this post was submitted on 08 Dec 2023
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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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[–] [email protected] 3 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (1 children)

Might be not as recent, but the Trine series might be worth a look. I would also recommend Magicka, but that can be chaotic at times so I am not sure if that would be a good fit or not.

Since they mentioned action games as an option, Vermintide 2 can be a super fun co-op game and is very enjoyable across the easiest and hardest difficulties. It’s Warhammer Fantasy so the aesthetic is gonna be more grimdark and gory than cute, but holy fucknuggets is the gameplay good. It’s basically horde shooter like Left 4 Dead and Payday, but with a huge focus on melee combat rather than shooting. It’s also an “easy to pick up, hard to master” game and very much enjoyable, so the lower difficulties might be less chaotic than the higher difficulties. The community is also generally pretty chill and nice, so if y’all ever play pubs you’ll usually get people who aren’t sweaty and tryharding in the game outside of very specifically the second-hardest difficulty called Legend. Killing rats on anything below the Champion difficulty can be a chill time, and on Champion or above, the game starts to really engage you with mechanics like dodging, pushblocking, cleave, stagger, boss kiting, and light/heavy attack weaving.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 8 months ago

Trine 2 got recommended by someone else specifically among the Trine games, and I have that and Magicka in my steam library, unplayed. So I think those might get a shot at some point.

Vermintide 2 is great! I've played quite a bit of it, but I don't think we're quite ready for that yet.

Thanks!

[–] [email protected] 3 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago)

I haven't seen either of these mentioned yet, so you might look into Ponpu, and Light Fingers on the Switch.

Ponpu might be a little much, but Light Fingers may be a decent-ish pace, as it goes for something of a digital tabletop-like game design. They tend to go on sale around the holidays, so if you wait a little while you may snag'em on the cheap.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 8 months ago (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 8 months ago (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Fair enough. There’s a ton of other good suggestions in this thread, I hope you both find something that you can enjoy together!

[–] [email protected] 2 points 8 months ago

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.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 8 months ago (3 children)

Wario Ware games on Switch, Nidhogg also.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 8 months ago
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[–] [email protected] 3 points 8 months ago

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.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (1 children)

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

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[–] [email protected] 3 points 8 months ago
[–] [email protected] 3 points 8 months ago

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.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 8 months ago

Sounds a bit like my partner, who doesn't like most action games. For a game you could play together, I think you could try a "creature collector" type game, like pokemon. There are actually a lot of creature collectors, pokemon is just the most popular, but there are cheap digital games on the switch store that are made by Pokemon fans and from what I can tell are better in a lot of ways.

You can also emulate all of the old console games for free, that's what my partner did for a bunch of Pokemon titles.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 8 months ago (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 8 months ago (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 8 months ago

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.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago)

My partner is no gamer, but when it comes to playing together, she enjoyed:

Pokemon: Lets Go Pikachu

Diablo 3

Kingdom Two Crowns

[–] [email protected] 2 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Visual novel types of games, maybe? Anything from Quantic Dream, Telltale

[–] [email protected] 2 points 8 months ago

I'm in an extremely similar relationship to OP it sounds like. Any time I've tried to play a VN style game hasn't been very successful. They always end up bored unless it's crazy engaging. 'What Remains of Edith Finch' comes to mind as one of the successful narrative focused games I found though.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 8 months ago (1 children)

My time at sand rock is kind of like stardew, but 3d and I liked it better. I haven't tried the multiplayer , but the single player was fun.

Baldur's gate 3 is a huge game of the year smash hit. Good coop. Turn based combat. Local split screen. Probably turn the difficulty down if you don't care for DND rules and just have fun.

Audio surf I believe has co-op. It's a fun little toy of a game, but not very deep. You steer a car over a track generated from your music

[–] [email protected] 2 points 8 months ago

I'll look into My time at sand rock, stardew didn't catch their interest when we were looking at trailers and such earlier tonight.

Love bg3, I think that could be in the cards maybe a game or two down the line!

Audiosurf is a blast from the past! That was one of the early games I played a lot of on steam, it might be a good low stakes option sometime.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 8 months ago

Haven by The Game Bakers

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