My partner and I occasionally play games together, but they pretty much only play word puzzle games on their own. I’m not very good at word games though, and they don’t have very good spatial skills, so we frequently find ourselves mismatched. We have a switch and a single decent gaming pc, and a pretty old laptop.
The biggest hit for us has been Baba is You because it is slow paced, and combines words and logic and spatial reasoning. Our biggest problem was that its not actually coop, so we would just alternate who played, which can disengage the other person. My partner also thought its aesthetic is cute.
Our next positive example is probably Snipperclips is also a pretty slow paced puzzler, is mostly spatial skills, but we could play at the same time. They also liked how interactive the avatars are, and particularly snipping my avatar up.
The first miss is overcooked, it was a bit too chaotic, and my partner felt a little lost and uncoordinated. They don’t remember it super well, so we might retry this one at some point if they feel more at home playing video games.
The other miss is Mario Kart, which they liked when we played with 4 player, but not just the 2 of us. I’m significantly better at Mario Kart, and they are pretty competitive. If they get more into games they might be willing to put in some time improving, but not so much right now.
Our worst miss was probably Tricky Towers, I’m decently good at regular Tetris, so I can do okay out of the box at physics based Tetris, but there was too much happening to fast for my partner. Combine that with it the competitive aspect and they didn’t enjoy this one at all.
The games they most fondly remember from childhood are Dance Dance Revolution and Guitar Hero, though we have downstairs neighbors under part of our apartment and no dance pad or guitars, SSX Tricky, and the Lord of the Rings movie tie in games.
They think they’d enjoy a game that does movement as input like ddr or guitar hero but is maybe less bouncy, and are open to action games, or games with a story, but they should be easier to control and not be too chaotic. Cute aesthetics and cats are a plus.
Thanks!
Edit: Everybody gave great recommendations! We picked up It takes two and pizza possum. Just finished the first chapter of it takes two and we had a blast, and I might even be able to get another game night in this weekend if we can be on top of chores. I’ll keep checking in this thread for more ideas for future games to try! Thanks again!
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Stardew valley
My partner didn’t “do” video games growing up. Till Stardew.
This is the way.
I think they have to get to the point where they mightbplay a video game on their own before stardew valley would land for them. They weren’t particularly inspired by the trailers.
It’s $15. Buy it, start a co-op game on the switch and hand them a controller.
Trust me.
This didn’t really work for us to be honest. It went a little better than most games, but it was too easy to get separated and do your own thing and it just didn’t really feel like we were playing together. Could be a strength, but I don’t think it’s ideal if your partner doesn’t really like video games haha.
Late to the thread, and you already have loads of suggestions, but Portal and Portal2 may help your partner with their spatial issues. I’ve heard that those are the games to use to introduce someone who doesn’t play videogames in general, but specifically FPS, to the media and basic controls that most of us gamers take for granted.
NOPE. This might work for some people but my partner couldn’t handle it :/. When walking around in 3D and paying attention is hard portals are just too hard when thrown into the mix. I would kill to be able to play Portal 2 coop, but alas :C. Maybe Portal 2 would be better to start on, they do a better job of introducing some concepts and the story is harder to completely ignore lol.
Yes! A very fun game to play as a couple! I liked how it was more graphically interesting than a lot of other puzzle games, and dialog is fantastic.
A lot of people have mentioned It takes Two, which really is great and you get to try many different mechanics.
You can also check out Fling or Keywe on steam. Only 2 players max (as compared to 4 players on Overcooked or Plate Up), but less complicated controls. Bread & Fred is another I’ve been meaning to check out too.
Unrailed has simple controls but more objectives to accomplish, and Out Of Space is similar to Overcooked but not in a cooking setting.
Edit: Didn’t realise I used a shortened name. Fling refers to ‘Fling to the Finish’
I’ve played it takes two with my partner and kinda got a little complicated around and after the first boss, definitely gonna give KeyWe a shot! Work our way up to it takes two again
My partner and I like to play the Lego games together. Lego Star Wars (2005ish) was a favorite, but the newer ones are fun too.
I could probably sell them on lego lotr, adding this one to the list!
Thanks!
Cool. Actually, if you remember, could let me know how that goes? (provided that you in fact try it.) I haven’t tried that one.
Since some have already been mentioned
Death Squared - nice puzzle game
Mario Party
Mario deluxe u
Plate up! - overcooked on crack.
Baldurs gate 3 on ez mode
Death Squared is really nice. I may have a spare key somewhere
It Takes Two is probably the best jumping off point (as you’ve already been informed). It has enough variety that you can discuss what parts they liked and maybe find the games in that kind of genre.
My partner isn’t big on games, but loves The Binding of Isaac for coop. The latest DLC adds a better coop mode, but the original coop mode with coop babies works well too (and there’s advantages like them being able to fly so they don’t need to worry about floor hazards). I think the fact that they grew up in a catholic household but aren’t religious helped them get into it lol.
As an outside the box option, have you thought about a single player turn based RPG as an option?something like Persona 5 for instance would have a good story, cute cat, and you could trade off on the battles while your partner would have input on the story beats and battle selections. I know it’s not 2-player really, but it might give you both a chance to steer the narrative and the choices together and you wouldn’t need to worry about them being overwhelm with complicated actions and inputs.
I think there are a lot of jrpgs they’d enjoy, if they became interested in gaming on their own. As is if they aren’t in control they disengage pretty fast, and they aren’t interested enough yet to want to play a single player thing I don’t think.
Fair enough. There’s a ton of other good suggestions in this thread, I hope you both find something that you can enjoy together!
Thanks! I appreciate the rec even if I don’tthink it fits us right now!
Yeah, I’ve added like 10 games to my steam wishlist with the intent to run 'em by them tonight, might do a once over before though, as I don’t want to overwhelm them.
My wife and I really enjoyed playing The Quarry together. It’s one of those games where it is more of a movie with decisions so I would do all of the controls and she would do the decisions.
May be hit or miss but Moving Out (1 or 2) is a lot of fun. You spend most of your time failing to do anything and just laughing about how goofy it is.
I could see how this might fall into the same pitfalls as overcooked, but it looks fun. I’ll add this to the proposal list!
Thanks!
Wario Ware games on Switch, Nidhogg also.
NIDHOGG!!!
I dunno that nidhogg would be a good game for us together, but it looks up my alley to play solo sometime.
Thanks!
It’s super silly fun, and shouldn’t be so expensive. I have it on PC and it’s playable on pretty much everything.
In terms of coop games with cats in them: Aqua Kitty is an option. More of an underwater action game, could be too fast paced.
If you ever return to Overcooked, some versions of the game have a Practice Mode you can go into. You can’t progress levels with this, but you can serve out dishes at your own pace, which feels nicer.
An old top-down shooter I enjoy is Assault Android Cactus. Players can revive themselves if they die, the only cost being that dying makes it hard to keep up a certain rate of kills needed to clear the level without the Battery draining out.
At a long stretch, there are visual novels like Pizza Game that are much more fun with your own voice acting applied, largely due to the horrendous stupidity of the whole cast.
Still play SSX Tricky with my family via an emulator
What’s your favorite thing about that game? I still know one of the people who created it
We’re competative I suppose. Grew up playing and nothing ever replaced it. There’s probably other arcade games we’d enjoy but the closest we’ve come was the Tetris Effect - but we haven’t picked that up again for a while. Tricky is one of those games that has a huge skill difference between being good and actually practicing. It’s fun, a bit janky - maybe it’s just what we know. My brother has a couple high scores on my steam deck and writing this has inspired me to go spend some time trying to beat them lol
Glad you are enjoying it. Any advice on getting it up and running on a steam deck? Just got one a few months ago and havent looked into emulation yet but intended to, life just got in the way and havent gone back to it yet. Maybe you can inspire me to get my some old tony hawk games running. Loved the ps era skater games
Yeah, there’s something called Emudeck, it makes setup super easy. Even comes with tools to add emulated games into your steam library to launch like a regular game.
There is this one funky caveat - the PlayStation and Switch games I emulate didn’t run very well, after some research I found out that lowering the CPU cores helps a ton. And it did, they run great for me now. To do that I had to install a Deck extension called Powertools - super easy to do because Emudeck came with a user interface to install plugins, Powertools included. Anyway, with Powertools you turn off this thing called SMT and then can lower the CPU cores. Some people think it’s actually a bug in emulation or Steam Deck drivers because using less cores shouldn’t have a big impact on performance so it may not be necessary in the future.
Tons of video examples on YouTube make the install and setup super easy. Highly reccomend setting emulation up, I’ve been playing through games I never finished as a kid and it’s been great. The convenience makes it awesome
Can you thank them for defining a huge part of my childhood playtime? My siblings and I bonded over that game. We still quote voicelines from it.
Can do Choss
Super Smash Bros. Ultimate is a must have imo. Me and my girl play it almost on the daily. Great competitive experience.
I think this is gonna have the same problem as mario kart, so I probably need to wait until they have some more game experience. Last year when I had my last smash phase they enjoyed the music being on in the background though.
I play a lot of games with my 10yr old daughter. Here are some of what we liked:
-Any lego game(there are sooo many and they often go on sale)
-trine series, much more puzzley
-sackboy a big adventure
-brothers a tale of two sons
-it takes two
-portal 2
-degrees of separation
-putty pals
-ibb and obb
-toodee and topdee
-bleep bloop
-battle block theater
-chariot
-pikunuku
We also loved going through the monkey island games. They are not mumtiplayer but they are slow point and click games that we bounced ideas off one another.
