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!
You must log in or register to comment.
Heroes of might and magic 3, hot seat
This seems like a game I would enjoy on my own, but might be a bit to crunchy for my partner at this point.
Animal Crossing sorta has 2p mode. The second player can’t walk too far from the main player and has more limited gameplay options, but it can be fun to run around and fish together.
I didn’t know animal crossing had local coop, they mentioned being open to animal crossing specifically today, so maybe I’ll pick it up. I haven’t played an animal crossing game since the one on the DS, I could be down to be their player 2 on it.
Every player on the same switch plays on the same island. Only one player can actually play at a time, but another can join on a separate controller and act as a sort of sidekick that can fish and pick vegetables and such. My husband and I like to split of the gardening across the island then take turns helping each other with our respective sections.
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.
Video games: Lovers in a Dangerous Spacetime, Pizza Opossum, PlateUp!
Physical game: Crokinole
Seen lovers in a dangerous spacetime a few times here now, will definitely run it past them. Pizza possum also looks like it could fit us super well!
Crokinole looks interesting, looks like a little bit of a rabbit hole I will have to check out a bit later.
Thanks!
Secret of Mana (SNES)
As one of the consoles most famous titles, there’s a number of ways to play it.
It’ll help develop some of her hand-eye, but in a slower, calmer way she will probably be more than equal to. There’s also a lot of character development and plot, it is a jrpg-influenced game after all.
2 player co-op kicks in about an hour-ish into the game, if memory serves, once the second character enters the story.
I really like Secret of Mana. I think because I’ve already played through it would make it less of a good coop game for them, but if I can get them a little interested in playing on their own I think it would have potential as an early game for them.
Alternatively you can apply the Little Brother technique and just let them win more than they lose in whatever “competitive” game y’all are playing.
Just try to do it in a non-obvious way.
I don’t think they’d appreciate that, and if they found out I think it’d damage the possibility of gaming being a thing we do together at all.
why not the lotr mmo lord of the rings online?
Overcooked is only fun if everyone is terrible or everyone is great. It’s a great concept but definitely not going to work out for most groups.
For Mario kart, did you put on some bots? Without the NPCs, 2 player is lame, even if you are both quite good.
Have you played It Takes Two? This sounds like it hits your requirements.
For couch coop, I’d actually suggest Mario Deluxe over the very recent Mario Wonder if you wanted to try a side scroller. Wonder is great, but it’s couch coop is poorly implemented unless you are both good or both terrible as with overcooked. Deluxe doesn’t have that issue, in my opinion, due to the way the scrolling works in game. It might feel odd spending $60 on a 10 year old game from the WII U, but Nintendo originals always hold up well.
I think they struggled to even parse what was going on in overcooked, and need more experience playing games generally to be able to enjoy that kind of chaos because they just felt lost.
Alas, beating bots on Mario Kart means nothing to them.
That’s 2 fast recs for it takes two, so I think thats probably gonna be on the shortlist.
I think I have NSMBU on wii u in storage at my parent’s house. We’re visiting in for the holidays, so maybe we’ll hook up the wii u there and try that. I remember liking that game a lot.
Thanks!
I actually think that’s what they called Mario deluxe for the WII U. Definitely look into it before buying a 2nd copy of the same game like I did. I mean, I’ve 100%ed it a few times now but still I wish I knew it was the same.
In fact, it’s better on the Wii u. Player 2 can either play as a Luigi or play as god on the Wii pad. Putting down tiles and making the game dead easy.
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.
Visual novel types of games, maybe? Anything from Quantic Dream, Telltale
deleted by creator
deleted by creator
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.
Try Handshakes. It’s 100% free. https://store.steampowered.com/app/2171690/Handshakes/
Officially it has no coop mode but because the game just accepts input from all input devices, one person can control the right hand and the other the left hand. No time limit, infinite retries. It’s a short game but you that’s really not a problem with a price tag of free.
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!
The Trine series is pretty fun. It’s a 2.5d puzzle platformer game. There are some combat bits, but most of the game is puzzles. I’d recommend the second one.
I have Trine 2 in the depths of my unplayed steam library, so this is a great option!
Thanks!
A weird one if your SO is a fan of anime. Persona 5.
My SO loved playing with me since they had all the guides and stuff ready to min max the game while I did the heavy lifting. It’s a different type of 2 player game, like a Driver and Navigator while driving.
