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!
I have been recommending Farm Together as a co-op game a lot lately because it is so damn simple but so good. The controls are immediately accessible, the game doesn’t give a flying fuck about stressing you out but at the same time there are a lot of systems to discover (making money isn’t trivial in this game) and the crops take realtime to grow so it naturally sets up a simple ritual with your co-op partner to play. There is not really any story to get into, but at the same time this makes it a bit more accessible to someone who isn’t already invested in video games since the gameplay loop is so immediate and unframed by any cutscenes, story setup, long tutorials or forced activities. You pick it up and start playing immediately, you decide completely how to interface with the game whether it be crunching out the numbers to figure out which crop, fish etc… to go for to maximize money, just zoning out watering, planting and harvesting or spending all your time placing cosmetic buildings and props to make your farm look cool. Want to take a break and just watch your partner play? Sure! Walk away for a half an hour if you want, you will probably have a bunch of crops waiting for you to harvest once you come back. The game really doesn’t have an opinion on how you should play it and it is great.
(It looks like a game like farmville, but there is zero manipulative microtransaction crap, just buy the game and play)
If you want more story and thematic framing, you absolutely have to try Stardew Valley, it is a co-op classic for a reason.
Also if you liked the idea of Overcooked but found it too focused on stressful energy that isn’t necessarily fun for everyone than check out PlateUp! YOU design the kitchen in plateup and add various components to it as you progress. It puts a lot more agency in the players hands instead of throwing players through a chaotic theme park ride that overcooked feels like in the harder levels. It also brings strategizing about kitchen design with your co-op partner into the gameplay loop which is great fun. You can also automate some stuff, so players can dig into that if they want to avoid feeling like the game is so focused on stressful action.