Top 35 Cooperative Games for Kids
Collaborative board and card games are a great way for children to learn how to work together with others in a fun and hands-on way. These types of games require everyone to work together which leads to teamwork, creativity, and problem-solving. In addition, cooperative games promote kindness and sharing, build communication skills, and help develop empathy.
Check out the list of Top 35 Collaborative Board and Card Games for kids and adults of all ages. These games are perfect for a family game night or classroom activity.
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Forbidden Island: Join a team of fearless adventurers on a do-or-die mission to capture four sacred treasures from the ruins of this perilous paradise. Race to collect the treasures and make a triumphant escape before you are swallowed into the watery abyss! |
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Sloth in a Hurry: Quick! Can you act Who, What, & How? Take turns drawing a Who and What card, then spin for the How! This quick-action improv game gets kids up, active, and laughing and is a non-competitive, confidence-building game. |
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Outfoxed: In Outfoxed, you move around the board to gather clues, then use the special evidence scanner to rule out suspects. You have to work together quickly because the guilty fox is high-tailing it toward the exit! Will you halt the hungry hooligan before it flies the coop or will you be outfoxed? |
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Ghost Fightin’ Treasure Hunters: It’s everybody vs. the ghosts. Work together to win! Can your team escape from the house with all 8 Treasure Jewels before 6 of the rooms become haunted? |
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Castle Panic: The co-op element makes Castle Panic a great family game and the perfect kick-off for your weekly game night. You must work together to defend your Castle, in the center of the board, from Monsters that attack out of the forest, at the edges of the board. |
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Cauldron Quest: Players work together to find hidden ingredients to create a spell-breaking potion; but work quickly - you have to find them all before the Wizard blocks off all the paths; if you succeed, everyone wins! |
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Dragon Dash: Dragon Dash is a noggin playground cooperative early learning game for kids. This means that all players are teammates and have the same goal. Either everyone wins, or everyone is defeated! |
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Pandemic: Players must work together playing to their characters' strengths and planning their strategy of eradication before the diseases overwhelm the world with ever-increasing outbreaks. |
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Forbidden Desert: You'll need to coordinate with your teammates and use every available resource if you hope to survive the scorching heat and relentless sandstorm. Find the flying machine and escape before you all become permanent artifacts of the Forbidden Desert! |
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Disney Eye Found It!: Rich with whimsical artwork and beloved Disney characters, this game is a guaranteed family favorite. A good-for-you game that encourages positive attitudes, teamwork, healthy competition, and get-up-and-go active play. |
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Break the Safe: This game must be played collaboratively, or nobody wins and the longest game takes only thirty minutes. Race against the clock on the safe to collect the keys necessary to break the safe. The keys are hidden, and sometimes booby-trapped. |
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Hoot Owl Hoot: Players work together to help the owls fly back to their nest before the sun comes up; if they are successful everyone wins. Children learn simple strategy and social development skills with no reading required. |
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Richard Scarry’s Busytown: Race around Busytown to search for hidden objects in this fun-filled collaborative. Drive through city streets, and activity-filled farm, a busy airport, and a bustling harbor full of boats. There’s so much to discover along the way! |
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Our beautifully illustrated Growth Mindset Conversation Cards feature 52 interesting questions to help kids and grown-ups share thoughtful discussions about kindness, resilience, gratitude, and more. The cards can be used around the dinner table, during a bedtime routine, car rides, and other fun gatherings. |
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Wildcraft: Though it is a cooperative game, there is plenty of strategy and drama as players travel up the mountain to the Huckleberry Patch and back to Grandma’s before nightfall. The only way to get back safely is to help each other out. However, it’s ok if you don’t make it. Grandma will come and get you. |
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The Oregon Trail Card Game: Players work together to move along the trail, fording rivers and playing Supply Cards to overcome calamities. |
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Cahoots: A colorful, cooperative card game in which players play cards to one of four piles matching either color or number. Players are racing against the clock to win so they need to be in cahoots! |
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Code Names: Codenames is a social word game with a simple premise and challenging gameplay. Two rival spymasters know the secret identities of 25 agents. Their teammates know the agents only by their codenames. The teams compete to see who can make contact with all of their agents first. |
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Snug as a Bug: Get all the little colorful bugs under the rug before the 3 stink bugs stink up the place! Each level adds more challenges. Work together to find those matches, and you all win! |
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Friends & Neighbors: Can players help a little girl who's sad because she's standing out in the rain or a boy who's afraid of the dark? With Friends and Neighbors, children will learn how! In this matching game that focuses on emotions, children encounter persons with a problem. |
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Feed the Woozle: Everyone plays together to feed the Woozle snacks from a spoon and if you can feed him 12 snacks before they are all used up, everyone wins! Play together, work together, and have some monstrous fun! |
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Mole Rats In Space: Players work together to help the busy Mole Rats gather their equipment and make it to their escape pod before the snake invaders get them! Children learn strategy, problem-solving, communication, and cooperation. |
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Telestrations: Draw what you see then guess what you saw for hilarious and unpredictable outcomes. It’s miscommunication at its best! Telestrations is perfect for family parties, fun with friends or entertaining a crowd. |
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Hanabi: In this challenging cooperative card game, players work together to launch a spectacular firework display. Trouble is, it's dark out, so you can't really see what you are working with. Each player holds their cards so that only the other players can see them. |
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Once Upon a Time: Once Upon a Time is a storytelling card game that encourages creativity and collaborative play. The object of the game, though, isn't just to win, but to have fun telling a story together. |
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Stone Soup: Stone Soup is a game drawn from the classic tale of cooperation. In this simple game, players work together to "cook" a soup by making matches of ingredients. Match all the ingredients before the fire under the kettle goes out and everyone wins! |
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Count Your Chickens: In this game, players help Mother Hen collect her chicks and bring them back to the coop. Spin and move, count the number of spaces and collect that number of chicks. Take turns, but work together because if you collect all the chicks then everyone wins! |
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Race to the Treasure: Players try to beat the Ogre to the treasure by creating a path from Start to End. Along the way, they need to collect three keys to open the treasure. Players strategize, cooperate and build a path together. If they do it before the Ogre gets there, they all win! |
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Gnomes at Night: Gnomes at Night is a cooperative search-and-find maze game where players work as a team to maneuver the magnetic gnome movers around the maze. Work together in this quick-thinking communication game where every second counts! |
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Sherlock Holmes - Consulting Detective: You can capture the mystery and excitement of Holmes' London in this challenging and informative game. You, the player, will match your deductive abilities against your opponents and the master sleuth himself, Sherlock Holmes. |
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Rory’s Story Cubes: Rory's Story Cubes is a pocket-sized creative story generator, provides hours of imaginative play for all ages. Anyone can become a great storyteller and there are no wrong answers. Simply roll the cubes and let the pictures spark your imagination! |
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Engineering Ants: Use your creativity to build solutions to help free the ants. Engineering Ants inspires kids to invent design and build. Players help each other, not play against each other. No one is left out. |
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Shadows Over Camelot: Shadows Over Camelot, based on the beloved board game, is a cooperative card game of guile, timing, memory, and betrayal set in the fantastical age of Arthur! Darkness has once again descended over Camelot; the Kingdom is no longer safe. |
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Dinosaur Escape Game: Work together as a team to get all three dinosaurs safely to Dinosaur Island before the volcano erupts! Roll the die and move the dinosaur movers around the board and uncover the matching dinosaurs under the fern tokens. But if you turn over the T-Rex, RUN! |
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Flash Point: Fire Rescue is a fully cooperative game, everyone plays on the same firefighting team - win or lose together. Every turn is filled with the tension of having to fight the fire back, rescuing victims or investigating points of interest. |
This is a great list and we currently own 13/35 cooperative games listed. The only one we have that is not on the list is Noah’s Animal Rescue. Love your posts.
Thank you for this fabulous list! We really love collaborative games, particularly as my girls (6 and 11) cannot compete on the same level.
Elizabeth, and others – do look up the ages on the manufacturer’s websites, Amazon or even boardgamegeek, which is a fantastic site.
I’d add Max the Cat to this list (a fore-runner of this genre and lovely), Famililou by Djeco, as well as the various Orchard-games by Haba. They have a First Orchard that we played successfully with a 3 year old.
hello! and thank you for this great list! by any chance could you provide guidance on which games are best for which ages…? thanks so much!