Best PC Games To Play With Friends

Photo: Donald Iain Smith(Getty Images)

Remember back in the day when you actually played video games while sitting shoulder to shoulder to your nemesis or allies, whichever role your friends or siblings had? While playing online gaming has made it easy to have multiplayer experience, especially in huge cities where friendships are stretched out, there is something truly magical about hot seat games. Games to play with friends on a single computer, that is, taking turns. Making you mash together next to a keyboard and a mouse, Hot seat games genuinely bring people together more than online games. Looking back on it, they make you appreciate gaming even more.

But they are a dying breed, unfortunately. Although, not extinct. These games to play with friends can vouch for that, and we did omit sports games as those are obvious choices, and not technically hot seat.

Photo: 2K Games

We all have friends that we love but with whom we don’t share the same political views. Watch these differences escalate as you nuke their communist pacifist civilization back to the stone age. Or perhaps suffer having to eat your words as your militaristic fascist regime goes bankrupt and people start to revolt while they gloat. Either way, Civ VI, and all its predecessors really, is a perfect game for hot seat gaming, as, like all games on this list of games to play with friends, it is turn-based. The vibrant world of Sid Meier’s Civilization will always offer something cool and interesting to glance at so you won’t feel bored waiting for your turn and the 4X aspect of it will provide for a strong replayability factor. It’s not just one of the best hot seat games, Civ is one of the best PC games ever. Period. And in the end, you don’t have to compete with your friends, you can be allies and carpet bomb Gandhi out of history.

Photo: Ubisoft

Another game series that exists for a really long time, and also another turn-based strategy, only Might & Magic Heroes VI has two levels to it – the adventure and the battle one. Both equally satisfying. The slight change of name is there, and it is irritable, but Heroes VI will make you devour member berries with one hand while you press end turn with the other. Since the game has six playable factions and an addictive gameplay, it’s perfect to play with friends, even multiple friends, as you’ll be dueling around a magic world similarly to D&D. It’s not the last game released in the series, but you actually want to play the games which are good, and Heroes VI evoke the nostalgia for the times when Heroes III made you skip on sleeping during spring breaks. Hours and hours of potential playtime will make the investment worthwhile and you’ll be actually surprised how the game doesn’t lose on its challenge and enjoyment factors.

Photo: Team17

Worms is a long-standing game series with a specific vibe and gameplay, and probably every gamer once blew up units of deadly worms with banana bombs, but they are somewhat forgotten. Fortunately, there has been a release in the series just last year, and Worms W.M.D is also a 2D artillery turn-based tactics video game like the best games in the franchise. One of those games that you can not only play with your gamer friends but also with significant others that are not deep into gaming. The cartoonish, loveable style of design, the unique humor and the sense of competition will make any relationship more enjoyable and joyful. Worms never go out of fashion and the developer Team17 only adds a smidge of new content to keep things fresh.

Photo: Sports Interactive

Football Manager is a sports game in nature, but different from Madden, PES, or NBA 2k series in the sense that you’re not directly controlling the players. Instead, you take the role of a soccer team’s manager after choosing a team or starting out unemployed. FM is the perfect embodiment of a sports simulation and so it can put you and your friend(s) in the leather seats of the people in charge of massive clubs like Manchester United and Chelsea, with all that goes with it. Transfers, media mind games, and of course, matches, so settle the score on who knows more about soccer once and for all! If that ends up being not you, the game comes out yearly, so, as the Liverpool’s supporters saying goes – there’s always next season.

Games to play with friends online are on the steady high for years now while hot seat games are slowly fading away. Although, these games truly bring something exclusive and special to PC gaming.

Which hot seat games would you recommend for other players, or do you prefer online games to play with friends?