Best Local Multiplayer Games on Game Pass

My wife does not play games, and she played this one to the end. That almost never happens. It Takes Two is built around two people on one screen, and the split-screen view changes shape as the chapters do, so you are rarely staring at two identical windows. The mechanics reset every hour or so, from a toolshed to a snow globe, and nothing overstays. It is strictly two players, so a group of four needs to look further down this list. It arrives through the EA Play perk bundled with Game Pass Ultimate, so check your tier before the evening starts.

Somebody always shouts 'who has the plate' within the first three minutes. At my house it is usually me, and I am usually shouting at one of my kids. Overcooked! 2 puts up to four cooks on one shared screen, and the levels keep rewriting the rules with moving counters, split kitchens, and platforms that carry your onions away. A versus mode exists for when cooperation turns sour. Overcooked has been a fixture at my LAN nights for years, and it is the one I hand to anyone who says they are not a gamer. Mixed ability is fine. The weakest cook just gets chopping duty.

Four players on my 55-inch QD-OLED sounds generous until the screen is cut into quarters and the inventory text shrinks to a whisper. That is Minecraft's weak spot locally. Everything else works in its favour. Each person gets their own view, so one builds while another mines and nobody has to follow anybody around. It is the long-haul pick on this list, a shared world a family can return to for months, not a one-night party game. Survival and creative both run locally, and it is the easiest game here to explain to a young kid.

I finish the campaign before I touch multiplayer, always have, and Halo: The Master Chief Collection lets you do both from the same couch. Six Halo games sit in one install, with split-screen campaign co-op and local versus matches for up to four players. That breadth is the pitch. Getting started is less smooth than with the party-first picks, since someone has to choose a game, a mode, and a map before anybody is shooting. Pick a campaign, grab a second controller, and only try Legendary if you enjoy arguments. Old, loud, and still sturdy.

Where Overcooked hands you a kitchen, PlateUp! hands you a blank room and a budget. You build the restaurant between days, choosing layouts and appliances, then up to four of you run it through service that gets nastier every round. That planning layer is why it holds up after Overcooked runs out of new levels. The first hour is confusing. On my first run I built a dining room the staff could not reach. Strategy-minded groups will forgive that, and the shared screen stays readable with four people on it.

Mario Kart on the N64 is the standard I hold every kart racer to, and Crash Team Racing Nitro-Fueled holds up better than most. Up to four people split the screen for races and battle modes, and clean drifting matters more than item luck. The AI does not go easy, so a player new to kart racing will spend the first few races at the back. That frustration is the price of a racer with some bite. On Game Pass it is console only, which rules out a laptop evening.

A single run is an evening or two, which suits my schedule better than most games here. Marvel Cosmic Invasion is a pixel-art beat-'em-up where up to four people share a screen, pick from heroes like Wolverine, Storm, Captain America, and Spider-Man, and punch through waves of cosmic nonsense. Dropping in takes seconds. Everybody understands hit, jump, special. It is the newest arrival among the couch games here, and it plays like an arcade cabinet with modern polish. Repetition sets in eventually, so treat it as a few good evenings, not a permanent fixture.

Sometimes gaming is just about relaxing, and Stardew Valley is one of the games I reach for when that is the whole brief. Played together, it gets better. Split-screen co-op lets two people share a farm, a wallet, and a slow plan for the season, with no timer pushing you anywhere. The split view makes everything smaller, and it will never rouse a room the way Overcooked does. That is fine. This is the evening where one person waters the crops and the other wanders off to the mines. Quiet, slow, and good at it.

Gears 5 is the loudest game on this list. Not a family pick. It is a mature-rated third-person shooter with split-screen campaign co-op, Horde, and local versus for duos who want something heavier than a kitchen. Every shotgun blast and chainsaw kill lands like it means it. My group's Helldivers 2 nights need headsets and a stable connection. Gears 5 asks for one sofa and two controllers, which is a relief. Newcomers will fumble cover and weapon swaps for a few matches, so give them a round or two before the real game starts.

Nobody wins Gang Beasts. They survive it. Four floppy characters on one shared screen punch, grab, and throw each other off rooftops and conveyor belts, and the clumsy controls are the joke. I have not seen a group go two minutes without laughing, including people who normally watch games from the sofa. Rounds are short, so it works as a warm-up before longer sessions. The depth is thin. Once the novelty fades you have seen the stages, and the laughs come from the people, not the game. Pick it for the first hour of a party, not the fourth.