10 Best Switch Multiplayer Games

The Nintendo Switch is going on 7 years now, and while it might just be winding down, with Nintendo starting to pave the way for their next console, there’s still so much to celebrate about the absolute juggernaut that has been the Switch. Being able to play handheld or docked to the TV was a major game changer — especially for multiplayer games.

Busting out your favorite local or online co-op titles anywhere you want, whether kart racing head-to-head with strangers around the globe or working with friends to splat the competition, there’s never been a better time for multiplayer Nintendo games. This list looks back across the Switch’s biggest releases to determine the very best multiplayer games to release on Nintendo’s most revolutionary video game system.

10 Mario Party Superstars

Fun For The Whole Family

Mario Party Superstars is a fantastic game for long-time Mario Party fans — or new fans looking for a fun, casual party game. Play local co-op with up to 3 other friends or delve into the surprisingly solid online mode to explore 5 classic maps from throughout the series, all enhanced for a more modern experience. Being able to visit fan-favorite boards like Peach’s Birthday Cake and Yoshi’s Tropical Island from the original Mario Party (1998) makes for a nostalgic romp through the series’ hay day. Each of the boards features a number of hazards, unique mechanics, and complexity levels to tailor your experience to your tastes.

Mario Party Superstars offers the best player experience in the series for quite some time.

The different boards available are extremely approachable and fun for all ages, making this an excellent game to break out with the younger kids in your life, while still offering some zany fun for adults just looking for some casual co-op. Mario Party Superstars would be even higher on this list if Nintendo had continued to release new boards for players to enjoy, but its 5 admittedly great boards just aren’t enough to push this game higher up this list. Make no mistake, though, that Mario Party Superstars offers the best player experience in the series for quite some time.

9 Overcooked! All You Can Eat

Put Your Friendships To The Test In This Hilarious Party Game

The first Overcooked was released back in 2016, offering a unique cooperative cooking “sim” that pits you and up to 3 of your friends against the clock to fill out orders, wash dishes, and put out kitchen fires in your pursuit of satisfying the customers’ orders. It was a huge hit! Despite being a cooperative game, things can get surprisingly heated and competitive in the kitchen, with player mistakes and collisions chipping away crucial seconds from the timer. Overcooked 2 dropped 2 years later with a number of gameplay improvements, including being able to throw food — something that can easily help (or hinder) in grabbing the coveted 3 stars for a level. Overall, 2 offered a more polished experience.

Featuring over 200 unique levels, you’ll cook on rocking pirate ships, moving platforms in space, lava-filled caves, and on top of speeding trucks!

Overcooked: All You Can Eat (2020) remasters the amazing levels and zany co-op shenanigans of 1 and combines them with the refined polish of 2 to deliver the ultimate cooking game for a group of friends looking to push each others’ buttons. Featuring over 200 unique levels, you’ll cook on rocking pirate ships, hover platforms in space, lava-filled caves, and on top of speeding trucks! Complete with seamless crossplay, you’ll be able to play online with all of your friends, regardless of where everyone chooses to game.

8 Fall Guys

Zany Obstacle Course Fun

Fall Guys is such a weird battle royale concept, but it’s kind of ridiculous we haven’t been treated to more obstacle course-style battle royales. The concept is simple: you’re 1 of 40 contestants competing against each other to win. You’ll jump, slide, wobble, and fall your way through several obstacle courses, with the ‘beans’ getting eliminated along the way until only 1 remains to claim the crown.

Fall Guys isn’t the best multiplayer on this list, but depending on your mood, it might just be the most fun.

Originally launching as a paid game on PS4 and PC, Fall Guys eventually went free to play and launched on pretty much every console, including the Nintendo Switch. Sure, the load times aren’t as snappy as more powerful consoles, but the game plays very well on the Switch, and it suits the handheld format perfectly. On top of the silly physics and wild obstacle courses, you’re also able to customize your character with gestures, color schemes, and costume pieces, giving you plenty of options to become the bean you always wanted to be. Fall Guys isn’t the best multiplayer on this list, but when the mood strikes, it might just be the most fun.

7 Super Mario Bros. Wonder

A Wonderful Platforming Adventure

The latest 2D installment of the historic plumber’s adventures throughout Mushroom Kingdom and beyond, Super Mario Bros. Wonder takes players on a magical and trippy adventure across the Flower Kingdom. Continuing the ongoing refinement process ever since the first Super Mario Bros. game released back in 1986, Super Mario Bros. Wonder has created what feels like the most user-friendly platforming adventure for the iconic plumber.

Wonder introduces the unique mechanic of Wonder Flowers, which, when acquired, will transform the given level to integrate some wild new mechanic, drastically changing the flow and presentation of the area. What’s more, every single level in Super Mario Bros. Wonder features its own unique Wonder Flower transformation, making each and every world a joy to traverse.

…every single level in Super Mario Bros. Wonder features its own unique Wonder Flower transformation, making each and every world a joy to traverse.

Most levels are easy enough to get through, but like many of the more recent 2D Mario adventures, the real challenge comes in tracking down every collectible across all of the levels. Make no mistake, though, there are some tough worlds to explore mixed in here — especially toward the end of the game.

Whether you’re a Mario superfan from back in the day or are looking to play your first Mario adventure, Super Mario Bros. Wonder is perfect for all ages and experience levels, solo or co-op.

6 Rocket League

Incredible High-Flying Competitive Action

Another crazy concept that the developer just nails, Rocket League, developed by Psyonix, absolutely delivered on their insane vision for a vehicle-based soccer game. One of the early success stories of a game launching on PS+ and rocketing to success, Rocket League became a huge hit after offering their game for free to PS+ subscribers. And while it might not run quite as flawlessly on the Switch as on one of the more powerful consoles, it still offers an incredible free-to-play experience that is unlike any other. This unique and competitive sports game pits (typically) 3 players against 3 opponents on a variety of beautiful fields, all built around the central conceit of knocking around an oversized ball with their vehicles.

Rocket League is relatively easy to pick up and enjoy, but the game’s longevity stems from not only its addictive gameplay, but also its ultra-high-skill ceiling. The first time you watch a car fly through the air, juggling the ball across the field to knock it into the opposing goal…it’ll either intimidate and turn you away, or it’ll wow you with just how dynamic and flexible the physics system truly is. Complete with a deep roster of different car types — all with their own unique feel — and an insane number of customization items to fully immerse yourself in the world of Rocket League, it becomes crystal clear why Rocket League deserves its place on this list.

5 Animal Crossing: New Horizons

Bringing The World Together In A Difficult Time

It’s true, Animal Crossing: New Horizons’ time in the spotlight has come and gone, but no Switch multiplayer list would be complete without including this absolute juggernaut of a cozy crafting sim. The game isn’t exactly built from the ground up as a robust multiplayer experience, but Animal Crossing: New Horizons deserves a place on this list more so for when it was initially released and its cultural impact during a harrowing time. Launching right at the start of global lockdowns due to the coronavirus pandemic, it released to countless people holed up indoors, many unable to work or go to school, and yearning for a way to connect with others.

The simple yet addictive gameplay loop of exploring, decorating, and remodeling your own personal island paradise was pure, innocent joy.

Animal Crossing: New Horizons offered exactly that in perhaps the coziest way possible. The simple yet addictive gameplay loop of exploring, decorating, and remodeling your own personal island paradise was pure, innocent joy. As with previous Animal Crossing games, you’ll have various potential cute animal villagers passing through your community regularly, searching for a place to live. You can customize your villagers, shower them with gifts, and most importantly (for this list), you can share your island with friends! Entire online communities sprang up out of nowhere for players to search for the best Turnip deals every week. Some people hosted interviews with celebrities, touring their custom islands. Other people tossed out their Island Code to host huge communal item and recipe trading parties. Sometimes, people simply visited friends for a bit of socializing, not really needing to do much of anything. Animal Crossing was everywhere.

Truth be told, the franchise probably will never reach these heights ever again; so perfect was its timing with such enormous difficulties shared across the globe. At the time of writing this, Animal Crossing: New Horizons probably isn’t going to be a phenomenal multiplayer experience. But it absolutely deserves a place on this list simply for the pervasiveness and universality of the experience it offered.

4 Fortnite

Constant Variety & Joyful Evolution

At this point, it’s hard to not know of the juggernaut that is Fortnite. Despite the Switch being one of the worst places to play this addicting battle royale (right next to mobile), this list just wouldn’t be complete without this enduring battle royale. The Switch’s performance isn’t terrible, running surprisingly well compared to just how gorgeous it can look running on an Xbox Series X or PlayStation 5. Despite these graphical shortcomings, and thanks to seamless crossplay, the Switch is still a completely viable way to enjoy everything Fortnite has to offer.

These various game modes all come together to deliver not just a great video game experience, but a great entertainment experience.

And it has quite a bit to offer. The iconic battle royale mode is of course a mainstay, but the game also offers some incredibly varied experiences across its game modes. LEGO Fortnite is a great survival crafting game, translating your favorite Fortnite characters into their own little LEGO versions. If that’s not your cup of tea, you can also check out Rocket Racing, an adrenaline-fueled racing game built on the bones of Rocket League’s awesome car physics. Or, if you’re in more of a music mood, check out Fortnite Festival, created by the devs behind Rockband to deliver a great rhythm game experience, complete with new songs on rotation week to week. These various game modes all come together to deliver not just a great video game experience, but a great entertainment experience.

As stated above, everything here does run better across other available platforms, but that doesn’t detract from just how versatile and engaging the Fortnite experience can be, whether you’re playing on an RTX 4070 or playing handheld at a friend’s house.

3 Splatoon 3

Nintendo’s Inspired Take On Competitive Shooters

You’re a squid, now. You’re a kid, now. Splatoon was a wild concept back when the first game launched on the Wii U back in 2015. A Nintendo-grown competitive shooter struck so many gamers as just…a bizarre choice, and they weren’t entirely wrong. Splatoon is an insane setting and vibe, combining snappy third-person shooting, innovative ‘swimming’ traversal through paint, and a zany, colorful setting that mixes an edgy (and sometimes incomprehensible) style with a unique Nintendo charm. Despite releasing on the Wii U with its horrible net code, complete with frequent disconnects and lag spikes, the game was lightning in a bottle.

With each iteration, Splatoon has only grown and improved in its presentation and design, complete with actually helpful motion controls. The iconic paint mechanic in Turf War creates both a unique objective and plays into the game’s excellent traversal. Matches aren’t necessarily won by splats (kills) alone, but are instead rated on just how much turf is covered in your team’s paint. Players are also able to swim through their own paint, allowing for quick traversal across an arena, up a wall, and behind enemy lines — so long as there’s available paint to hide in. Oh yeah, and swimming is also how you reload your weapons. The systems all feed back into each other beautifully, creating a phenomenal ecosystem.

If PVP isn’t quite your speed, the PVE Salmon Run mode provides an excellent co-op experience, pitting a team of four Inklings against wildly creative Salmonid bosses and fodder enemies, each requiring specific tactics to defeat. There really isn’t anything quite like Splatoon.

2 Super Smash Bros. Ultimate

The Ultimate Celebration Of Gaming

As its name implies, this game is the ultimate rendition of the Super Smash Bros. franchise. Though Super Smash Bros. Melee continues to hold a special place in the competitive scene, and Super Smash Bros. Brawl introduced the beloved adventure mode, The Subspace Emissary, Super Smash Bros. Ultimate delivers the definitive rendition of this iconic franchise, packaging the most stages and most diverse set of fighters across all the games.

Super Smash Bros. Ultimate became not just a celebration of Nintendo games, but a celebration of video games from across the industry…

Super Smash Bros. began back on the N64 and became one of the most outlandish and exciting ways to celebrate the colorful characters from Nintendo’s roster. Melee expanded the roster quite a bit, jumping from 12 to 25, then from 25 to 35 with Brawl. It wasn’t until Brawl that guest characters from other publishers and popular IPs were introduced with the shocking appearance of Mario’s old rival, Sonic the Hedgehog, and the equally iconic but perhaps more outlandish inclusion of Solid Snake. Super Smash Bros. Ultimate blew the lid off roster expectations, not only exploding the fighter options to 82 unique fighters (not counting all the fun nods with the Mii Fighter costumes), but also ramping up the variety (and ridiculousness) of non-Nintendo characters. Super Smash Bros. Ultimate became not just a celebration of Nintendo games, but all video games from across the industry, across console generations and publishers, to deliver the greatest commemoration of video games to exist.

And none of this even touches on just how fun the game is to play. Each fighter operates on the same general control scheme, but each one brings its own weight, balance, attacks, and defensive abilities that all call back to their own iconic games and franchises. With over 100 stages to select, each delivering their own unique hazards and challenges, on top of harking back to their respective video game properties, makes every moment of Super Smash Bros. Ultimate the opitome of the joy video games can bring.

1 Mario Kart 8 Deluxe

The Best Kart Racer Around

Mario Kart 8, even beyond the Mario Kart franchise, is an institution for Nintendo at this point. Originally releasing back in 2014 on the Wii-U, it delivered the best, most responsive kart racing at the time. It was quickly a smash hit. After releasing DLC updates, including new karts, characters, and tracks, the game felt pretty much complete. Being locked on the underrated and tragically named Wii U, the game was quickly relaunched on the Nintendo Switch, complete with all the DLC and added karts, characters, and tracks from the base game. It also came with a few additional new characters, fun added mechanics like being able to hold two items at the same time, and an updated battle mode.

Mario Kart 8 Deluxe is the definitive Mario Kart experience, delivering the most polished driving and the most fun you can have in the series, whether solo, local co-op with friends, or online.

Mario Kart 8 Deluxe has pretty much been THE best-selling Switch game month over month since the Deluxe edition’s launch in 2017. In addition to the 32 base-game tracks, the game’s Booster Course Pack delivered another 48(!) tracks from the previous Mario Kart titles — and another 8 classic Mario characters to join in on the action. Mario Kart 8 Deluxe is the definitive Mario Kart experience, delivering the most polished driving and the most fun you can have in the series, whether solo, local co-op with friends, or online.

This is the definitive pick-up-and-play experience when having friends over, whether they’re capital ‘G’ gamers, friends who haven’t picked up a video game in years, or friends/family who don’t play games at all! It’s incredibly accessible, deeply fun, and wildly addicting.