February is a cold month with warm holidays, in which we can all bundle together, put aside our differences, and work with each other. At least, that’s the case for these normally competitive board games that feature cooperative game modes, perfect for setting aside the cardboard pitchforks on Valentine’s and Family day.

Call To Adventure

Normally, in a game of Call to Adventure, your goal is to acquire the most destiny points, generally, by being more awesome than everyone else. In the cooperative variant, however, your team of heroes must struggle against and overcome a powerful adversary before they gain a set amount of experience. There are plenty of different adversaries to face, each of them with their own special abilities. This variant is perfect for those seeking a fantasy-themed journey for 2-4 adventurers.

Paranormal Detectives

In Paranormal Detectives, the players are tasked with correctly identifying five keys that explain how a ghost, well, became a ghost. These are: who killed them, why they killed them, how they killed them, what they killed them with, and where they killed them. Correctly guess all five and you win! And the ghost wins. Still dead, but hey, justice, right? The co-op variant sees the detectives work together like… normal detectives, except they only have two attempts collectively to correctly determine how the ghost died. Paranormal Detectives is excellent for a medium-sized group of mediums, about 2-6.

Bad Bones

Tower defense is a classic flash game genre and Bad Bones really brings it back to life, just like these undead skeletons, rising from the cemetery to destroy your towers and villages. In a regular game of Bad Bones, you can misdirect, and even catapult, enemy skellies into your opponent’s field. You can still do that when playing cooperatively, but whoever you’re playing with might not like that, seeing as how you’re supposed to be working together to protect a single village. Survive ten rounds and you all win! Bad Bones is a lovely game of endless innuendos for 2-4 calcium comrades.

Codenames

This game variant is probably the most well-known of the lot, but, just in case you didn’t know, this wonderful party game can also become a high-pressure cooperative mission for two players. In this version of the game, one player is the spymaster and gives clues for the other person as usual. The opposing agents always find one agent per turn, making this way to play Codenames a bit more forgiving than the standalone game Codenames Duet. 

Are there any games with cooperative variants that you feel should be featured or given a shout out for February?