Gaming

Lethal Company has a mod that enables more people in a lobby and Project Zomboid is a blast if you can get past the graphics.

• Barotrauma. Game can be challenging and serious, but also ridiculously hilarious and off the walls, often in the same playthrough.
• Valheim.
• Project Zomboid. You might want to consider upping some of the difficulty with more players, though. More zombies, for example.
• Minecraft.
• Planetside 2. Squad/platoon up and just roll around together. The learning curve, however, can be surprisingly high.
• Battlebit Remastered.

If you want a Mario Party like, Pummel Party is very fun imo

If you like survival games… Ark, 7 days to die, Conan Exiles, Valheim*… You can self-host all of them so you don’t need to deal with griefers.

Valheim’s doesn’t work so well if you don’t all play together. Resources from exploration are finite and it really sucks if all the places you go, your buddies went to and looted already. Works best if most people play together and everyone plays around the same amount of time.

@azezeB Some suggestions

1. Dead By Daylight. 5 people with one being the Killer so you can rotate that if desired.
2. Halo Infinite multiplayer can do 12 person parties for the “Big” map modes.
3. I believe Lego Fortnite also lets you have up to 8. It’s more Minecraft and not a Battle Royale at all.
4. Lethal company modded can support more than 4. That could be lots of fun.
5. Retro FPS like Quake from various years. Just as a small distraction

There are still MMOs. They can be a blast with a group of friends who consistently play together. Or Ark? Or Rust?

Stardew Valley can be modded to support 8-player sessions but the upcoming 1.6 update will include it natively.

Risk of Rain 2 is a blast with a group

Ones I've played, in no particular order

• Rust
• Civilization
• Valheim
• Project Cars
• Battlebit
• Stolen Realm
• Hell Let Loose

TTT in GMod is GOAT

If you want to avoid the hassle that it takes to set up a Microsoft account you may try Minetest instead of Minecraft.
It's an free and Open Source reimplementation that needs no Java, and the game mode "Mineclone" is very close to the original.

Regardings RTS I can recommend Supreme Commander: Forged Alliance

I you want to try out a business simulation you may look at OpenTTD which is free (and free of ads) over Steam.

And don't forget Among Us.

It's only 4 players but Baldur's Gate 3 is so much fun to play coop.

You mentioned LoL. Dota 2 is really fun if you guys haven't tried it, highly recommend. Biggest thing to get used to compared to LoL is the movement (most heroes have a turn speed)

World of Warcraft. If your focus is primarily in PvP, then you specifically want to look at Battlegrounds and Arenas in WoW.

Space Engineers.

Satisfactory.

Factorio (actually not sure what the MP limit is without mods; but I know there's a mod that makes it infinite due to seeing the Spiffing Brit playing with like 300 people at once).

EVE Online (the bigger your group the stronger you'd be. Get 100 of 'em; start your own corporation)

Actually while thinking about what supports more than 4 it's mostly creative games and MMORPGs (that know of). Damn near everything centers on groups of just 3-4 with the exception of the 5v5 competitive shooters.

Muck can be a pretty hilarious time with a bunch of friends. Practically any Halo game has some kind of game mode that a bunch of friends can enjoy.

You want to ONLY play with your group or are you also wanting to play with others? Or both/either?

One I haven’t seen here yet is Pulsar: Lost Colony. Similar to Star Trek Bridge Crew or Artemis I think, but you can do away type missions along with working together to fly and operate the ship. Up to 5 players.

MMORPGs like World of Warcraft or Guild Wars 2 are a great way to play together. With 5 players you can exactly fill a party in both games.

RTS games like Starcraft 2 (which is free now) or Age of Empires could also be fun, but 5 players is a bit awkward because it's too many for a single team and uneven so you can't play like a 3v3. But at least in SC2 there's a 2v2 and a 3v3 ladder so you could always split into two teams or play a free for all. There are also a bunch of cool custom games in the arcade like Ice Baneling Escape or Zealot Hockey you could try.

Very different, but Trackmania is also fun with friends. Not the right choice if you enjoy ramming your friends off the road, but there are probably other games for that too. To set up and play in a club/server you'd need club access which costs like $20 a year, but you can try the game for free first to see if you like it. You can compete for records on a map, play an RPG together (a map style where the focus is on finding the right way instead of just racing) or build tracks for each other.

You could try an ARPG, unfortunately most of them (Diablo, Grim Dawn, Last Epoch) seem to limit parties to 4 players, but Path of Exile allows up to six. And if you're not serious about the end game you'll never need to spend any money (if you are it's like $40 for stash tabs one time and you're set forever).

Barotrauma should be able to take up to 16 players and if you as a group can get into this game then you will have a good laugh for a good amount of time.

Golf With Your Friends - up to 12 p. Simple game but getting hit by your friends ball right before scoring the hole kinda never gets old.

Any grand strategy will be able to host many players Civ, HoI, HoMaM, AoE, RoN, Stellaris, ...

Ps. Check out DEFCON/ICBM

My crew had fun with Tribes of Midgard for a while but to be honest you'll need more than 5 people :)

Quake Live

tetr.io could be good

(dont enable manual targeting or you'll ruin friendships)

I think elder scrolls online has 4 player dungeons but questing can mainly be done in a large group

https://en.m.uesp.net/wiki/Online:Grouping#:~:text=Regular%20Groups%20consist%20of%20up,and%20AvA%20battles%20in%20Cyrodiil

For some slightly less common games: Golf with your friends is a great mini game to play, effectively really crazy golf online

From the Depths build ships/planes/tanks with entirely custom guns, engines etc. then play on the campaign map with fleets of these ships. you can make some really complicated vehicles if that's your thing. Unlimited player count as far as I'm aware.

A less deep version of that is Avorion - Mine resources to build custom ships (less complicated) then even small fleets and do quests, make allies/enemies as you venture to the centre of the galaxy. Supports unlimited players as far as I'm aware. It also allows you to form an alliance to share resources with other players. Resource gathering (mining/salvaging) can be automated by your fleets if that's not your thing.

I'd suggest valheim but I'm not sure how is the performance nowadays, our rented servers struggled a lot with only 3-4 people and I think 10 is the max. Sailing was especially very laggy and glitchy because if it unfortunately.