If your multiplayer gaming sessions are getting stale, we’ve got you covered. With a near-endless selection of online games and blockbuster titles vying for your attention, the task of choosing what games to play can feel a bit overwhelming, but when your status in the friend group is up for debate, the stakes are even higher.

For some, the idea of playing alone might sound like the perfect escape from the rigours of day-to-day life, but for most of us, a truly immersive gaming experience is better enjoyed with friends. Whether you are looking for a chilled-out campaign that allows you to chat and play along without too much stress, or an excellent multiplayer mode that demands all your attention, there will be a fun online game to suit your needs.

While we could have easily kept listing all our favourite video games to play with friends, we did our best to keep the list a bit more manageable. This list will be updated as new games come out and prove themselves, so keep your eyes peeled! 

These are the best multiplayer video games that you and your friends should play right now.

Best Games to Play with Friends

Whether you’re looking for free-to-play games to kill some time or a new virtual life to lose yourself in for 100 hours, you’ll find it with one of these online multiplayer games. To choose the best games to play with friends, we focused on gameplay and mechanics, difficulty, campaign length and replayability, taking into consideration each title’s visual storytelling and multiplayer features.

1. Apex Legends

• Genre: Battle-Royale Hero Shooter
• Platforms: Windows (Steam), PlayStation 5, PlayStation 4, Nintendo Switch, Nintendo Switch 2, Xbox Series X/S, Xbox One
• Players: 1-3
• Price: Free to play

It’s been out for a while at this point, but Apex Legends is still one of the best hero shooters you can get your grubby little hands on these days. Offering a whole lot for the very fair price of free*, Apex takes several of the tried and true concepts of the wildly successful battle royale genre, mixes it with the gunplay and movement of developer Respawn’s prior series, Titanfall, and adds in a hero-based roster of 25 characters: each of which have their own individual playstyles and niches within the game’s meta.

Depending on which character you choose, you’ll be reversing the flow of gravity around you, teleporting through space to reach locations unseen or unexpected, overheating your enemies weapons as they try to shoot you down, or shielding your teammates from danger. Or a whole bunch of other things: each character has three abilities, meaning a team will have access to nine at a time, and, across the 60-player maps, there’s always someone doing something cool.

If that sounds complicated: know that while there’s a lot to learn, Apex is actually one of the more easily parsed competitive shooters on the market, and thankfully has managed to cultivate a healthy, and supportive, player base—a rarity these days, if we’re being honest. Ask for help and you shall (hopefully) receive!

2. ARC Raiders

• Genre: PvPvE Extraction Shooter
• Platforms: Steam, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series S/X
• Players: 1-3 per team
• Price: AUD$60

One of two big new games to drop recently and make a splash in the multiplayer-shooter arena, ARC Raiders takes some of the best bits of other extraction shooters (like Escape from Tarkoff and Hunt: The Showdown), and mixes it in with the kind of near-future post-apocalyptic world you’re likely to find in Horizon: Zero Dawn or Destiny—at least in the Cosmodrome. 

You are a raider, and your job is to go topside to the ruined lands of Speranza, explore the destroyed and partially buried world above, and bring whatever useful stuff you can back to your home base. There, you can mission prep, build better weapons, and take a load off before heading back out on your next job. As is common in the extraction genre, though, you’ll have to watch out for other players, who can decide at any point to take you out and bring your hard-earned spoils back for themselves. 

If that sounds stressful, know that ARC Raiders is a bit more forgiving than some of the other games in the genre, and has a whole PvE element to it that I haven’t really even touched on—a whole faction of robots that roam the world and seemingly want to murder any human they come across. Wonderful!

If you and your friends are a bit burned out on the endless deathmatches of other shooters, it might be worth giving ARC Raiders a look in.

3. Battlefield 6

• Genre: First-Person Shooter
• Platforms: Steam, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series S/X
• Players: 4 players per party, up to 64-players per match
• Price: AUD$109.95

One of the two biggest first-person military shooter franchises of gaming, Battlefield has had a few ups and downs over the course of its life as a franchise—but the new Battlefield 6 seems to be a return to form in many ways, delivering the destructible, open maps series veterans have been asking for, alongside a modern coat of paint. 

To put it bluntly, Battlefield 6 is awesome but it’s even better when you’re playing with a group of buddies. There are few things better than jumping into a lobby together with your friends, gearing up for a match together, and then… probably getting sniped from across the map. 

If you’re not keen on simply serving as a modern infantryman, you can always jump into a tank and shell your enemies. Or a helicopter. Or a jet. Vehicles are a staple of Battlefield’s multiplayer, and while the new iterations are a bit buggy, they’re still fun.

There’s also a single-player campaign if you’re more into that, but that’s not really gonna work for a list of the best online multiplayer games, is it? It’s there if you want it, but we all know why people play these games. 

4. Elden Ring Nightreign

• Genre: Rogue-like Souls Action
• Platforms: Steam (Windows), PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S
• Players: 1 or 3
• Price: AUD$54.95

If you’ve bounced off of Dark Souls-maker From Software’s games before, Elden Ring Nightreign may be a smoother entry point. Rather than heading into a cold, desolate and unforgiving world alone, in Nightreign you can do it with two of your friends, and with a built-in way of reviving downed team-mates you’re less likely to get frustrated at the series’ characteristic difficulty.

This isn’t just Elden Ring with friends, though. Rather than being dropped into a world you’re meant to take your time to explore and understand, here you’re literally dropped into a reflection of the original games’ world and are given a time limit of three in-world days to survive, power up, and take down your target Nightlord. Whether you (and your team) live or die, at the end of a run you’re whisked back to the Roundtable Hold to prepare for your next incursion into Limveld.

You can practice each character’s specific playstyle, as well as try out all the potential weapon drops you could find in the open world so that when that Moonveil finally appears you’re ready to rock and roll. The game is very difficult for solo players, though, so best to bring some buddies.

There has been some additional content added since launch (a more difficult series of challenges for once you’ve exhausted the base-game’s content) and there’ll be a bigger, expansion-style paid DLC dropping in less than a month—as well as a whole new multiplayer From Software game, exclusive to the Nintendo Switch 2, called The Duskbloods—so we’ll be eating good for a while. 

5. Enshrouded

• Genre: Survival
• Platforms: Steam (Windows)
• Players: 1 – 16
• Price: AU$42.99

If you’re like me and sunk a few hundred hours into Valheim (yes, really), you’re probably already well aware of this one, but for those of you who aren’t in the know, let me break it down. Enshrouded is a third-person survival crafting game set in a fantasy world called Embervale, where you (and up to 15 friends) explore the world with the goal of gearing up before diving into swathes of the map that are covered in magical and oppressive fog.

You’ll spend a lot of time out of the fog, but when you enter it you’ll start running into more dangerous foes, but likewise find better rewards. Together, you may just be able to get out alive to return to your base, regroup, and build out your operations.

You can certainly play games like this alone, but it becomes a bit easier when you have multiple players taking on different aspects of the game at once. For example, my friends love being in charge of building up our base and coming up with fun new designs, whereas I prefer to take care of farming and alchemy. Additionally, with a fairly flexible class system, we can each build out our own characters to support one another.

It’s still in Early Access, like a few other games on this list, but it’s already had a massive content drop in the form of the northern mountains. The update brought on a whole new biome, as well as a new boss, a new tier of weapons and armour, new mechanics, and an expanded farming system. There’s more updates planned for Enshrouded as well, so there’ll be life in the game for quite a while. 

6. Fortnite

• Genre: Battle Royale
• Platforms: Epic Store (Windows), Nintendo Switch, Playstation 4/5, Xbox Series X/S/One
• Players: 1 – 4
• Price: Free to play

Fortnite is an interesting game because not only is it incredibly popular, but it’s also evolving beyond just being a battle royale murder simulator. You can go to concerts in Fortnite now, race cars, or play a survival game as a Lego figure. There’s even a Counter-Strike-esque first-person shooter attached to the game now called Fortnite Ballistic that has essentially changed the game entirely.

Despite getting weirder with every new season (which tends to last around three months each), Fortnite remains one of the most popular games to play online due to its tried-and-tested formula. The basic act of dropping out of the battle bus, scavenging for weapons, and teaming up with your friends is a lot of fun, whether it be in the ‘modern’ playlist or in the ‘OG’ recreation of season one.

There’s a lot to talk about with Fortnite, and honestly, we just don’t have the time to highlight it all. Compared to other games of its ilk, Fortnite’s main difference from its competition is that you can build defensive structures almost instantly, provided you have the resources. 

There is also a zero-build mode if, like us, you’d rather just scope out the competition mano-a-mano. Or, if you’re like me specifically, you can let your teammates do most of the killing while you play around with whatever melee weapon got added each season. 

7. Marvel Rivals

• Genre: Hero Shooter
• Platforms: Steam (Windows), Epic Store (Windows), PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S
• Players: 1 – 5
• Price: Free to play

In the lead-up to its release, Marvel Rivals was called a lot of things: an Overwatch rip-off, just another big-budget trend-chasing shooter conceived of in a board room, doomed to follow Concord‘s lead and be dead on arrival. Almost a year after launch, though, and the game is still consistently in the top ten games played on Steam.

Admittedly, this online multiplayer title does play very similarly to Overwatch, in that you pick a (super)hero and engage in a team-based deathmatch. The game is played entirely from a third-person perspective, though, and defaults to a 6v6 fight, rather than 5v5. Plus, you’re playing as your favourite superheroes and villains from Marvel’s varied comic-and-movie empire: Iron Man, Wolverine, Spiderman, Venom, Magneto, Loki, and the rest of the gang are all here, and all fill the necessary roles of Duelist, Strategist and Vanguard.

In fact, perhaps the game’s biggest difficulty curve is that it has launched with 33 different heroes to choose from, making it difficult for newer players to know where to start, and has only added more as the game has aged. Hero shooter veterans might have an easier time, but suffice to say, there’s a lot of choice and with some good coordination, you can pull off some pretty awesome combos.

Best of all, Marvel Rivals is a free online game to play with friends, and that usually means microtransactions are pretty egregious. That’s true here, but you can also just not spend any more money and enjoy the fun gameplay, rather than needing new costumes. I know, I’m not even fooling myself.

8. Minecraft

• Genre: Survival Crafting
• Platforms: Everything
• Players: Up to 20 for self-hosted servers, but the sky is the limit
• Price: AUD$49

The granddaddy of the modern survival crafting renaissance and a cultural icon, it’s hard to keep in mind that the original release of Minecraft was made by a team of less than 10 people, and yet has gone on to become the most commercially successful video game ever made. 

It’s also hard to keep in mind, given how ‘big’ the game has become over the years, that it is still just a fun, cozy game to jump into with your friends. Minecraft is the definition of value-for-money, giving you a seemingly endless world to explore, deep caverns to spelunk, vast oceans to dredge, and whole other dimensions to visit. And that isn’t even taking the crafting into account. 

The main loop of the game, beyond just taking your time, is mining materials from the procedurally generated world in order to build new and better things—from wooden tools, to stone, to iron, etc. With these new tools, you’re able to better survive the world, dig deeper, and live longer. Pair this cycle with the added fun of having a few friends around, breeding animals for food (or company), and planting crops for more ingredients, and you have a lot to do.

There’s plenty of really, really cool automation you can make happen in Minecraft if you’re getting serious about it, but sometimes it’s more fun to keep the game simple and just live off the land, as Notch intended.

9. Monster Hunter Wilds

• Genre: Action RPG
• Platforms: Steam (Windows), PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S
• Players: 1-4
• Price: AUD$104.95

Following up on the wildly successful Monster Hunter World released in 2018, Wilds further streamlines the Monster Hunter formula, while expanding the ‘open world’ part of the series to new heights. You play as a Monster Hunter (duh), a warrior-for-hire, employed by the Hunter’s Guild, faced with the task of protecting the various villages and towns about the world from the often rampaging beasts of the wild. Sometimes that’s as simple as driving a particularly angry giant chicken away from civilisation, but sometimes it involves essentially fighting the monster equivalent of a raging tornado, or a volcanic eruption.

It’s all possible alone–here more than in earlier entries, as Wilds is significantly easier than World or Rise that came before it—but it’s definitely more fun with friends.

Capcom made an effort to make co-op play more streamlined in Wilds, but the series’ characteristic multiplayer jank still exists. There are about three different ways you can party up with your friends – and if you want to play through the story together it’s not going to be a smooth ride. 

My advice would be to try to do story quests together where possible, and then take a break with some open-world hunting together to get the full experience.

10. Path of Exile 2

• Genre: Action RPG
• Platforms: Steam (Windows), PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S
• Players: 1-6
• Price: AUD$46 for Early Access, but will be Free to Play on release

This one is for all the jaded Diablo fans out there who have been left wanting by the last few decades of Blizzard games. Path of Exile was already well known as a fantastic alternative demon-slaying ARPG, but with the launch of its sequel the series has shown off what it’s really capable of. And it’s capable of a lot.

The game is still in early access, so expect more to come, but for now you’ll get access to six fully fleshed-out classes: the crossbow-wielding Mercenary, pet summoning Witch, elemental archer Ranger, ki-powered Monk, martial powerhouse Warrior, and arcane adept Sorceress.

Each of those classes gets access to an absolutely massive skill tree that gives me nightmares and can be further ascended into a more focused subclass a bit further into the game. Everyone who complained that Diablo III and IV failed on the skills front should be salivating at this game—and that’s just the character customisation. There’s a whole dark fantasy world out there to explore, with up to five of your friends, and plenty of whoop-ass to unleash on the nightmarish creatures of Wraeclast.

11. Peak

• Genre: Climbing
• Platforms: Steam
• Players: 1-4
• Price: AUD$11.79

Peak is an interesting game. There isn’t a lot else like it, as you’re effectively just climbing a procedurally-generated mountain solo or with some buddies. Where it gets interesting is in the social aspects—you can definitely help your friends scale the giant mountain-shaped problem you’re all facing, but there are ways you can hinder them, or consume them.

See, each game starts with you and your buddies crash landing on a deserted island, and you’re left with the daunting task of making it to the highest point of the landmass before a strange, deadly fog suffocates you. Oh, and the fog slowly rises, so you’ll need to get moving.

To keep climbing, you’ll need energy, and to get energy you’ll need to eat. There’s plenty of food found naturally in the environment for those willing to look for it—but sometimes, in particularly dire situations, a fellow starving climber might start to look pretty tasty. What’s better—both of you dying on a mountain, or one of you potentially making it to safety? These are the important questions. 

It sounds bleak, but Peak is very much wrapped in a cute, pastel style, so you don’t feel as bad eating your friend when their head starts looking like a cartoon roast chicken.

12. Returnal

• Genre: Roguelike, Third-Person Shooter
• Platforms: Windows (Steam), PlayStation 5
• Players: 1-2
• Price: AUD$94.95

One of the best games available on the PlayStation 5, Housemarque’s Returnal is a fantastic pick for a co-op campaign. It’s a bit more focused on story than some of the other games on this list, but the mystery and revelations will keep you and a buddy coming back for more.

In Returnal, you play as Selene Vassos, an astronaut who becomes trapped in a time loop while exploring a mysterious planet. This planet is home to myriad monstrous creatures and alien biomes that shift and reset each time you die, with the time loop helping to explain Vassos’ death, return, and continued exploration of the procedurally-generated world repeatedly.

While the story of the game is definitely set up for one player, Returnal‘s Ascendancy update brought on the ability for two players to dive into the game together online, which certainly makes the repeated exploration and deaths more fun. It borrows from the ever-stressful bullet-hell genre, so expect to see a lot of bullets on the screen at once – all of which you’ll need to avoid in order to figure out just what the hell is happening here.

13. Split Fiction

• Genre: Action adventure, platformer
• Platforms: Windows (Steam)., PlayStation 5, Nintendo Switch 2, Xbox Series X/S
• Players: 2
• Price: AUD$69.95

Have you ever wondered what it’d be like if you and your friend got sucked into a series of ever-more weird and wacky worlds, based off of sci-fi and fantasy stories you and that friend have written, and had to figure out how to escape? No? Too niche?

Split Fiction is exactly that, following sci-fi author Mio and fantasy author Zoe as they make their way through simulations of the worlds they’ve created. The game is made from the ground up for co-op multiplayer, either or online, so you cannot play this one alone and will need to bring a friend along.

What it lacks in a single-player mode, though, Split Fiction more than delivers in gameplay variety. While each level will effectively play like a 3D platformer, you’ll be doing very different things in each: flying dragons in one, grappling through a techno city in another. It changes so often that it feels like multiple games in one, which is definitely a good thing.

14. Stardew Valley

• Genre: Farming Simulator
• Platforms: Literally everything
• Players: 1-8
• Price: AUD$16.99

Easily one of the most successful indie games ever made, Stardew Valley puts you in charge of your late grandfather’s long-neglected farm plot, and gives you free reign as to what you decide to do with it. Want to turn it into a functioning apple orchid? Do it. Prefer to raise cattle? Okay, go for it. Intend on turning it into a winery? Plant some grapes, grab some casks, and get cracking.

There’s a lot more in the game than just farming, though. You can delve into the mines below Stardew Valley to extract valuable minerals and weapons, or can spend your time getting to know the locals. You can decide to befriend the local fisherman and get really into how best to catch every fish in town, or focus entirely on making your home the cosiest place imaginable.

And if that wasn’t enough, you can do it with up to 7 of your friends, finally allowing you and your buds to live out your ‘what if we all lived together’ dreams. If this game is your jam, you’re going to easily lose hundreds of hours here, so tread lightly.

15. Valheim

• Genre: Survival Crafting
• Platforms: Windows, Mac (Steam), Xbox Ones, Xbox Series X/S
• Players: 1-10
• Price: AUD$30

When Valheim dropped in 2021, it surprised many players with how robust an experience it offered while still in early access. Fast-forward to this year, and the game is still in early access, but it has been improved and expanded immensely.

The game sees you take on the role of a Viking exploring the purgatorial realm of Valheim for Odin, who has tasked you (and your friends) with defeating creatures across the game’s hostile biomes. You’ll need to survive the wilderness, gather ingredients to build a homestead, and forge new weapons and equipment to help you enter more deadly regions – which, of course, offer better materials for crafting. It’s the tried-and-true survival game formula, but executed incredibly well.

Plus, even though the game doesn’t push the most photorealistic graphics known to man, it’s pretty and deeply atmospheric. The first time you attempt to circumnavigate an island using a rickety raft, it begins raining, and you see some movement in the water, you’ll probably think you’re playing a survival horror game. It really does feel like an immersive experience, which can be fantastic when you are looking for good games to play with friends.

Make no mistake, Valheim can be punishing, but if you master its systems and remember to keep your shield up, you’ll be clearing out new islands in no time.