The best Nintendo Switch Co-op game to play with your kids
My favorite is Luigi's Mansion 3 - let me explain why..
I bought my son a Nintendo Switch when he was ~5 years old. That might be a little early but I was looking for new things we can do together that might potentially be more fun for me.
In retrospect, it was a great decision. We played a lot together since then, had a lot of fun, and I believe it has some positive effects as well (link1, link2, link3..)
Co-op games
I think the biggest reason the Nintendo Switch is a great console for kids is because of the variety of co-op games. If you’re not familiar with the term - it’s games you can play ‘together’ as opposed to ‘multiplayer’ games that you compete with each other.
Except for the normal fun you have playing a game, co-op games are less competitive and often require helping each other out.
I’ve tried quite a few different co-op games like: LEGO Horizon Adventures, Donkey Kong Country, Rayman Legends, Overcooked, Untitled Goose Game, Super Mario Bros. Wonder and more.. In my personal opinion, all these games don’t compare with Luigi’s Mansion 3 (considering my son’s age at the time).
Luigi’s Mansion 3
This game is a clear winner in my opinion for a few main reasons -
The game is relatively easy to master but still very fun. Once you learn how to successfully catch ghosts you’ve done 70% of the work, but there’s still some puzzle elements, things to search for, some bosses that require a little more.
Storyline is simple yet enjoyable. Graphics are really cute as well.
There’s a lot to do - even after beating all the bosses, my son enjoys going back and searching for more gems we didn’t find and ghosts we didn’t catch yet.
Guigi (the sidekick) can’t really die. He can, but he can always come back to life. This is perfect for playing with a kid that isn’t a gaming master yet! For the first few levels in the game, I always played Luigi and my son Guigi. Only after he mastered the controls he wanted to start switching around.
Some puzzles require cooperation - This is a great aspect of the game! Some puzzles you’ll run into throughout the game, mostly in the later stages, require special cooperation between the two characters, so you need to communicate and work together to solve them.
Other co-op games have some of these elements as well, but in my opinion (from the games I played), this game found the perfect mix of everything, creating a really enjoyable game that doesn’t get boring and is really fun to play with your kids.
I’m definitely not a hardcore gamer, barely a casual gamer myself, so feel free to take this with a grain of salt. What I can say though is that I recommended this game to a few different friends as games to play with their kids, and they couldn’t stop thanking me :).