Biggest surprise for me last year was the new Yooka Laylee game which like 2 months old at the time.

lol, I googled Long Dark and it looks like someone created a compilation of everything I dislike in video games

It seems like Metro 2033 has been given away on various storefronts roughly eleventy billion times

Darkest Dungeon is great. If I didn't already own it and have 100+ hours in it I'd be picking it up.

My Time in Portia looks somewhat interesting.

It's nice that there's so much money in gaming that big companies like Epic buy up these games and give them away as loss leaders.

Yep, outside of a few dollars here and there for cheaper/older indie games (and Ducktales Remastered for my kids), the only games I've purchased at full price in the last 5 years for PC are Yooka-Laylee and Cuphead.

I've spent thousands on Nintendo games and Consoles over the years (NES thru Wii) so I'd like to think my investment in keeping gaming going as a platform is now rewarding me with free content.

Oddworld yesterday, The Long Dark today. Appears to be following the list.

Thanks for the heads up on the free games. Have had the long dark on wishlist for awhile. $0 seems like a good price to pull the trigger

Same with the long dark, and others that are on my wishlist as well like darkest dungeon and stranded deep (if list is accurate).

Due to Xmas being cancelled for me, as I'm in complete lock-down, I've been looking at playing games online with my brother, and maybe parents, over the period.

Obviously looked at Tabletop Simulator. Any suggestions for good Steam games? Ideally Co-op, but don't mind PvP, and preferably free! So far we've these to test tomorrow:

Don't Starve Together
Crusader Kings II
King Arthur's Gold

overcooked 1/2
Minecraft win10/phone/tablet editions have easy coop free server play
moving out
rocket league (w/brother)
Fall guys

Cool thanks! Will check them out.

Played a bit of Overcooked and was so bad at it, but definitely good fun.
I'm an OG Rocket League player from when it was Supersonic Acrobatic Rocket-Powered Battle-Cars (can see why they changed the name).

Moving Out is a strong rec and a ton of fun with a friend.

Do they know how to play CK2 at all? That's prob not a noob friendly game for the family.\

Edit- I realize now it's prob you and your brother.

Similar question to thethethe's, except I'm interested in local two-player PC games. Ones I've already got:
Streets of Rage 4
Left 4 Dead 2
Portal 2
Street Fighter 5
Gears of War 5
Lara Croft: Guardian of Light - I've only played this in singleplayer when it was released in 2010. Something like this seems ideal for local co-op; are there any similar, more recent games?

You said online games, right? Pretty sure Moving Out is just local co-op.


Should definitely play some Among Us with the whole fam. Parents can play free on their phones.

If you like puzzle games, 'We Were Here' is a fun free one for two people - it requires mics as communication to solve problems is a big part of the game.

The follow ups 'We were here too' and 'We were here together' aren't free, but reasonably priced.

Yeh I know it's a complicated one. I think part of the fun will be bumbling through together, with no idea what we're doing. Might check out a YouTube or two if things are really bad.

Cool cheers. Yeh seen people playing on twitch. If it can cause arguments and falling outs between us, even though we're 100s of miles apart, it's the perfect Xmas game experience!

Awesome! Seems perfect, added to my list to try tonight. Thanks.

A group of people with equally zero knowledge of the game would be pretty hillarious, but you do all still have to deal with the (very cutthroat) AI. The crusades will start and family members will get wiped out.

IMO, EU4 would be a better choice for this. Divide up the main western european powers and everyone is going to be pretty cushioned from the AI. It's a lot easier to keep ahead even when you have no clue what's going on.

I've never played it but seems to be a good interactive game:
Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes

Yeah, Krimson kind of touches on what I was going to say too but CK2 is much steeper and (imo) less intuitive to use the UI. It's great tho and def hilarious (plus it's free!).

I'm not super verse on CK2 but had this same thought as well basically.

Meant to also say Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes is also hilarious and perfect to cause some family jimmy rustling.

Little update. Last night's run didn't go very well at all, mainly due to my internet playing up and regularly kicking me, which naturally puts a stop to any serious game play. Managed to play a bit of a few games though.

King Arthur's Gold - Seemed promising, although we didn't really know what we were doing. When we got into bigger games, everyone had a lot more health and were a lot better, so I think we just annoyed them. One guy on my team in particular kept running around me making angry red exclamations marks!! so I thought it best to leave. We agreed to practise offline and have another shot later.

Crusader Kings II - Didn't get very far with this. Basically inundated with options, all of which was either (a) telling me it was locked and I needed xxxx content, or (b) was trying to take me somewhere to buy xxxx content pack. I was annoyed about my internet by this point, so rage quit. I'll try play a bit of single player offline and see what I think.

We Were Here - Definitely the most successful, and we both were really enjoying it, although, again marred by the fact I kept dcing, so we never got very far. Will definitely be playing again.
Question regarding the walkie talkies - I understand you communicate on them. Ours weren't 'working', but possibly because we were already using our mics talking on messenger. Is there any difference between using the walkie talkies and using something like zoom/messenger? or are we 'cheating'?

I've seen Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes and it looks great. If my internet sorts itself out, I'd be very tempted to pull the trigger on it.

The walkie talkies are one-way (at a time) only, so you have to make sure to activate them, talk and then deactivate them - also it's a good idea to include an 'over' at the end so the other guy knows you've finished talking and you'll open the channel for him/her. You can cancel each other out if you're talking at the same time.

I don't really see this "feature" adding much though so if you're having problems I don't see any reason to not go with out-of-game chat instead.

Cool thanks. I figured it might be something like that.