If you’re open to the idea of ditching a Microsoft product, I’d suggest Vintage Story as a Minecraft alternative that I think has a nicer aesthetic. It’s meant to be a sort of slow, “grindy” game, but if you sort of rewire your thinking to it being a slice of life game, akin to Stardew, I think it’s very fun. Fair warning the early game can be very punishing if you’re brand new to it, so explore the world and difficulty setting when you make your first save.
Somewhat cozy game with a femme lead I’m excited for is Cairn. It’s got a demo at the moment, but I’m very much looking forward to the full game. It’s technically a survival game about rock climbing, but if I had to guess the story will center the main character going through a lot of personal growth while attempting to scale a mountain (a la Celeste, also a great game) and overcoming a lot of adversity to regain some self confidence.
I'm currently playing Research Story, that one is pretty cute. There are romances. I don't know about combat since I haven't gotten that far (just a few hours of play); it doesn't really seem like there will be combat, but there could be.
I'd also recommend Apico, Mudborne, Littlewood, or Fields of Mistria. I'm sure I'm missing a ton. I think Steam has "Cute," "Romance," and "Slice of Life" tags if you wanted to browse those on the storefront.
I’m a fan of taking turns “driving” for slower paced logic or puzzle games. Titles that come to mind:
Myst
Curse of the Golden Idol
Summertime Madness
Chants of Sennar
Superliminal
Viewfinder
Baba is You
I can highly recommend all of these as they almost universally benefit from more minds working on them together. I would say Baba is the only one that gets REALLY challenging, but there are good mind and logic bending puzzles throughout them all!
EDIT: I’ll also add that Myst, Golden Idol, and Chants of Sennar (Summertime Madness maybe a little) all benefit from solid note taking and map making This provides a great job for the “copilot” while the other person is managing the actual input device.
My girlfriend and I do the same but with more simplistic story heavy games. We just finished Slay The Princess and it was an amazing experience like this.
Wandersong! You play as a Bard who has to save the world through music and singing. Minimal combat and absolutely wonderful storyline that will make you cry tears of joy.
A bit of a wilder rec would be Cassette Beasts, which is basically Pokémon but better and has really nice optional romances. Very combat focused tho.
Haha hell yeah. The OST for cassette beasts is an all timer. The devs behind Wandersong also just released a monster catching game called Beastball if you want some more indie pokemon fix. Haven’t tried it yet but I heard great things.
This was a really awesome read. I appreciate the work you do. This brings me back to some of the older days when k actually enjoyed checking out game journalism. Do let me know if there’s something I could do to support your work :)
If you’re interested, I’m also in a fun Revolt server, where you can find me lurking most days too (if you wanna join Linux, FOSS, gaming chats and the like!!!)
Keep talking and nobody explodes could be a fun one, only needs 1 device and the other player needs the manual which can be on a phone or printed out. You could even play it over a phone call.
As I recall, the ‘campaign’ gets impossible to do with two players because of the inability to look up enough stuff in parallel. There are mods and custom bombs though.
Might do but you can always go until you find it too hard and then go back to one that you like, or use custom to set a difficulty that you like.
Also tried playing it with extra people before, so far just 3, 1 with the bomb and 2 with manuals. But playing with a few more could also be fun, maybe even set them up with a phone each and stick each team in a different room.
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