My wife loves board games, but dislikes very competitive games, and is completely uninterested in aggressive "beat up the other guy" games. We recently discovered Pandemic, where each player works together to try and halt the spread of a number of deadly diseases. We really liked it.
What other games are there that are cooperative in nature?
Arkham Horror is almost completely cooperative.
It is the players against a Great Old One(GOO) of Cthulhu mythos. Players need to work together to arm themselves and find clues that will enable them to seal gates that open from other realms. There is a large number of expansions, but the basic game is very enjoyable.
Generally, the expansions make the game harder and should be avoided until you can regularly beat the GOO in the base game.
See Is it possible to play 2-player, 2-character Arkham Horror successfully? for a question about the viability of a popular 2 player variant for Arkham Horror.
Forbidden Island is another cooperative game created by the same guy that made Pandemic. http://www.boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/65244/forbidden-island
My wife and I played and loved Shadows Over Camelot for years before Pandemic existed.
There are many cooperative games around now, and some are on my radar:
The Lord of the Rings is a cooperative board game that I like. The one thing to watch out for (as with many other cooperative games) is that a few enthusiasts take over the whole running of the game, and others just passively do as they are told.
It has an extension that converts it to a one-against-many game, Lord of the Rings: Sauron. So don't get that extension if you're looking for the cooperative experience.
Another good cooperative game might be Ghost Stories.
Ghost Stories is a cooperative game in which the players try to defeat the spirit of Wu-Feng, the lord of hell, and his legions of ghosts before they haunt a town and recover the ashes that will allow him to return to life. Each Player represents a taoist monk ghost hunter who is working together with the others to fight off waves of spirits and other beings mostly inspired by eastern mythology.Blockquote
I have the perfect game for you guys: Last Night On Earth. I've played dozens of board games, and I really don't go back to any of them anymore except for this one. It is a co-op game, as long as you have more than 3 players. The reason for this is that you have Heroes and Zombies and someone has to be zombies. However, this is why it's not a highly competitive game: as much as Heroes may want to win, the chances of that happening are unlikely. Ok, I know this sounds ridiculous: "why would I want to play a game which one side almost always wins?!." The answer is simple, Last Night on Earth's charm lies in recreating B zombie movie cliches and playing through impossible odds. You are encouraged to create your own rules and try new things.
Try Carcassonne. You can be competitive if you want, but there's no need. Beautiful maps you can create. And if needed you can play with more people. It's quite easy to explain.
I play a lot of cooperative games.
The two that we currently play are:
Castle Ravenloft - Based on the old D&D theme. Fun and simpler to play.
Red November - Gnomish Submarine that continually gets less seaworthy.
Also some great quick card games:
The Isle of Dr. Necreaux, Space Hulk (as mentioned above)
All games are co-op and "all win or all lose".
One way to ease the competitive pressure is to play silly games so that the players don't take them too seriously. Cheapass Games are a good choice, with Kill Dr. Lucky being my favourite.
I also like dexterity games for the same reason. Some have a bit of strategy, but nobody takes them too seriously. I like Pitch Car, Villa Paletti, Bausack, and Polarity.
Knizia's Lord of the Rings game is the only truly cooperative game I know of. The players are playing against the board so to speak.
Many people like it because of the "working together to reach a goal" without a human adversary element (most other coop games feature one player to be the 'bad guy').
I like Advanced Civilization just because it can be played mostly cooperative. Unfortunately it is out of print, but you still can get it used.
The goal of the game is to build a civilization. There can be little conflicts between players, but these can be settled peacefully. The only problem is with the calamities. (Calamities are part of the trading system so you can trade calamities to other players). But most of the time this can be settled too.
If you're a little more flexible on the definition of 'board game', the recent Space Hulk card game is fast-paced and easy to learn, while being completely cooperative (players VS the deck).
Have you considered games that are more like puzzles? They can still be competitive, but it's more of a race than a fist fight. The best example I can think of is Ricochet Robots.
A similar category is deduction games like Mastermind and its relatives Black Box and Zone X.
For another kind of puzzle game, see if you can track down Situation 4. It's a competitive jigsaw puzzle. (I'm not kidding.) This is mostly aimed at kids, but I find the idea hilarious.
Not a two-player game, but don't miss Space Alert. It's a high-pressure game of cooperation and coordination (4-5 players cooperate to defend their spaceship). The challenge comes from the need to coordinate actions under tight time pressure. (If one player fires the main starboard gun four moves in a row to fend off a threat, someone else had better have thought to go down to engineering and divert power to recharge it... or come order resolution, it's going to go 'pffft' instead of 'zap'.)
It's like playing RoboRally while trying not to bump into the other players... but with no time to talk over all your moves in advance.
Has a group scoring system too; you're encouraged to keep track of the group's triumphs and deaths for future comparison. Level of difficulty is higly customisable; more so than in Pandemic.
After thinking about my recommendation for Through the Ages, it occurs to me that you and your wife might be well served by a wide variety of eurogames. Many euros have very low player interaction, and while not exactly cooperative, they certainly avoid the "beat up the other guy" problem. In fact, many of the best-regarded euros have been accused of being "multiplayer solitaire", an accusation which might turn out to be a ringing endorsement in this case.
The interaction between players in many games comes down to denial-of-choice or denial-of-resources. For example, in Puerto Rico, if you choose the Craftsman role all players will produce goods, but you'll get an extra for choosing the role. And in Agricola, if you go fishing no other player can get food from fishing that turn. In both cases, you've denied the other player the opportunity of making that choice.
Those are three of the best games in the world (don't just take my word for it, ask BGG), and big favorites at my family's table, which often includes just my wife and me. I answered originally with some strictly cooperative games, but thought you might enjoy the low player interactivity of these exemplary eurogames, too.
Excellent question. This answer is bucking the trend somewhat from the other answers here, but what about a game like Pair Go? Obviously, you'd have to be interested in a traditional strategy game like Go, first. Also, since Go is a metaphor for war, I don't know if Go counts as a 'beat up the other guy' game for your wife.
Pair Go would involve you & your wife playing the same side of a Go game against another couple.
The dynamics get interesting, at least for me, because I never seem to know what my wife is thinking ;-)
Actually, that may be a metaphor for my entire marriage...
Maze is a chess-like game that is cooperative. It's basically a puzzle where each player moves the pieces on his side of the board. The publisher specializes in cooperative games, but most of them are for kids.
If you're willing to print out and assemble a free print-and-play game, consider Space Monster ( http://www.invisible-city.com/play/507/space-monster ). Elevator pitch: Alien – The boardgame.
Neat features: The alien's special powers, immunities, and weaknesses are different every game. Many player roles, so your "crew" is different every game. Modular board, so the space ship is different every time. The alien doesn't have hit points, but a health deck that controls how it reacts and behaves after it gets wounded. Can be played co-op, co-op with possible traitor, and one-vs-many.
Takes 1 to 5 (6?) players.
Try Buffy The Vampire Slayer, the 2000 Edition - sadly, this is now out of print and you have to get it from Ebay, but, it's a great co-op game with multiple players as good, and one player as evil. Sadly, the later Buffy game is pretty lame. But the 2000 one is a ton of fun - particularly if you're a Buffy fan.
Someone introduced us to Forbidden Island the other day. Easy to learn entertaining race against the system to recover items then escape as the waters rise and tiles disappear. Not without some flaws though: our first game was over in failure almost as soon as it began due to some unlucky turn-ups, and sometimes it's so obvious what each player/character needs to do the game feels like it's running on rails.
I personally love A Touch of Evil: it's another take on the a bunch of heroes working together against the big bad. You have slightly different character cards and each person plays one and goes around, picking up cards, items and fighting flunkies and you eventually get together to fight the big bad. I'm not sure how well it would work with only two people, but at least you don't need someone to play the bad guy.
