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[nenjin]

Worms is always a possibility.

Some people want to play SC2. Me, I'm not so wild about it.

Also as I look over the field, there are a lot of indie games out there of varying degrees of quality that fulfill the requirement, but kinda look like cutesy garbo.

[Frumple]

Yeah, with SC2 I would like totally friggin' avoid the base gameplay. To hell with that nonsense, same as it used to be/still is with WC3. Go with custom maps that aren't competitive, or are team based or whatever. I'm thinking of this one astroid thing offhand that's pretty neat and for two teams of four, ferex. Can't remember the name, though. Still there's some fairly robust stuff for the engine these days for group sizes like you're talking about, and iirc the arcade or whatever it is is straight up free these days.

... also yeah with worms I'd probably look into spinoff/similar stuff more than the actual worms games. Pretty sure I remember there being some pretty wild junk in that general area, maybe through mods or somethin'.

[nenjin]

Bumping this because it's LAN Party time again, just seeing if anyone has any suggestions not already mentioned previously.

[Robsoie]

google showed me that link, maybe of interest :
https://store.steampowered.com/curator/11707935-More-Than-4-Local-Multiplayer/

[nenjin]

Also as I look over the field, there are a lot of indie games out there of varying degrees of quality that fulfill the requirement, but kinda look like cutesy garbo.

Problem for me is there's so many lite-titles out there that people would play for an hour and want to move on to something else. Trying to find something a bit more substantial. Kind of a mix of asking for suggestions and hopefully some recommendations. The last time I tried to just randomly suggest unknown games to folks at the party, no one really wanted to start dropping money just to know if a game was worth playing. But thanks for the link, I check that periodically.

[IronyOwl]

Pummel Party handles up to 8 players and offers split screen and remote play (that is, anyone who owns the game can invite friends who don't own the game to play it anyway). It's a party game, so a bunch of competitive minigames tied together by overall rankings/progress. I haven't played a lot of it, but what I did play was pretty fun.

Interplanetary supports I believe up to 8 players, hotseat, and remote play. It consists of careful construction and wanton genocide, building up your planet to rain hell upon your neighbors using gravity to curve your shots (or lasers to ignore all that and pinpoint incinerate critical infrastructure and/or major population centers). Very fun, though a bit limited to M U R D E R.

Golf With Your Friends is exactly and precisely what it sounds like. It handles up to 12 players, split screen, and remote play. Features aiming and setting power for golf shots on a miniature golf course, as well as a level editor (which I haven't tried yet) and various silly settings (like replacing golf balls with knobbly whatsits that are impossible to properly aim). Surprisingly fun!


Those would be my obvious, literally built for this suggestions. Other higher-than-four multiplayer games I'm aware of include:

Age of Wonders: Planetfall. It's a 4X but a pretty stabby one, sometimes described as "Civilization + XCOM". That's maybe a stretch, but most of your 4Xery is dedicated to supporting your murder squads. It offers remote play and I think up to 8 players, but is fairly expensive. I have no idea how well it'd play competitively.

A few ARPGs allow more than 4 players, specifically Torchlight 2 and Path of Exile at 6. I imagine they're pretty taste-specific, but murder and looting with your friends is usually pretty good fun. PoE is also free.

Risk of Rain and its sequel are shooty roguelike-ish things with official player caps at 4. However, it's apparently pretty easy to edit or mod that a bit higher. It's cooperative but involves ever-strengthening waves of foes, randomly dropped or purchaseable items, and unique character classes.

[sambojin]

OpenRA (Red Alert) is nice and simple, but still hardcore enough for an RTS.

Duke Nukem 3D for some old skool shooter action. Or Unreal Tournament with mods (some of the RPG and monster summoner ones are ace. Check old video game magazine coverdisc compilations if you can't find them on moddb)

Wargame: Red Dragon is, if anything, more fun when no-one knows what they're doing (most 10v10 games are like this. It's hilarious).

Diablo 2 supports up to eight players, and it's hard to go wrong with an hour or two of that.

Xwing vs Tiefighter's expansion had an 8 player co-op campaign. I have no idea if it was LAN compatible, but I vaguely remember it being so. Don't know if it would work these days.

OpenTTD (Transport Tycoon Deluxe) can be good for a complete change of pace. The map just gets silly, pretty quickly.

Offworld Trading Company is kind of similar, but far quicker paced, and with far more player interaction later on. Pretty sure it does up to eight players.

Will second Running with Rifles as a fun little you-guys-vs-an-entire-army type game. Very underrated title.

Soldat is good for a little 2-d side-on multi-player competitive shooter. Gets pretty damn hardcore, and is free.

[nenjin]

As always, thanks for the effort.

Golf With Your Friends

I watched a good amount of this on Funhaus and yeah, it's mini-golf not missiles and lasers and death, and yet it looks really fun. Thanks for reminding me of this, if all else fails I will suggest we try this. Bit low key for a LAN party but again, it looked like a lot of fun.

4x

Civ 4 and Total Warhammer 2 are both on the table. Big commitment though, you're basically like "ok we're playing this for 3 days then." I'd put games like Terraria or your garden variety crafting/survival games into this category as well.

aRPGs

Diablo 2 might actually be on the table. At this point I think I'd be happy just to bro around in D2. PoE does not sit well with enough people at the LAN party to recommend. (Too bad I've put hella hours into that game.) Torchlight is a meh from me, personally.

Risk of Rain

Seen it around plenty, never thought of playing it. Modding in more people for coop action would be great if it's a low barrier to entry.

RTS

A few of my friends seem to be in to competitive RTS at the LAN. Personally, playing against my friends has never been my cup of tea. If we wanted to go that route there's many options but I try to steer the group away from it. One dude's idea was literally "let's all play against the dude with the highest APM in Starcraft" which got a big no from me. Personally for RTS, I'd recommend for us to play Dawn of War with all the mods or Company of Heroes, but I get that for many playing against OP AI isn't really a draw.

This kind of encompasses all the old time arena shooters as well. Mindlessly running around shooting rockets at each other for hours just doesn't do it for me, personally. Similarly, I have games like Gang Beasts that don't really work or last for the same reasons.

There's definitely multiple breeds of LAN players: some want to tangle with people or friends online, and some want to just play coop in the live company of friends. I'm definitely in the latter group.

Running With Rifles

See, I'm familiar with RWR and I legitimately tried to get people to buy in last time, to no avail. I guess the videos on Steam didn't inspire them. But it was also late in the LAN party when people were close to tapped out, so I can try again.

Wargame: Red Dragon

I have one of these and after like 45 mins trying to figure it out going in blind, I noped out. Learning threshold is important for a LAN, IMO. If it's too complex or detailed, many people nope out immediately when they see it.

Most of this is just a desperate attempt for me to avoid having to play League of Legends with them.

[Frumple]

I've never done risk of rain multiplayer, but so far as barrier to entry goes it's pretty damn painless. It's a fairly straightforward platforming run and gun dealio mechanically. Pretty good fun even solo, too.

The sequel, I'unno about. 3d generally ain't my jam, but folks do seem to like it well enough, from what I've seen of videos and whatnot.

[sambojin]

SMITE has a pretty low barrier for entry for a moba, if you do get stuck doing that. Closer to an FPS in many ways (so draws a side crowd for that), is very easy to get "not hopeless" at, and is pretty fun as a "we're all just going to muck around and smash other noobs like us" for a bit. Free to, even with the limited subset of characters-of-the-week.

I know you're trying to stay away from the genre, and LoL or DotA fans would probably be miffed at being made to play "not their game", but it's way more fun for a short burst where even non-moba players can crank out some "moments" in any match with just basic game playing skills.

I think it might be capped at 5v5 though, so not that much better than the standard 4-player co-op thing. I honestly don't even know if it's still running... (it is, just looked).


X-wing vs TIE-Fighter: Balance of Power Campaigns is pretty cheap on steam, and does do LAN. $14.50Aussie, so $10'ish US. Apparently the GoG version runs a tiny bit easier, and is about the same price. Star Wars'y Co-op might not be bad for the sort of stuff you want. 8 player, all on the same side(Rebel or Empire) in the campaigns. Or lots of PvP if you want to try that as well. If you like Star Wars, or co-op, or really low end flying sims, or like shooting stuff, it should do it for you (or should cover enough of the party that lots of people get something from it). Works on Win7, so should go on Win10 (especially the gog version). Not many missions either (15 per campaign, one campaign for each faction), so you could probably go through the whole thing with your mates in one evening as the goodies or baddies.
(you could potentially refund it after doing so, if $10 is too much, or if some want to bail on the idea after a few missions and play a moba while you're all having fun)

[nenjin]

That sounds pretty sick, they're all Star Wars fans and I did enjoy me some Tie Fighter. Thanks.

[George_Chickens]

Have you ever tried the Cube engine games? They're a bunch of arena shooters with decently lethal AI and a collaborative map editor, where you can create a map as you play. Cube 2: Sauerbraten is the main one, and I'd say it's all around a pretty great game. It's simple enough that you can just jump in and play without ever having played an arena shooter before, but not so simple it's boring.

There's also Red Eclipse 2, which has much more glitter on it and is a lot more modern. It's free on Steam, but requires a much beefier computer to actually run.

Unreal Tournament 2004 is also a good choice if you're into the genre, because there are some gigantic maps that are great to play cooperatively, and it also has a ton of mods that totally change what the game is. The base game has enough variety, from basketball to space battles in fighter ships, that I think everyone will find something to enjoy.

[Robsoie]

There was mention of Worms (that is always a good laugh with multiple people) previously, so i would suggest Hedgewars :
https://www.hedgewars.org/

It's an open source clone of the Worms 2 engine (Worms 2, Armageddon, World Party) and is really good at delivering the Worms gameplay, highly customisable modes and options and can features tons of players on servers or on LAN.

And it's free so there's no risk of having lost money if you all end into not liking the Worms type of gameplay.

for having replayed old Unreal Tournament (the one from 99) with a friend vs bots some months ago it's always a big fun.

[LoSboccacc]

there's always carmageddon, both old and new

[ThtblovesDF]

King Arthurs Gold is now free on Steam and pretty great. Has cool mods, too.