Shattered Pixel Dungeon. rouge likes are tough as all fuck, but there’s something about the level of detail in this game, and the way I get to build characters that I find very relaxing
I played Minecraft with my gf before but she didn’t really enjoy it. The only game I’ve seen her play a lot of is Civ 6.
This time on Minecraft I started a server with some friends and she’s having a blast. She made a cute little house and she has built a “girl-cave” where she and her friend shares cake. It’s so wholesome.
In case you she’s new you could probably play a LAN world on peaceful. That’s what I did back when I started.
It was never released where I live, but I love using Duckstation (psx/1) to play Vib-Ribbon since I don’t have a modded ps1/2.
I absolutely love emulation. It’s a great way for anyone to play their favorite retro games or titles they’ve never played without shilling out hundreds if not thousands because of resellers that probably live in their mom’s basement and weigh 6000 pounds.
As someone who still does LAN weekends with a few friends a couple of times a year, this is a hard one especially if you have 6+ players, however here are my suggestions.
Supreme Commander using the FAF Client - huge scale RTS with up to 16 people in a single map (8v8).
Left4Dead Versus - 8 people go 4v4 so two teams in your case. Dedicated server recommend.
Unreal Tournament 2005/3 - lots of games modes and supports a lot of people but you may need a dedicated server.
Gary’s Mod PropHunt, Bomberman etc - Great sandbox game - can be a bit junky to setup up but excellent if you get it right
Blur - racing game which may be hard to find as it is not being sold anywhere but an excellent multiplayer one
Factorio - way slower pace than any games mentioned, but if you play Deathworld is an adrenaline rush and fun coop. Up to 500 people so 15-16 people is no sweat. Also good for long term goals for continuing play.
Human Fall Flat - funny physics puzzle game up to 4 people. Great for competition as you can make it 4 teams of 4 and have a leaderboard.
Planetside 2 - FPSMMO - epic battles and still very active
That’s a lot of typing already - let me know if you want more suggestions - happy gaming
Seconded. Nice and chill, with just a touch of coming-of-age parents-aren’t-invincible melancholy.
Using A Short Hike as a jumping off point and following the growing-pains and melancholy threads while maintaining the explore-and-talk aspects, I’d like to recommend Night in the Woods.
A Hat in Time is a somewhat easy platformer IMO. It’s super cute and a low-stress game.
If the only reason that you’re avoiding action games is that she may not be good at the controls, you can consider action games that have good low difficulty modes. Deep Rock Galactic has good lower difficulty modes in my opinion, and it is fun to play with others.
IIRC Dusk has a really slow paced low difficulty mode as well. Projectile based attacks move super slow. I’m not sure what she’ll be into as far as genre goes, but action games may be approachable if you pick the right ones.
My partner wasn’t into video games, but I got her into them. One she was really into is stardew valley. It’s really chill and low stakes. Might be a good one to try.
I’m really surprised I haven’t seen them mentioned here (and apologies if someone did suggest it and I missed it!).
The Monkey Island games. Super simple controls, as most of it is point and click. Not expensive to get into, so no big loss if it ends up not being her thing. They are silly and clever, and reward the player for being silly and clever. They are puzzle games that require some attention to detail and curiosity to solve, but there isn’t any “fail” condition. You just don’t progress if you can’t solve the puzzle. It doesn’t assume any prior game knowledge or habits; a lot of games will expect the player to be familiar with certain controls or tropes commonly used in games, but Monkey Island is more similar to a “choose your own adventure” style story.
If it’s at an Internet cafe where everyone is in attendance, I seriously strongly suggest “The Ship”. In my experience, probably the ultimate LAN game. Screen peeking allowed but not encouraged.
The game is effectively a game of assassin—but you have to upkeep your player’s needs (food/water/shower/bathroom/sleep). Your character needing to take a shit is stressful—very often you begin the process only to have your murderer pop open the door with a fire axe.
It used to have a “viral” gift copy thing on Steam where 1 purchased copy generated 2 gift copies and those copies generated 1 copy each. So in theory, you could only require 3 copies for 15 of you if that’s still active.
Deep Rock Galactic. Lots of fun, easy to adjust difficulty, plays on lower-end machines. 1-4 person teams (the levels scale with team size).
I also hear 100% Orange Juice is really fun with friends and approachable for non-gamers, but I’ve only played single player, and the computer players cheat. I can’t say for certain if this is a good choice or not.
Deep rock galactic looks like a lot of fun but I’m hesitant about the small team sizes. With 4 player teams we would have to have 4 parallel games going at the same time.
With a set of mods natively supported by the game through mod.io, you can get as many as 8 people in a spacerig (lobby) without the game crashing, and in theory up to 16 if they join after the drop pod has landed. I’d recommend the following set of mods if you go that route:
Downside of this method is you have to log into mod.io through your Steam account, and I’d personally be too paranoid to do that at an internet cafe, but it would get y’all down to 1-2 parallel games. In addition, if you turn up swarm sizes, the game basically becomes Starship Troopers: Space Dwarf Edition.
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