While there might be tons of great games to play on your own on PC, you might be looking for some games that you can play with a friend (or a few). Luckily, there are just as many great co-op games for you and your friends to play without ever having to pay a cent (unless you really, really want to).
These days, most free-to-play games are massive MMORPGs that allow you to make purchases in-game, but the good thing is that there is a surprising amount of variety to be found among those games. If you know where to look, you’ll find there are lots of great co-op games on PC.
Updated On August 02, 2025, by Sanyam Jain:While there are quite a few co-op games that you may enjoy with your friends for a limited time, some of them have can last a lifetime since these games get consistent updates with new content, and the recent co-op highlight in this category is Marvel Rivals.
The dungeon-crawling formula established and refined by the Diablo series has seeped into a lot of different genres these days. If you want a free variant of it to try out with friends,then look no further than Path of Exile.The game wears the Diablo influence on its sleeve, especially the more complex elements taken from Diablo 2.
It was a saving grace for a lot of fans who were less than pleased with the direction Diablo 3 went, which no doubt led to Path of Exile’s rise in popularity upon release. It may be free, but it can be hard to get into due to a surprisingly high skill ceiling. This can be a plus or a minus, depending on what type of gamer you are.
Trove isn’t as complex as other MMOs,but that’s part of its appeal. You don’t need to spend a lot of time tinkering around with the systems. Attacking is simple, and there are only three abilities you may use in battle for any given class. The art style is also a little more welcoming with a voxel-based approach.
Even though the game is free-to-play, there are opportunities to spend more money with microtransactions. Admittedly, ignoring all of these makes some elements of the game big grinds, but if you are with friends, it is just the mindless fun you might need when hanging out with them through gaming.
While there are already plenty of zombie-shooter co-op games in the market, Once Human holds quite a special place among all of them. This game took to the skies on its release due to its massive open-world waiting for you to explore. Each area has something unique about it, and there are plenty of puzzles for you to piece together.
As you try to get various chests, you’ll also be fighting a bunch of zombies, with some having their own unique skill set. However, if you’re someone who likes to stay away from conflict, you’re able to also focus on building a home for your co-op friends while they go outside and get the loot.
13No More Room In Hell
Metacritic User Score: 7.5
Left 4 Dead is the big zombie game from Valve, but No More Room In Hell was an independently developed mod for Half-Life 2 that takes a more grounded approach to a first-person game in a zombie apocalypse.
The gameplay aims for realism and forces you to ration resources and make tough choices on when to fight and when to run. The standalone title is also free, much like the mod, allowing eight players to join and attempt to survive together.
There was no critic score available for No More Room in Hell, so we used the user score instead.
12Marvel Rivals
Metacritic Score: 72
Any game that has Marvel in it is bound to get some attraction simply because of how popular the franchise is, but only a few of them can live up to the hype. Thankfully, Marvel Rivals is one of them since the game has done everything right to make a generic hero multiplayer shooter feel like a new experience.
The best part about it is that you get to play as your favorite Marvel character and perform unique abilities like creating a portalbetween time and space with Doctor Strange. You can play this game with up to six friends, and once you learn it enough, you can even challenge yourself to earn a rank in it.
While there might be many games where you can group up with your friends to challenge various enemies, most of them put you against bots that have some predetermined controls. However, the true adrenaline of battle from video games comes when you’re up against real players on the other side.
Valorant is the perfect game to have this feeling as you’re able to make a team of five people and queue up against another group with the same number. While there are multiple game modes, you essentially have to plant or diffuse the Spike in the most common one, but you can always win the round by just defeating all your enemies.
There seems to be a trend among free-to-play games offering a free variant to a popular video game that costs money. Dauntless, for example, feels a lot like Monster Hunter.
It is built on the loop of defeating a monster whose loot helps you build stronger equipment to take on even more powerful monsters. Going into these hunts with friends is a great way to spend some time gaming. The main difference between it and Monster Hunter World is the more cartoonish graphics.
9Alien Swarm
Metacritic Score: 77
Alien Swarm is for those who lovehectic top-down shooters. In this one, you can go through the campaign with three other friends. Team composition is important to survival, so be sure to pick the right class and use the right equipment to complement the other players in your party.
The game started its life as a mod for Unreal Tournament 2004 before the developers were hired by Valve, and a standalone version came out in 2010. The standalone version is still free and runs on the source engine as opposed to the Unreal Engine.
It’s impossible to talk about this topic and not mention one of the most famous free-to-play games of all time,Team Fortress 2. A staple of Steam since the day it was available on the store, Team Fortress 2 is a great option to play with friends, or against friends.
It primarily serves as a first-person shooter with a variety of objective-based modes where you and some friends can work on the same team to decimate your enemies. The PVP may be over a decade old at this point, but the fact that it’s still relevant speaks to how much fun it is.
7With You
No Metacritic Score Available
With You is a surprisingly charming little game for you to play with a close friend. Communication is key in this game, as you’ll have to work with your friend in order to overcome the various challenges that are thrown your way.
It’s far from the trickiest game around, but it is a fun way to spend time with a friend or even a loved one who may not be as into gaming as you. It’s worth a try, especially if you enjoy unique puzzle games that don’t go overboard with the difficulty.
