My best friend and I have seen each other in person vanishingly few times during the pandemic, but even before this unprecendented period of social distancing our once or twice-weekly hangouts paled in comparison to the time we spent together as housemates a few years ago. Through all of this, we've stayed very close in large part due to a consistent practice of finding time to play cooperative video games online.

For much of the time we've played together, the best fit for our needs was some flavor of first person shooter, most often a "Battle Royale" style game called PUBG. Working as a duo we'd hide from and ambush our opponents, more often than not getting clobbered by players an order of magnitude better than we were, but from time to time achieving glorious victory.

He recently came across a cooperative game that's been getting rave reviews. It Takes Two is a cooperative adventure and puzzle game with a storyline that's as strange and interesting as any movie I've seen recently. The cooperative gameplay mechanics are rich and varied, gameplay paradigms constantly shifting in allusions to well loved genres of video games and only rarely failing to nail every mechanic they introduce.

It Takes Two follows the adventures of May and Cody, parents of a little girl named Rose. Through a sequence of events triggered by them breaking the news of their divorce to their daughter, May and Cody are trapped in strange doll bodies and embark on psychedelically strange adventures on a liliputian scale in their own house and environs.

This is an absolute masterpiece and I'm thrilled to have discovered it so soon before my first child arrives - I'm already eagerly awaiting the day we can play in the wild world of May, Cody and Rose's house.