The Game Recommendation For Your Kids thread

pandasuit wrote:

The frame narrative seems to be about a sick relative and I don’t yet know how that ends so maybe some parental guidance needed there if that story gets too sad.

Spoiler:

The relative dies. It does become sad and heavy The second half of the game is about grief and processing grief.

I recommend Lost Words for adults, too; it's not strictly (or even intended to be?) a kids' game. It's basically a 2d narrative adventure, a la The Artful Escape.

Getting the boy (8) a Switch Lite for Christmas. He really wants Zelda. What does GWJ recommend?

If he likes Zelda games and wants more beyond Breath of the Wild and/or Link's Awakening, Cadence of Hyrule is great and has an easy mode and co-op. Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity should be a back pocket reserve game if he really gets into the BotW world. It's fun, but different type of game with BotW themes.

Here's some more that my kids have enjoyed:
Super Mario 3D World + Bowser's Fury (4 player Co-op)
Super Mario Odyssey
Super Mario Maker 2
Animal Crossing New Horizon
Pokemon Sword / Shield
Mario Kart 8 Deluxe
Kirby Star Allies (4 player Co-op)
Yoshi's Crafted World
Miitopia

I would recommend all of these, depending on what the kid is into.

Minecraft

garion333 wrote:

Minecraft

Or Terraria - preferred in our house as there's more substance

My 10yo daughter is enjoying Unpacking. No surprise since she loves re-arranging rooms is real life.

She also recently started Dorfromantic and likes it a lot. We play Carcassonne as a family so I expected Dorfromantic would be a hit.

Anyone been Chrimbo shopping for games for your kids and are excited for any of it?

Chrimbo?

Christmas shopping yes. But the games they're asking for are not of interest to me. Hearts of Iron IV & TABS for one, Last Kids on Earth, and what had the only chance of me caring, but not because it's portable Mario RPGs, with a couple Mario & Luigi games for the other. My kids know how to assert their individuality in their game choices. I just have no interest in any of those games.

EDIT: Seems Chrimbo is a British slang term for Christmas

The problem in our house is that we have an Xbox with Game Pass. Which is fantastic on a day-to-day basis, as my son has a dizzying array of titles he can try out. It's bad for Christmas and birthdays, because it's hard to get excited about a new game when you have hundreds at your fingertips already.

That said, we have bought a Quest 2 for Christmas. It's my son's present, and he will unwrap it, but it's really for the whole household. And yes, I'm jolly well looking forward to that.

Tasty Pudding wrote:

The problem in our house is that we have an Xbox with Game Pass. Which is fantastic on a day-to-day basis, as my son has a dizzying array of titles he can try out. It's bad for Christmas and birthdays, because it's hard to get excited about a new game when you have hundreds at your fingertips already.

That said, we have bought a Quest 2 for Christmas. It's my son's present, and he will unwrap it, but it's really for the whole household. And yes, I'm jolly well looking forward to that. :)

Same and same except we sorta let them open the Quest 2 early because reasons. Quest 2 is pretty great. Half Life Alyx is amazing.

pandasuit wrote:

Same and same except we sorta let them open the Quest 2 early because reasons.

I did that last year with the Series X! Got one on launch day and should have kept it under wraps until Christmas, but I was too excited didn't.

This time, with the Quest, the wife is making me wait until the 25th. :sadface:

So my son (almost 5) has gotten very very into video games lately, largely driven by an extended COVID-induced isolation period. He's quite good at managing a couple of games on the switch, but I'm struggling to find age appropriate games for him on his Android tablet.

I've tried a LOT of different games for him, but everything is either too easy and too "baby-ish", where he is totally disinterested, or too challenging where he is very into it but constantly needs grown up help - which kind of defeats the purpose of giving him tablet time so I can get some chores done.

Can anyone recommend some Android games that are simple and forgiving enough that a 5 year old can play on their own without help, but that might also keep his interest? He really likes action games - Mario Run was a hit, so other simple brawlers/platformers would be a hit. Thanks!

Have you done educational ones? My son basically taught himself to read via tablet games.

Teach your Monster to Read has been his favorite. Duck Duck Moose is also fun.

Assuming the free to play version isn't too gratuitous, how about Plants vs Zombies (the first game). My daughter played that a ton. Different genre though.

Not sure about Android, but on iOS my 5 year old daughter likes lately:

Plants vs Zombies
PBS Kids app has a lot of free games she plays
Townscraper
MathTango
Toca Life World (LOTS of DLC though...)
Epic books (not a game, but she likes the books and it reads some to you)
Endless Reader

I second any and all of the Toca games for small kids, Great franchise.

Pocket City is a nice sim city clone built for the phones. They're working on a 2nd one, but I remember enjoying the first and it wasn't annoying about F2P stuff. Come to think of it, I cannot recall how it was monetized. Maybe a 1-time purchase to unlock bigger features.

LeapingGnome wrote:

Not sure about Android, but on iOS my 5 year old daughter likes lately:

Plants vs Zombies
PBS Kids app has a lot of free games she plays
Townscraper
MathTango
Toca Life World (LOTS of DLC though...)
Epic books (not a game, but she likes the books and it reads some to you)
Endless Reader

I'll second PBS Kids, I'd imagine half of more of all tablet time the last 2 months has been that for our 5 year old.

So it seems that if you are looking for a 4-player couch co-op game, The Last Kids on Earth and the Staff of Doom is a decent offering. I played a small bit of the game (30-45 mins) after my son got it, and if you liked any of the Gauntlet games and such, give it a look.

mrtomaytohead wrote:

Pocket City is a nice sim city clone built for the phones. They're working on a 2nd one, but I remember enjoying the first and it wasn't annoying about F2P stuff. Come to think of it, I cannot recall how it was monetized. Maybe a 1-time purchase to unlock bigger features.

Pocket City is a pretty good SimCity clone. Easy enough for kids to play, and has a sandbox mode, too. Indeed, it has a 1-time purchase, which is great.

Riverbond is free on Epic this week and is highly recommended (by me!) as a kid-friendly ARPG with couch co-op and a wonderful voxel aesthetic.

https://store.epicgames.com/en-US/p/...

Hey folks.. need a new game rec. Looking for something co-op to play with my 11 year old.

We've played through recently - Two of Us, Minecraft Dungeons. He's a fairly advanced gamer, so looking for something both of us can enjoy. I wondered about Diablo 3, or something along those lines.

Obviously we've played a ton of Minecraft as well

We have 2 PC's, XSX and PS5.

It Takes Two is good and on Xbox Gamepass. It does deal with the possibility of divorce, although I assume the mommy and daddy are going to reconnect thanks to this adventure and end up staying together. I've been playing the game with my daughter, who was 12 years old when we started. The game is a very good-looking and modern 3D platformer with problem solving.

There's also a million Lego games out there; I've played Lego Marvel and the first Lego Harry Potter games with my daughter. These games can get a bit frustrating when it's not obvious what it requires for you to do to advance, which is nearly always, but my daughter seems to enjoy them anyway.

Full Metal Furies if you want a more involved brawler than Castle Crashers with a brain bending puzzle that gates the end, but can be worked on from the very beginning. My wife and I loved this game, and the need to work together in combat as some enemies will put up shields you have to attack with a specific character, and think through the puzzle solutions (we eventually looked some up). The game also scales with more players by not just adding more health or enemies on screen, but changing the enemy mix. You only haven't heard more because it was a marketing failure so much that it has been the subject of some articles with the devs admitting they did that part wrong.

Archvale was fun with my 7 year old - even if we played on easy.

Deep Rock Galactic might be a good shout. Or the Halo games, if you want something less open-ended.

Unravel 2 is a good cooperative platformer.

Haven't played it myself, but BiPed was positively talked about last year.

I have played it single-player, and am sure that TMNT: Shredder's Revenge would be a blast in co-op!

AUs_TBirD wrote:

I have played it single-player, and am sure that TMNT: Shredder's Revenge would be a blast in co-op!

TMNT is indeed fun co-op. Not as well tuned for different numbers of players as Full Metal Furies, but still great fun, and I've heard it is best suited for 2-3 players, but supports up to 6 on a single system (except PS4/5).

Maybe not quite what you are after, but my daughter and I have been playing a … lot … of Stardew Valley co-op over the last few months. It’s been great fun working together on common goals, or splitting the jobs when we like different things (she likes fishing, I prefer mining).

My kids have been having fun with Fossil Hunters lately. I got it in one of the itch.io bundles. It has 4-player couch co-op. It's also on sale right now for $5.99 until Sept. 14th.

Fedaykin98 wrote:

It Takes Two is good and on Xbox Gamepass. It does deal with the possibility of divorce, although I assume the mommy and daddy are going to reconnect thanks to this adventure and end up staying together. I've been playing the game with my daughter, who was 12 years old when we started. The game is a very good-looking and modern 3D platformer with problem solving.

There's also a million Lego games out there; I've played Lego Marvel and the first Lego Harry Potter games with my daughter. These games can get a bit frustrating when it's not obvious what it requires for you to do to advance, which is nearly always, but my daughter seems to enjoy them anyway.

I said we played Two of Us, what I meant to say was we played It Takes Two lol. We've tried a few Lego games and neither of us can really get into them.