Have you played Deep Rock Galactic? It’s a wonderful games where you play a dwarf mining things, fighting off bugs while you do it. You play in a group of up to 4 people trying to complete your objectives together.

I find it really hard to explain what makes it great, so you’ll just have to trust it’s avid fan base!

If you and your partner enjoy RPG’s, I highly recommend Divinity: Original Sin (and Divinity: Original Sin 2, though we haven’t finished that one yet). Very story-driven, the tactical combat is a blast when you get into strategizing and collaborating, and there are all sorts of non-combat shenanigans you can get up to as well (the second even more so than the first).

You probably played it already, but if you didn’t, Portal 2 has a Co-op campaign and it’s really good.

Edit: I opened my steam library for more games and and saw that apparently an unofficial mod Portal reloaded had a co-op update if you already played the original. Anyway here’s some more games.

Battleblock theater: a co-op puzzle platformer. It has a bit of a party game vibe with it’s humour and ability to mess with your friends, but it has a story.

Don’t starve together: a 2d survival game with an interesting drawn style.

FEAR 3: a horror FPS.

Payday 2: a co-op FPS where you rob banks (and other places).

I’m a bit surprised by your premise, games with local co-op have certainly almost disappeared entirely, but I haven’t noticed a trend in online co-op. Some good ones off-hand (that haven’t been mentioned). These are in descending order if my personal playtime as a rough proxy for how good I think they are.

• Remnant
• Wasteland 3
• Outriders
• Gloomhaven
• Risk of Rain 2
• Warhammer Vermintide 2
• Monster Hunter World
• Left 4 Dead series
• Back 4 Blood
• Borderlands series
• Magicka
• Star Wars the Old Republic
• Helldivers
• Barony
• Barotrauma
• Gods Trigger
• Action Squad
• Aragami 1,2
• Evil West

Deep Rock Galactic

When I started to read your post I was going to reply with ItTakes Two, but then I saw you already played it. IMO that is the best co-op game ever. A little bit of everything, amazing graphics, gameplay, music. I only wish I found something close to it.

My friend and I played We Were Here Forever. Not an action game whatsoever. Graphics were meh. Story ok. The challenges were fun but difficult. If you are looking for a “thinking/puzzle” co-op that requires good communication, you may want to give it a try.

Following this post to see other comments, as I would love to try out a good co-op as well.

We recommend V Rising. It’s an ARPG (Diablo-like), but with big focus on base building.

You mine, you craft, you build a cool looking goth castle, and then you hunt enemies or bosses using your upgraded weapon and new skills. It’s very fun. You can spin up a local server and modify your own server/game rules to increase progress speed (as some features are designed for a 24/7 server, and your game only advances when it’s running, so some speedups are necessary)

Dont Starve Together and Overcooked are my jam with wife :3

The Trine series is a fun 1-3 player game with a nice story and a few puzzles to play trough.

If you want to explore and do story on the side i can also always recommend Guild Wars 2. Base game is f2p so worthy of a look IMO.

Use the Local Co-Op tag on Steam and you can filter them down pretty well. I played through these with my wife. They were a ton of fun. I put an asterisks beside my favorites.
Darksiders Genesis*
It Takes Two*
Lara Croft and the Guardian of Light (with the Legacy of Kain DLC)*
Secret of Mana Remake*
Unravel 2
Full Metal Furies*
Castle Crashers*

These are good too.

Helldivers*
Road Redemption
Rampage Knights
Broforce
Streets of Rage 4
Huntdown*
Any WORMS game, WMD is great.
Overcooked
Lovers in a Dangerous Spacetime*
Speedrunners
Shadowgrounds

I want to throw in the We were here series, I love those kind of coop games

Here are some rough categories and hours included.

Builder / Survival

Sounded like you were not that interested in this genre but they can be fun co-op experiences.

• Terraria (850 hours) - Two of my friends I have done two clean slate full play-throughs of this game.
• Core Keeper (77 hours) - Also played through the content of this game with same 2 friends.
• Valheim (344 hours) - Did a co-op play through with a friend on this one. Might do it again with Mistlands or with other updates.

Boss Encounters / Building

• V Rising (79 hours)

Played through V Rising with a friend, co-op pve, and it was a blast. We really enjoyed the different boss battles. We are going to revisit this one soon as they dropped / are dropping new content.

Exploration / Melee Combat / Story

• Dying Light 2 (87 hours)

Enjoyed playing Dying Light 2 with a friend, playing the game turned out to a mix of playing solo and playing co-op.

Platformer

• Trine

Fox mentioned this and I’ll add it as well. Fun co-op platformer with some fun story telling aspects.

MMO

• Guildwars 2

Fox also mentioned GW2 in the thread. There is a ridiculous amount of content in this game with no subscription required. Combat feedback/force has always felt weak imo but there is a massive world to explore and jumpy puzzles if you are into that (love them).

More story focused co-op

Also watching this thread as I’m curious what shows up. I haven’t played many games in this area on PC.