loud: that is the spirit of the game, not a favour.
• Great for mixed groups. Families, colleagues, non-gamer friends: the tension comes from the game, not from each other.

The trap: the alpha player

Cooperative games have a well-known flaw. When all the information is on the table, an experienced player can end up dictating everyone's moves. The others no longer play; they execute. People call it quarterbacking or the alpha player problem.

Two fixes:

1. Pick games with hidden information or limited communication. Hanabi, The Mind and The Crew structurally stop one player from controlling everything: you cannot see everything, or you are not allowed to say everything.
2. Agree on a simple rule: advice is welcome, but everyone decides their own turn.

Where to start

To discover the genre: Forbidden Island

Designed by Matt Leacock, creator of Pandemic, Forbidden Island (2010) is the ideal entry point: rules explained in five minutes, half-hour games, and real tension as the island sinks. Perfect for families.

For a real strategy evening: Pandemic

Pandemic (2008), by the same designer, is the benchmark of the genre. Four diseases spread across the world map, everyone has a unique role, and you must coordinate to eradicate them. Watch out for the alpha player: everything is visible in this one.

For players who do not talk: The Mind and Hanabi

The Mind (Wolfgang Warsch, 2018) is just a deck of numbered cards: play them in ascending order… without ever talking. Baffling, then addictive.

Hanabi (Antoine Bauza), winner of the prestigious Spiel des Jahres in 2013, flips the logic: you see everyone's cards except your own, and every hint is a scarce resource.

For two: Sky Team

Sky Team (Luc Rémond), Spiel des Jahres 2024, is a cooperative game built for two: a pilot, a co-pilot, and a landing to pull off by placing dice without being able to discuss. Fifteen-minute games you play back to back.

For card game fans: The Crew

The Crew (Thomas Sing), Kennerspiel des Jahres 2020, turns the classic trick-taking game into a cooperative space mission, with a campaign of dozens of missions of increasing difficulty.

For experienced players: Spirit Island

For groups that love demanding games, Spirit Island (2017) offers deep cooperative strategy: spirits of nature push back invading colonists. Save it for evenings with time to spare.

Logging cooperative plays

One last detail that often gets overlooked: a cooperative play is not logged like a regular one. There is no winner, only a team result. And it should not count in a ranking between players: winning at The Mind is not beating your friends. We go into more detail in our article on keeping score of your plays.

In MeepleThèque, cooperative games have their own mode: you log “We won!” or “The game won” in one tap, those plays stay out of the rankings, and the app keeps a separate team record (“beat the game 7 times out of 10”).