This list focuses on official, developer-backed multiplayer modes. What they share in common is a particular game loop, with resource gathering and crafting complementary to other goals - from exploration and fighting to growing a city to managing a successful amusement park or farm.

This list broadly covers base-building, automation, survival, and certain types of crafting games. So we’ve created a list of some of our favorites that support cooperative play mostly online multiplayer with a few entries that support couch co-op.

But these games are often more fun with others, letting you create abominations together or ruthlessly mess with each other’s work. There’s that perfect gameplay loop that comes from doing menial tasks and then, later, building systems to help automate those chores. Those are my favorite FPS games on the Mac right now, but if there are any other can't-miss shooters on your short list, let me know in the comments below.Base-building and management simulator games scratch a particular itch. And it's free, so you have nothing to lose but some download bandwidth. Its graphics are quaint and primitive, its interface is awkward by modern standards, but it stands out as a period piece worthy of remembering and enjoying.

You must descend into its innermost recesses, battling fearsome monsters to save the world. The game traps you in a mysterious pyramid in the Yucatan that threatens the very survival of the Earth. Not 'freemium' - there are no in-app purchases you need to make to keep playing. Man Up Time has resurrected this 20-year-old masterpiece for modern Mac and they've made it absolutely free. That game was called Pathways Into Darkness. Before Halo, before Myth, before Marathon, way back in 1993, Bungie Software made a name for itself with Mac gamers with one of the most innovative first person shooters we'd ever seen (and really, we hadn't seen a lot of them, but we knew this one was cool).

Multiplayer steam games for mac