Ever since late 2020 and COVID-19, many new arcade-style games have been created in hopes of creating a fun social activity for people that cannot get together in person. In our post-COVID world, these games have become mainstream and even popular among non-gamers as a way to connect with friends across the country/world; have a cost-effective game night online; and/or just have a genuinely stress-free good time with friends or family.
Before getting into the list, there are some commonalities among these games that make them so popular and fun. First, they are non-competitive, simple games that most people can pick up and understand with very little time in the game. Second, each session can be as long or short as needed – one round takes around 10 minutes and players can choose to progress as many of these rounds together as they want. Third, these games are cost-effective, only priced around $10 or less and can provide hours of fun for all friends involved. Lastly, these games are optimized to be run on any kind of computer, so a $200 laptop and a $4000 PC can run these games at the same efficiency.
With all these qualities, it’s no wonder why these games are popular around gaming and non-gaming communities alike. Keeping that in mind, let’s get into the Top 5 Games to Play with Friends on Steam:
- Among Us – $4.99 – This list had to include this game because it created this trend and went super-viral during COVID. Millions of players still play Among Us and there have been countless games that have tried to copy it. The premise – players play as astronauts on a spaceship, but one player is an alien. The non-alien players must go around the ship and completed different tasks while the alien player has to kill all the non-alien players without getting found out. After a player is killed, a council is called between all the alive players and everyone votes on who they believe committed the act. Whoever receives the most votes is kicked off the ship; this process repeats until either the alien is the last one alive or non-aliens vote the alien off the ship. While simple, it can be very fun when arguing at council or being the alien that deceives everyone else.
- Lethal Company – $9.99 – Players work for a corrupt company that exploits their workers. They must travel from planet to planet and collect random junk to meet their quote. However, these planets have dangerous monsters on them and the players have nothing to defend themselves. With the money players make, they can buy tools and weapons from the company at extreme mark ups. If everyone dies or the company quota is not met, the game is over. However, surviving and meeting the quota allows players to progress to new worlds with more monsters but also more money. Very scary and very fun at the same time is the best way to describe this game.
- Liar’s Bar – $6.99 – Players chose an animal what they want to be and are then thrust into a bar to play different tabletop games like BS or Dice. The twist, losing is a life-or-death situation. The goal is to be the last one standing, which awards points over the rest of the players. This repeats game after game until the players decide it’s over. While there are only a few tabletop games available now, more will be added in the coming months. It’s a fun game now but once all the game modes are added and players can switch between games to play, it will be really fun to play with friends.
- R.E.P.O. – $9.99 – Similar to Lethal Company, players need to collect items and meet their quota so the corrupt company they work for doesn’t get rid of them. The key differences are that the monsters a more complex and players have more ways to defend themselves against these monsters. The longer players take to meet their quota on any given level, the darker the level becomes and the more monsters that they have to deal with. With a little bit of strategy mixed in, this game is a lot of fun and fright.
- Content Warning – $6.99 – Players load into a world together with video cameras and are all recording each other exploring the worlds they travel to. However, monsters will come out when players least expect and try to ruin their videos and kill them. There are no ways to defend against or defeat the monsters, so all players can do is run away and try to escape all while creating content. It’s very funny and scary to watch players react to all the monster they encounter.
