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Good games to play with young children

The_Mask

Just like Yves, I chase tales.
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The land of ice and snow.
Strap Yourselves In Codex Year of the Donut Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag. Pathfinder: Wrath I helped put crap in Monomyth
The Incredible Machine, especially the old one. Chess. Scorched Earth.

You would be surprised how well kids do in games with simple rules.
 

destinae vomitus

Educated
Joined
Apr 25, 2021
Messages
93
Rayman Origins & Legends and both Ori games. The latter lack co-op but you can make up for it by giving kind fatherly advice and protips.
 

spectre

Arcane
Joined
Oct 26, 2008
Messages
5,380
Which lego games are good? I'll look at the other games recommended here.
My kid only played Lego City Undercover, Ninjago, Star Wars and Pirates of the Carribean. On a surface level, they feel same-ish to me, in that they are all console ports with all the ailments thereof (clunky camera with the woes, you're pretty much expected to play them with a controller). Structure wise, you follow the main story with an additional free play mode in which you unlock various collectibles on the maps you've already beaten.
The games are impossible to lose, even though there are health "hearts", you immediately respawn nearby when you lose them all or fail a jump. So at the most, you'll get stuck on a puzzle,
but there isn't really a Game Over state.

Gameplay wise, it's usually a mix of combat (easy button mashing), exploration, puzzles, jumping (which can be infuriating because of the camera, good thing you get infinite retries) and some racing/obstacle runs.
The actual proportions depend on the game, e.g. Ninjago was pretty combat heavy while PotC went heavier on exploration.
As far as I could tell, port quality was shoddy in pretty much all of them, there were plenty of bugs like
random crashes, something not triggering in the code (solved by restarting the level), characters getting stuck, etc.

As to which one was the best, my kid played the Ninjago one to 99% completion, so this one was probably the best for him. From my perspective, the PotC probably had the best puzzles,
but it was possible to get stuck because something bugged out, or the game didn't communicate what you're expected to do.

Undercover looked really good, but your kid needs decent English to really appreciate it (the previous two were pretty language independent, and there's not one word spoken in PotC).
It felt a bit like a family friendly GTA. I might revisit it because we didn't have a controller at that time and driving was crap on the keyboard.

We didn't like the Star Wars much, I especially loathed the controls for space flight and space combat.
 

Neuromancer

Augur
Joined
Jun 10, 2018
Messages
1,238
Undercover looked really good, but your kid needs decent English to really appreciate it
The game has multiple language options with full voice translations, tough.

From the Steam page:
InterfaceFull AudioSubtitles
English
Portuguese - Brazil
Portuguese - Portugal
Spanish - Spain
Italian
French
German
Danish
Dutch
Polish
Russian
Traditional Chinese
Japanese

So, English knowledge isn't necessarily required.
If your kid speaks another language, than you are right, of course.
 

jimster

Educated
Joined
Oct 2, 2021
Messages
121
I loved the Lego games as a kid (I'm a bit zoomer yes).

I think my favorites were Lego Star Wars 1 and 2 ("The Complete Saga"), and Indiana Jones 2, which had a large hub world and a level editor. But all of them from Star Wars through Pirates of the Caribbean were good to me. Didn't like much when the characters started speaking and I was getting too old. Their main appeal were as co-op collectathons, the actual gameplay is mostly the same very simple hack-and-slash. Lego City Undercover is more GTA style and was cool from what I played.

I also liked the older Legoland for PC which is an RCT clone.

My brother is playing the new Lego Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga and it seems very... modernized... DLC to unlock some important characters which goes against the purpose of a collectathon, bullet sponge enemies, skill trees, HUD is very cluttered, characters seem to be more homogenized, added quests for some reason...
 

BLOBERT

FUCKING SLAYINGN IT BROS
Patron
Joined
Jun 12, 2007
Messages
4,236
Location
BRO
Codex 2012
FIRST ALMOST ANY MAME BEATUM UP

XMEN
DINNOSORES ABS CADILLAC
DOUBLE DRAGON
TMNT
SIMPSONS
UNDERCOVER COPS
PUNISHER
ALEIN VS PREDATIR
METMORPHIC FORCE
GAIA CRUSADRERA
CAPTAIN COMMANDO
BATTLE CIRCUIT
DENJINMAKI
GUARDIANS
NIGHT SLASHERS
SENGOKU 1 OR 2 OR 3
COMBATRIBES
SHADOW FORCE
ARABIAN NIGHTS
PRETTY SOLDIER SAILOR MOON
MUTATION NATION
 
Joined
Jan 27, 2023
Messages
57
Clive's Barker Jericho.

In all seriousness, Plants vs Zombies comes to mind, Super Tux, blobby volley and that's all I have on my hard drive for games that I would recommend for young children.
 

MurkrLurkr

Learned
Joined
Aug 23, 2020
Messages
444
Location
Serbistan
A few weeks ago I installed Fighting Fantasy Classics on my phone, so my soon to be six year old son and I can have fun and pass the time while my wife masturbates scratching and rubbing herself against assortment of products in the Ikea showroom or while diving through piles of clothing on sale in Zara stores... My first CYOA books were Disney's, so I'm finally reading/playing something more substantial. We're not native english speakers, so I translate the text, leading my son through the adventures, while he chooses between the offered options and rolls the dice... We attract the glances, sometimes approving and othertimes not, of passers-by, while I theatrically describe to him the intricate mesmerizing corridors and the creatures that inhabit them.. I've read him major works of Corpus Tolkienianum and occasionally we play tabletop DnD together, so he's already familiar with the lore and monsterarium of various fantasy worlds... While reading "The Warlock of Firetop Mountain" we got lost in the maze, and I didn't want to resort to searching the internet for a solution but had him draw a map by hand. The kid was so excited that in the following days he, with a beaming face and a sparkle in his eyes, only talked about finding the way out of the "damnable labyrinthine passages". We are having mad fun and it makes me sick when I see the nonsense that parents offer their children on their tablets and phones, just so they wouldn't have to pay attention and engage them in some meaningful way... But, maybe I'm wrong and sacrificing my own time, that can be spent in a more "lucrative" way, on the altar of children's upbringing is a fool's errand... When I talk to my friends, many of whom are selfmade IT experts or economists with stronk wemen by their sides, who earn a lot, optimizing their time so that they don't have gaps in their walk towards "success and self-actualization", sometimes I feel like they look down on me and my slow and unfit ways in the capitalist race for acquisition of wealth... But from my perspective they remind me more and more of machine people who operate on programs and algorithms, because even when they are having fun they do it calculatedly and their children look like vacant eyed NPCs to me... I'm a teacher by vocation and maybe, on a business level, I'm really incompetent and clueless in this aggressive time of chasing and fighting for the best possible position in the "coordinate system of confusion", but I like to think that I'm successful as a parent, and this isn't only a personal feeling, but is also recognized by others, in kindergarten for example, where they call my son an Encyclopedia Matthewica (his name is Mateja/Matthew), emphasizing empathy, clarity of thought and imagination as his qualities... I am satisfied and grateful to God for everything that I have and don't have, and I wholeheartedly advise all parents to devote themselves more to their children because the time will come when they will not need us as much, and the memories of the stories and games we participated in will become building blocks of their lives ... or offer them to Moloch instead :bounce:
 

3 others

Scholar
Joined
Aug 11, 2015
Messages
147
There's an American org called Common Sense Media that publishes family / "for children" oriented reviews on media releases, including vidya gaymes. This is the kind of perspective that's hard to find elsewhere. They have an age estimate, some details on gore / spookiness / difficulty and site / user / kids' reviews. Some of the stuff is surprisingly in-depth. For example, here's some details on the scary parts of Botanicula:
A bit of mild scariness comes in the form of menacing creatures that chase well-meaning plants/bugs. Innocent animals are occasionally poked and prodded by these creatures, and sometimes fed to other creatures as you participate in a living ecosystem. One short sequence shows a puppet show where a puppet chops off the head of a dragon, and the dragon's stump bleeds onto the stage. The same puppet show has puppet versions of the five heroes pulling off legs of a bad spider who then bleeds on the stage. The real heroes of the game cower nearby in fear. Near the end of the game, players shoot a menacing monsters until it's dead.
...which I agree with. The game has an apprehensive atmosphere at times, and if I hadn't played it myself beforehand, this is the kind of info I'd like to have before trying it with young kids.

There's also a site with an even lamer name: Taming Gaming. It's not as comprehensive with their content, but they tend to have an entry for almost all notable recent releases that I can think of. KeyWe? There it is. Twodee & Topdee? Of course. It's good to have at least some info on the suitability of those.
 

3 others

Scholar
Joined
Aug 11, 2015
Messages
147
As for what I've found my pre-school age kids enjoying, here are some hits from the last year:

Mini Motorways is an easy-to-understand traffic routing game. It has a forgiving sandbox mode where even young kids can just plonk down roads, bridges and tunnels and see the city grow with different colored buildings.

Carto is a cute-looking light puzzle game with a nice core gimmick where you edit the overworld map as you go through the game. Solving puzzles requires understanding English, and even then some of the solutions seem kind of arbitrary but it's alright.

Pikuniku is very suitable for a baby's first platformer. Keyboard controls seem to be a bridge too far for my kids so maybe I'll have to invest in a Switch after the summer.

Samorost 3 is the last in the series from the Machinarium devs. It's not quite as easy to pick up for a child. The puzzles are more unintuitive and overall the game world isn't quite as logical, but still very enjoyable for even smaller kids.

Donut County has a flat cartoony look, and a very easily understood main gimmick of playing as a moving hole in the ground that has to swallow everything on screen. Sort of like an inverted katamari damacy or something. This would be an excellent kids game if it wasn't so insistent on having an Epic! Dramatic! Quirky! story that's waay too overwhelming in a game like this.
 

Galdred

Studio Draconis
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Developer
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May 6, 2011
Messages
4,346
Location
Middle Empire
Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag.
Here are the games that worked with mine:

Early
- Various iterations of Pokemon on Nintendo DS. Pokemon Conquest is the one I would recommend the most (basically Fire Emblem pokemon).
- A few old arcade games on Mame (Bubble Bobble mostly)


7 year old+
- Polytopia: ie, simplified Civilization

On Switch: Mario + Rabbids Kingdom Battle, Just Dance, Ringfit
Switch is a great platform for kids, but everything being 500% more expensive than it should made me get very few games for it.


10 year old +
Empires of the Undergrowth (because my daughter was really interested in ants)

Monster Hunters Stories 2: Wings of Ruin
Monster Taming/riding JRPG with great production values
img-5300_ezz6.jpg

LAN recommendations (we played 3 players vs AI)
- Terraria

98f446e9f8cbb0422a5519b69da4b63b486483a47d4db97ab9eb9a7e84900a55_product_card_v2_mobile_slider_639.jpg

- Age of Mythology
s1-0ca6c2c0f26f932cb5dace86b9a33fb4.jpg

- Keplerth

It's our current goto game. It is kind of top down Terraria, but with more important base building. It is much weaker than Terraria solo, but it allows me to explore/fight while the kids take care of the farming.
I suspect Necesse to be the better game (with more focus on colony building), but it is still in EA.

Educational that only works if it is the only option available to the kid
Calculords (android):
Step 1: wait for the kid to be grounded from screens for a week. You can usually rely on the mother for that, as it happens to be their favourite punishment most of the time.
Step 2: commute the punishment to "no screen, but Calculords"

Then, your kid will have to perform arithmetic operations to prevail.
9lIYTnD.png
 
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KeighnMcDeath

RPG Codex Boomer
Joined
Nov 23, 2016
Messages
12,859
I guess Carcassonne is a bit much


Maybe Samorost 1-3
Ballance
Bridge Constructor
Super Hexagon
Arrow
Arrow Patterns
Islanders
Terrascape
Growth
AER - Memories of Old
Lost Ember
Röki
inbento
Swipepi
Fill Multicolor
Links Puzzle
shapez
Arise: A simple story
Hob
Golf Peaks
Haven Park
140
Onde
Ori
Tiny Bang Story
Unwording
Etherborn
Please Fix the Road
A little Golf Journey
GNOG
Chuchel
Donut County
Lumino City
Botanicula
Boulder Dash Deluxe
Doors: Paradox
Gorogoa
Candle man: the complete journey
Switchball HD
Pile Up! Box by Box
Dorfromantik
Cloud Gardens
Carto
Sky: Children of the night
Journey
Flower
Flow

eh… I guess mostly puzzle games.
 

Halfling Rodeo

Educated
Joined
Dec 14, 2023
Messages
963
KeyWe
KeyWe is a cute, co-operative postal puzzler starring Jeff and Debra, two small kiwi birds working in a whimsical post office. They must jump, flap, peck and butt-slam their way across an interactive landscape of levers, bells and buttons to get those messages delivered on time!
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1242980/KeyWe/
Keywe's difficulty ramps up fast and requires a lot of reading skills to know how to pass a level. Playing it coop with another adult we still had difficulty relatively early into the game. It's not a fun party game like it looks, it requires focus to get shit done quickly and some of the levels are plain annoying or poorly designed.

I'd recommend kid friendly SNES games. Bomberman is easy to understand and you can carry them to wins while they throw bombs from the sidelines. Pocky and Rocky works pretty well. As others have said the cuter beat 'em ups work. I liked the Asterix arcade game since it was silly.
 

KeighnMcDeath

RPG Codex Boomer
Joined
Nov 23, 2016
Messages
12,859
After watching this video and remembering you don’t need the three “R”s to graduate high school in Oregon; I reconsider any gaming now:


Yeah, have them do yard work or teach them arts, crafts, and household chores. Read books. I had not realized children are now beyond retarded.
 

Viata

Arcane
Joined
Nov 11, 2014
Messages
9,885
Location
Water Play Catarinense
It's funny. I remember reading, many years ago, how the current generation would be the smartest one since they were growing up with all those advanced techs stuff. They probably forgotten that most people are used to walled garden tech like smartphone. Many kids today have no idea how file structure works in a computer because smartphone searches it for them, so when you see a kid on a computer, you may find that their desktop is full of files because otherwise they will not be able to find it. I remember someone saying something that I agree 100%: the smarter the phone is, the dumber the kid is.
 

goregasm

Scholar
Joined
Aug 19, 2016
Messages
135
I will say this with a caveat, my kids are rather limited in their screen time an hour or so a day after dinner/before bed, they are usually outdoors playing or out in nature learning something, they are allowed more on a weekend maybe or during really bad weather (it's been well below zero by me)

Picked up our oldest (5) a switch for xmas. I have been ruining his life in Mario Kart, but he's learning to persevere, learn from his mistakes and the tracks, he now finishes a distant second to me in 150cc races.

Also got him some mario "rpg" as well but he has just started his reading mastery so it's a bit difficult for him to pick up. He CAN read at 5, and I am very proud of that, literally reading them bedtime stories every night since they were born plays a part, yet it takes time for him to work out newer words and I can't imagine dialogue boxes are much fun at that age.

Hes also got a couple of pacman, and a couple of monster truck games as well.

He enjoys minecraft, which is okay with me, I'm a carpenter irl and I encourage the building aspect, he enjoys collecting the animals as pets. Kid stuff.

Outside of that on my PC I have let him play some racing games I enjoy, and he has sat in for some plays of Tactics Ogre, UnderRail, Baldurs gate, Kingmaker.

He then saw me playing something newer, prettier, might have been KCD or or something and his little mind was blown.

He just started learning about knights in school and has a very limited overview of some of that style of stuff and his interest in more rpg style things has grown, asking me questions about history etc, and last night asked me to help him with the mario "rpg" game, can't recall the name, has some rabbits or something in it made by ubisoft I think?

Unfortunately all of his friends are short term memory autistic children who literally turn off a mario kart game if they are losing. He hasn't been that way and is learning it takes effort to succeed, which is something I think (certain) games can be beneficial at teaching aspects of (dark souls etc)

So the battle continues.

Edit: I was just referring to videya gamezz. Outside of that we play everything from checkers to rat trap, memory game, to connect 4.
 
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3 others

Scholar
Joined
Aug 11, 2015
Messages
147
Has anyone tried Lost in Play? It's a recent non-verbal point-n-click game that seems promising although I'm not fond of the contemporary cartoon artstyle.

029528cb7e4784ba0905dfe870fa427088749fcdaae39cff10ebb2fe0f58bfdc.jpg
 

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