Not exactly sure what the server limits are but something like Valheim could work for a large group of people. It’s an open world sandbox so people can divide up and do whatever they want to on the same server (exploring, fighting, mining, building, farming, etc.) Not sure how far you can get in the game in 3 hours though…
Alternatively you could play some sort of team based shooter but there might be a stark skill difference in a competitive setting.
Apparently the star wars bf classic collection has a 32 player co-op mode vs ai which sounds amazing to me, but I’ve never tried it before
Among Us can be a lot of fun with a big group, and it goes up to 15 people. Or if you want something a little more focused on the sneaky and investigative part you could check out something like Town of Salem.
Games of low-stakes lying and finger pointing can be a lot of fun. And trying to be the baddie in one of them without giggling like a fool in an internet cafe and giving yourself away sounds amusing.
As someone who still does LAN weekends with a few friends a couple of times a year, this is a hard one especially if you have 6+ players, however here are my suggestions.
Supreme Commander using the FAF Client - huge scale RTS with up to 16 people in a single map (8v8).
Left4Dead Versus - 8 people go 4v4 so two teams in your case. Dedicated server recommend.
Unreal Tournament 2005/3 - lots of games modes and supports a lot of people but you may need a dedicated server.
Gary’s Mod PropHunt, Bomberman etc - Great sandbox game - can be a bit junky to setup up but excellent if you get it right
Blur - racing game which may be hard to find as it is not being sold anywhere but an excellent multiplayer one
Factorio - way slower pace than any games mentioned, but if you play Deathworld is an adrenaline rush and fun coop. Up to 500 people so 15-16 people is no sweat. Also good for long term goals for continuing play.
Human Fall Flat - funny physics puzzle game up to 4 people. Great for competition as you can make it 4 teams of 4 and have a leaderboard.
Planetside 2 - FPSMMO - epic battles and still very active
That’s a lot of typing already - let me know if you want more suggestions - happy gaming
A bunch of friends and I have been playing Sniper Elite 5. It’s a mixed bag of varied experience. Some are terrible but just enjoy the shit talking (I’m one of those) and others just kick the crap out of the rest of us. But it’s a fun bonding experience too since you can have up to 4 teams against each other and just need to make sure there’s a fairly even balance.
Its f2p and you can explore all together, since every starting map gets unlocked no matter what race you pick at the start.
It is also very easy to learn and you can even outlevel each other if anyone wanna keep playing in private, since you get levelcapped depending what map you are in.
Brilliant game design all around and still one of the best multiplayer games out there IMHO.
Thank you for the suggestion. I think we want something with fast action and team competition. But I will keep this in my back pocket should the discussion steer towards these types of games.
If it’s at an Internet cafe where everyone is in attendance, I seriously strongly suggest “The Ship”. In my experience, probably the ultimate LAN game. Screen peeking allowed but not encouraged.
The game is effectively a game of assassin—but you have to upkeep your player’s needs (food/water/shower/bathroom/sleep). Your character needing to take a shit is stressful—very often you begin the process only to have your murderer pop open the door with a fire axe.
It used to have a “viral” gift copy thing on Steam where 1 purchased copy generated 2 gift copies and those copies generated 1 copy each. So in theory, you could only require 3 copies for 15 of you if that’s still active.
Deep Rock Galactic. Lots of fun, easy to adjust difficulty, plays on lower-end machines. 1-4 person teams (the levels scale with team size).
I also hear 100% Orange Juice is really fun with friends and approachable for non-gamers, but I’ve only played single player, and the computer players cheat. I can’t say for certain if this is a good choice or not.
Deep rock galactic looks like a lot of fun but I’m hesitant about the small team sizes. With 4 player teams we would have to have 4 parallel games going at the same time.
With a set of mods natively supported by the game through mod.io, you can get as many as 8 people in a spacerig (lobby) without the game crashing, and in theory up to 16 if they join after the drop pod has landed. I’d recommend the following set of mods if you go that route:
Downside of this method is you have to log into mod.io through your Steam account, and I’d personally be too paranoid to do that at an internet cafe, but it would get y’all down to 1-2 parallel games. In addition, if you turn up swarm sizes, the game basically becomes Starship Troopers: Space Dwarf Edition.
Quake 3 if you wanna go old school. Pretty much anything will run it these days and you can easily spin up a local server for it. You can do FFA or play on teams.
Rocket League is always fun IMO. Good to blow off steam and not have to focus on story.
To blow off steam without focus on a story is very much inline with what we are after.
The downside with rocket league is that if we create tournaments, it is elimination rounds. What do the eliminated people do while the tournament completes. Or maybe I’m overthinking it, they could just play local matches until we decide to start a new tournament.
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