These aren’t exactly exploration games, but they’re simple games that my toddler likes too:
Animal Crossing is easily her favorite. She loves “helping” my wife pick outfits and fish.
A Building Full of Cats is short, cheap, and cute. She likes making up stories about each apartment and cat. There’s also tons of similar games in different locations.
Cats in Time has simple puzzles that she can do with a bit of help.
Slime Rancher might be a good fit. It’s simple and cute with a focus on exploration.
Dorf Romantik is a relaxing and cute game that’s a good introduction to resource management. She might not be good at the actual goal of the game, but she likes placing tiles.
Subnautica in creative mode might be interesting for exploration, depending on how sensitive your kid is about some of the darker areas and creatures.
The Peppa Pig game is surprisingly open. If you just walk off screen it lets you keep going and you end up in new locations. Hop on the bus and end up in another location. There aren’t many blocks to stop you from going where you feel like going and there’s a variety of activities at each location.
Chiming in as a parent. My kids are MOST social when playing video games. They hop online with their friends and they chat and laugh and bullshit with each other.
The case against video games was created by people who think staring at the TV until they fall asleep is a good night.
I’d just throw out that my recollection is that it was really more of a mid-to-late 2000’s thing for the oversaturation of WW2 games, if you’re willing to move your window forward a bit. That and there weren’t nearly as many games being released at that time period, so it didn’t take much to saturate the market; there were roughly 1/50th the number of releases in 2008 as today (www.statista.com/…/number-games-released-steam/ using steam releases as a rough approximation of total).
In terms of specific games, I don’t have any that aren’t already mentioned elsewhere. The Battlefield, Band of Brothers, and Call of Duty recurring releases are really the big ones. …wikipedia.org/…/List_of_World_War_II_video_games has a good list if you want to browse more.
Did Sony announce a PS5 Pro? I think its just a rumor at this time. And even if so, we don’t know what the system can do, what restrictions or problems it could have and what it will cost. We don’t know if the console will be available without a problem. We don’t know when the thing comes out either, if ever. It’s incredible hard to know if its worth waiting, if we don’t know anything.
And second, if you really need a console right now, then buy one. My thumb of rule is, if you can wait, then wait. So this is ultimately your decision.
Iconoclasts - really nicely made metroidvania with pixel graphics
Tametsi - a collection of handmade Minesweeper puzzles with additional twists and mechanics. Extremely cheap on Steam
Gunfire Reborn - roguelite FPS with Borderland-ish graphics, decently made 4 man co-op (unlike Risk of Rain 2, you can actually revive teammates that got knocked down immediately) and a lot of difficulty scaling. Notably, still gets new content, both free and paid DLCs (those add new classes and some new weapons)
Edited to add another: Opus Magnum - an automation/optimization puzzle game with alchemy theme. Supports user-created puzzles through Steam Workshop
Tametsi just barely eked out being my most played game of 2023 over, duh duh duh!! Elden Ring. Yes, it took me longer to finish a $1 Minesweeper clone than to finish a massive Fromsoft Soulslike. Haha!
Cloudpunk - A cyberpunk driving/walking simulator with a good story, great voice acting, LEGO-inspired graphics, and a Blade Runner inspired soundtrack. It’s dripping with atmosphere and I wish I could play it again for the first time.
Plate up : a rogue like kitchen survival game can also be multiplayer , survive as many days as you can getting more customers but also more kitchen gadgets
Back back hero: rogue like dungeon delve with pack management and new story mode where you rebuild a town .
Both are surprisingly addictive and consume my dreams
A Robot Named Fight - “Metroidvania roguelike focused on exploration and item collection. Explore a different, procedurally-generated labyrinth each time you play and discover randomized power-ups to traverse obstacles, find secrets and explode meat beasts.” Links: Steam - Website (It is also available on Switch, link on website)
I have almost 500 hours of playtime and still go back to it every now and then. Really awesome game with superb music, graphics and feel.
What’s extra cool is that the lone developer open-sourced the game code, available here: OpenARNF on GitHubSadly I’ve yet to see any mods, spinoffs or anything else come from it.
Not just that but the combat is boring as shit and brings “repetition” to levels I’ve never seen before. The only attraction to this game is that they actually got James Woods.
I kinda liked the Disney crossover thing but nomura just couldn’t stick to the concept and had to dive deep in his own ass and sideline disney in favor of his own convoluted roster of charcaters
Any of the Paper Mario or Super Mario RPG games. Maybe I’m not the target audience, but I’ve often felt that without the Mario name they would be considered mediocre.
Alongside this, basically every 3D Sonic game. I feel that Sonic has become a thing for furries, and that the 3D games just don’t really seem to get what a Sonic game should be. Frontiers was somewhat decent in the open world aspect, but its constant reliance on the homing dash just highlights how buggy those games are.
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