Spirit Island is really good as you can adjust the difficulty and it’s always different Stars of Akarios if you want a Gloomhaven Light Experience with some 7th Continent sprinkled in.

Mysterium - something easy to learn and can be played by up to 7 people. One of the players is trying to tell others (psychics) who their killer is using very nice looking but rather ambiguous cards.

Maximum apocalypse - up to 6 characters doing different missions in different types of the apocalypse (zombies, nuclear war, aliens, robots). Map is randomly generated so even though there is limited number of scenarios they are replayable.

Sherlock Holmes consulting detective (multiple boxes) or Bureau of investigation - investigation in Arkham & elsewhere. These are text based puzzles (e.g. solve a murder case).

Spirit island - it’s basically anti Settlers of Catan :) Still learning to play it but so far it seems like an amazing game with many scenarios…

I can recommend the new Deep Rock Galactic board game. Great time. It looks like it should be a complex game with all of its minis but each session is less than 1.5 hours from my experience. Also, the minis are fantastic, definitely worth the price and space :).

I see a few of my favorites have been mentioned already (Aeon’s End, Spirit Island, The Crew, Pandemic Legacy) but here’s a few more:

• Gloomhaven: There’s a reason this game was at the Boardgamegeek #1 spot for years. Absolutely an epic game, with so much strategy and variety involved. For those who are intimidated by the complexity, size or price of the game, there is also Gloomhaven: Jaws of the Lion, which is essentially a light version of the game. An excellent starting point, and not any less fun than it’s big sibling.

• Oathsworn: Into the Deepwood: Another big campaign game with very interesting mechanics. The game is quite hard and punishing, but you have lots of difficulty levels you can play on. The story is set in a land overrun by the Deepwood, a forest filled with huge monsters. You play a band of mercenaries who defend people from those monsters.

• Sprawlopolis: A game consisting of 18 cards, that contain city blocks and roads, and each player places a card down to add to the city. Each card has a different scoring system on its back, and you draw a few for each game, so every game feels entirely different. Quick to play, and fits in your pocket so you can bring it anywhere.

Terraforming Mars isn’t strictly coop but it sort of has a coop aspect to it. You could play it as a coop if you wanted to (try to terraform mars before X number of generations).

Edit: turns out someone has actually written up a pretty comprehensive set of new rules/instructions for a coop variant on BGG https://boardgamegeek.com/thread/2009605/man-against-nature-cooperative-variant

Another vote for Pandemic. My wife and I played a TON of the original years before the actual pandemic. Started Pandemic Legacy Season 1 with some friends and it’s an absolute blast too (literally… at some point you have to permanently remove / destroy game pieces and we strapped them to a bottle rocket and shot them into the night sky).

It’s definitely a game where there are basically a lot of ways that you can lose and only one way to win. It often feels like the loss conditions are closing in from all sides. More often than not it also feels like the line between winning and losing is razor thin and you feel like you are “grabbing victory from the jaws of defeat”. This can be a little stressful at times but I find it enjoyable. It has a built in mechanism to alter the difficulty too, so you can get as close to the jaws of defeat as you like.

Very much recommend the base version.

Also recommend the Legacy version, but it’s a bit of a commitment and can only be played through once (but that playthrough is spread across something like a dozen play sessions)

I love Burgle Bros 1 and 2 for coop gaming. Fun theme and working out plans together is a blast.

I’ve been playing lots of Hanabi lately too.

I’m trying to cull my collection to one shelf per game genre. Here are the ones that made the cut for my co-op shelf:

• The 7th Continent (2017)
• Agents of SMERSH (2012)
• Burgle Bros. (2015)*
• Dawn of the Zeds (Third Edition) (2016)
• Flash Point: Fire Rescue (2011)*
• Forbidden Desert (2013)
• Freedom: The Underground Railroad (2013)
• Ghost Stories (2008)*
• The Grizzled (2015)
• Horrified (2019)
• The LOOP (2020)
• Pandemic: Iberia (2016)*
• Police Precinct
• Wok Star (2010)
• Zombicide (2012)

The four with asterisks are my favorites.

My wife and I had a blast playing through Pandemic Legacy S1