Recommend a game for me to play with my partner

Glemek@lemmy.world to Games@lemmy.world – 137 points –

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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Lovers in a Dangerous Spacetime - coop, a bit actiony but less chaotic than Overcooked. Beautiful and cute artstyle.

Fantastic game, my family has been playing it for years on Switch, starting from when my kids were uselessly young, to now that they are pretty good gamers and it has always been fun. One of the few games my wife plays with everyone.

I think this is one we'll check out. I bounced off it a few years ago, but I think that was because I played it in a party where I was more interested in just hanging out and catching up with the other players.

Stardew valley

My partner didn't "do" video games growing up. Till Stardew.

This is the way.

I think they have to get to the point where they mightbplay a video game on their own before stardew valley would land for them. They weren't particularly inspired by the trailers.

It's $15. Buy it, start a co-op game on the switch and hand them a controller.

Trust me.

This didn’t really work for us to be honest. It went a little better than most games, but it was too easy to get separated and do your own thing and it just didn’t really feel like we were playing together. Could be a strength, but I don’t think it’s ideal if your partner doesn’t really like video games haha.

The Trine series is pretty fun. It's a 2.5d puzzle platformer game. There are some combat bits, but most of the game is puzzles. I'd recommend the second one.

I have Trine 2 in the depths of my unplayed steam library, so this is a great option!

Thanks!

My partner and I like to play the Lego games together. Lego Star Wars (2005ish) was a favorite, but the newer ones are fun too.

I could probably sell them on lego lotr, adding this one to the list!

Thanks!

Cool. Actually, if you remember, could let me know how that goes? (provided that you in fact try it.) I haven't tried that one.

Lego Harry Potter on Switch is what my wife and I did and she liked it. She is not a gamer.

Weirdly enough she also liked Mario Golf on switch.

I second the Lego games. Although the older ones (Complete Saga) & Lego Indiana Jones were annoying to play COOP because there's no split screen.

But Lego Star Wars Clonewars has split screen so you don't get in the way of each other. I haven't actually played other newer Lego games but I assume they will have split screen as well.

In our world, the lack of split screen was a feature. It was less co-op as in play together, and more like play as a team. We enjoy fighting about meaningless stuff like whether to collect studs or whether to hurry along. I'd imagine if I tried playing with a sibling, there would be blood.

For me I just found it annoying that whenever we wanted to go in different directions one player would end up getting dragged back by the camera border. So many failed jumps...

But that's fair, if someone thinks that being able to get in the way of each other and being forced to cooperate better due to it adds to their enjoyment of the game then playing the games without split screen could be preferable.

I just never considered that possibility.

A lot of people have mentioned It takes Two, which really is great and you get to try many different mechanics.

You can also check out Fling or Keywe on steam. Only 2 players max (as compared to 4 players on Overcooked or Plate Up), but less complicated controls. Bread & Fred is another I've been meaning to check out too.

Unrailed has simple controls but more objectives to accomplish, and Out Of Space is similar to Overcooked but not in a cooking setting.

Edit: Didn't realise I used a shortened name. Fling refers to 'Fling to the Finish'

I've played it takes two with my partner and kinda got a little complicated around and after the first boss, definitely gonna give KeyWe a shot! Work our way up to it takes two again

Late to the thread, and you already have loads of suggestions, but Portal and Portal2 may help your partner with their spatial issues. I've heard that those are the games to use to introduce someone who doesn't play videogames in general, but specifically FPS, to the media and basic controls that most of us gamers take for granted.

NOPE. This might work for some people but my partner couldn’t handle it :/. When walking around in 3D and paying attention is hard portals are just too hard when thrown into the mix. I would kill to be able to play Portal 2 coop, but alas :C. Maybe Portal 2 would be better to start on, they do a better job of introducing some concepts and the story is harder to completely ignore lol.

Yes! A very fun game to play as a couple! I liked how it was more graphically interesting than a lot of other puzzle games, and dialog is fantastic.

Divinity: Original Sin 1 and 2. It's not on the switch, but I'm guessing it should run fine on your old laptop since D:OS1 came out in 2014. My wife and I love these games since she isn't very good with fast action, and these are turn based fighting so she can take her time figuring out what to do to whom.

It's also got great couch co-op.

Yep, my partner also did not enjoy the "misses" on his list, but we had a blast playing divinity original sins 1 & 2. Now we are 100 hours into Baldurs gate 3. I highly recommend these games for couples.

Surprisingly, though, while more fast paced, she did also really enjoy It Takes Two. It is a game that does try to be a bit accessible for the new player.

I love dos2 and bg3, if we can work up to those I would count that as a huge success

Overcooked is only fun if everyone is terrible or everyone is great. It's a great concept but definitely not going to work out for most groups.

For Mario kart, did you put on some bots? Without the NPCs, 2 player is lame, even if you are both quite good.

Have you played It Takes Two? This sounds like it hits your requirements.

For couch coop, I'd actually suggest Mario Deluxe over the very recent Mario Wonder if you wanted to try a side scroller. Wonder is great, but it's couch coop is poorly implemented unless you are both good or both terrible as with overcooked. Deluxe doesn't have that issue, in my opinion, due to the way the scrolling works in game. It might feel odd spending $60 on a 10 year old game from the WII U, but Nintendo originals always hold up well.

I think they struggled to even parse what was going on in overcooked, and need more experience playing games generally to be able to enjoy that kind of chaos because they just felt lost.

Alas, beating bots on Mario Kart means nothing to them.

That's 2 fast recs for it takes two, so I think thats probably gonna be on the shortlist.

I think I have NSMBU on wii u in storage at my parent's house. We're visiting in for the holidays, so maybe we'll hook up the wii u there and try that. I remember liking that game a lot.

Thanks!

I actually think that's what they called Mario deluxe for the WII U. Definitely look into it before buying a 2nd copy of the same game like I did. I mean, I've 100%ed it a few times now but still I wish I knew it was the same.

In fact, it's better on the Wii u. Player 2 can either play as a Luigi or play as god on the Wii pad. Putting down tiles and making the game dead easy.

Portal 2 has a coop mode which I hear is great. I adore portal 1 and 2, but never got a chance to try coop.

I liked the portal games a lot, but they might be abit too spatial heavy for my partner, so I'm a little worried they'd disengage.

Thanks!

My wife is not very spatial, but enjoyed playing coop Portal 2, for a little bit. Once we got to the stage where I was just telling her where to go or stand the entire time we stopped playing together.

That's about what I would expect would happen with us too. Its already in my steam library tho, so we may try it.

My partner had a hard time dealing with FPS movement. Throwing in portals just made it a complete mess. It really wasn’t a good jumping off point, I think it’s good to be weary.

We Were Here and its sequels seem like the perfect slowish paced coop puzzle games for you guys.

Operation Tango and Escape Simulator are similar and also great.

A Way Out is similar to It Takes Two, with a more serious story.

Monster Prom/Monster Camp and The Yahwg are co-op visual novels.

Clandestine is a Co-op stealth game where one player plays as a spy, fps style, while the other plays as a hacker providing overwatch by controlling cameras and doors, giving directions, etc.

Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes is another asymmetrical co-op game where one person is trying to defuse a bomb by solving puzzles and the other is trying to help by reading the manual. The defuser has to tell the other person what’s going on so they can give the right instructions, much sillier than it sounds.

I love we were here an there are several sequels

It takes two is the obvious suggestion, and I'd personally also recommend vampire survivors

Serious answer:
If it doesn't have to be digital, there's an entire world of board games available. Dominoes, Magic: The Gathering
Funny answer:
If it has to be digital, Table Top Simulator is fairly cheap and can play an entire world of available board games. /s

Wife an I split time on RDR2. Her doing most of the fishing/hunting, me doing the rootin/tootin parts.

We do play some board games. I think magic has the same problem as with mario kart, but with less pick up and play-ability. We liked playing gloomhaven ok, but I have to do the setup.

That kind of spliting gameplay could maybe work for us eventually, but I kind of doubt it at this point.

Thanks!

To quote Bob Belcher, "Laugh On Loudly". Gloomhaven is so good that I kickstarted Frosthaven to support the maker. It's sealed in the box, in a closet.

I do play Frosthaven (we've completed Gloomhaven and Forgotten Circles) with 2 of my siblings and a step brother on Tuesdays. Fridays I play Crimson Scales (fan made Gloomhaven expansion) on Table Top Simulator.

Luckily, the sister and her husband host and do all the setup (we play their copy). TTS, I host but the "setup" is basically loading the mod and clicking a couple buttons. For the physical game, we use Gloomhaven Secretariat to manage the monster abilities, attack modifiers, health, effects, etc which really cuts down the setup/teardown time.

I did have a seat open up on the Friday table, we get together about 5:30pm and run until 8pm Eastern...

We have Jaws of the Lion.

Looking into secretariat for gloomhaven quickly, it looks really useful, I've been thinking about the gloomhaven video game as an option too. There are things I like about physical more, but I also think it'd be very convenient.

I super appreciate the implied offer, and hope that someone fills your spot. I am however on west coast time, and am kinda half evening shift schedule besides, so I wouldn't be able to make that at all regularly...

Thank you though!

In the board game theme, have you tried any 2-player abstract strategy games? Some of my favourites include:

Quarto (complex 4-in-a-row game with a twist: your opponent chooses the piece you must play)

Quixo (from the same publisher, Gigamic - tic tac toe on steroids with an ever-changing board)

Hive (each piece moves a certain way, very portable defend-the-queen game)

Tak (simple rules, deep strategy - connect opposite edges of the board while preventing your opponent from doing it)

Not strategy, but abstract speed game: Nine Tiles by Japanese company Oink Games (not Nine Tiles Panic, tho that one isn't bad). Oink has very clever, easily packable party games and a few can be played with two people.

I found this really difficult to read/understand this in places with the neutral pronouns. Anyway a cool little coop puzzle game is Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes. It's an asymmetrical puzzle game where one of you is trying to defuse a bomb (played on a computer) while the other is trying to give directions without seeing the bomb. It might fit your asymmetrical needs you described.

Every "they" refers to the partner (the first two words of the post). Shouldn't take too long to get used to in future.

As a non-native speaker I still struggle with it. Just sounds like plural all the time. I'd expect something like "they does" for an individual and "they do" for a group of people but "they do" for just an individual frequently fucks up my comprehension.

The post we're looking at includes "my partner" then almost immediately after "they", with consistent conjugations of the verb (which doesn't change). It can look a little odd and take some getting used to, but it isn't far removed from other seemingly irregular uses, such as yous/youse/y'all for addressing a group of people (direct form of 'they'), instead of using the singular 'you'.

If you have two displays for you PC and are willing to do a bit of fiddling, I think you can set up split screen two player stardew valley which is a great chill game

It Takes Two is probably the best jumping off point (as you’ve already been informed). It has enough variety that you can discuss what parts they liked and maybe find the games in that kind of genre.

My partner isn’t big on games, but loves The Binding of Isaac for coop. The latest DLC adds a better coop mode, but the original coop mode with coop babies works well too (and there’s advantages like them being able to fly so they don’t need to worry about floor hazards). I think the fact that they grew up in a catholic household but aren’t religious helped them get into it lol.

I genuinely think getting a Wii U would be an awesome idea too, massive libraries made of just games that are perfect for this situation.

I have a Wii U in storage at my parent's house, I might see about us checking some games out when we visit for the holidays in a couple weeks. I don't want to overwhelm them too much though.

what about Yoshi's Crafted World? easy gameplay, cute aesthetics and good co-op

Lego games like Lego Starwars has already been mentioned and I will second those (especially the newer ones that have split screen).

Divinity Original Sin is also great.

 

Honestly most games I can think of have already been mentioned and those who have not seem like they might not be that great of an option since it seems your partner isn't normally into gaming. (RTS in particular might be too hard)

But I will suggest some anyway just in case

 

Starcraft 2 has free online multiplayer which includes a COOP vs AI mode.

There's also a 2 player campaign adaption of Warcraft 3's normally single player campaign. Although it might only be available for pre-Reforged.

Also I didn't know about it before now, I googled it just in case, but apparently SC2 also has COOP mods for its campaigns.

 

You mentioned having a Switch so I will recommend Advance Wars Reboot and Wargroove 1 & 2, although there are no COOP campaigns but you can play multiplayer maps.

Besides Advance Wars Reboot Camp on Switch (or the originals for Gameboy, which you could play with emulator), there's also an online fan site called Advance Wars By Web where you can play advance wars in the web browser, although there's no single player.

Wargroove is also on Steam and besides the campaign and regular game itself there are puzzles.

 

And speaking of Puzzles, card games tend to have Puzzles. I haven't actually played Magic, Yu Gi Oh, etc. so I can't say for sure whether they have any, but there's puzzles in Faeria. (I would've recommended Might and Magic Duel of Champions, it had some great puzzles, but Ubisoft shut that game down many years ago)

Also StarCraft 2 can be modded with MassRecall so you can go through the SC1 campaigns, more than just SC and Broodwars, in the SC2 engine, which makes them a bit easier and more satisfying. I think that would allow you to do co-op on the original single player campaigns.

My partner was never really into games growing up, and especially had trouble with the spatial aspect and controllers.

The tipping point came when we played Minecraft together and they got to use a keyboard and mouse rather than a controller. Since then, they’ve done tons gaming on their own with hundreds of hours in Stardew Valley and a more recently a deep dive into Fallout 4.

Destiny 2 played a big part in learning shooting mechanics, sense of space, and especially precision platforming.

Thrilled to see that you’ve found and enjoyed It Takes Two because that’s our all-time favorite co-op game and we recommend it to everybody.

Since yours is into puzzling, I want to second the recommendation for the We Were Here series. The first one is free and each is better than the next. It’s an asymmetrical puzzler that requires two computers with each player unable to see the other’s screen. Communication is critical to solve each of the puzzles.

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.

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.

Portal 2 might be fun. It has a co-op mode and is similarly a puzzle game where you need to work out the logic of each level and then sequence your actions in the correct order.

My wife and I really enjoyed playing The Quarry together. It's one of those games where it is more of a movie with decisions so I would do all of the controls and she would do the decisions.

Secret of Mana (SNES)

As one of the consoles most famous titles, there's a number of ways to play it.

It'll help develop some of her hand-eye, but in a slower, calmer way she will probably be more than equal to. There's also a lot of character development and plot, it is a jrpg-influenced game after all.

2 player co-op kicks in about an hour-ish into the game, if memory serves, once the second character enters the story.

I really like Secret of Mana. I think because I've already played through it would make it less of a good coop game for them, but if I can get them a little interested in playing on their own I think it would have potential as an early game for them.

Alternatively you can apply the Little Brother technique and just let them win more than they lose in whatever “competitive” game y’all are playing.

Just try to do it in a non-obvious way.

I don't think they'd appreciate that, and if they found out I think it'd damage the possibility of gaming being a thing we do together at all.

May be hit or miss but Moving Out (1 or 2) is a lot of fun. You spend most of your time failing to do anything and just laughing about how goofy it is.

I could see how this might fall into the same pitfalls as overcooked, but it looks fun. I'll add this to the proposal list!

Thanks!

Out of Space: it's very similar to Overcooked, but a lot less chaotic, me and my wife love it and play it all of the time because Overcooked, while great, can be too much action. It is available for PC (and should work even on the crappy one possibly), and switch. Let me know how that goes, I love this game and it is not widely known so I love showing it up to people.

I play a lot of games with my 10yr old daughter. Here are some of what we liked:

-Any lego game(there are sooo many and they often go on sale)

-trine series, much more puzzley

-sackboy a big adventure

-brothers a tale of two sons

-it takes two

-portal 2

-degrees of separation

-putty pals

-ibb and obb

-toodee and topdee

-bleep bloop

-battle block theater

-chariot

-pikunuku

We also loved going through the monkey island games. They are not mumtiplayer but they are slow point and click games that we bounced ideas off one another.

+1 for Portal 2.

OP, the co-op campaign for Portal 2 is a separate story from the single player campaign.

It's a puzzle game at it's heart, wrapped in the control scheme of an FPS.

Video games: Lovers in a Dangerous Spacetime, Pizza Opossum, PlateUp!

Physical game: Crokinole

Seen lovers in a dangerous spacetime a few times here now, will definitely run it past them. Pizza possum also looks like it could fit us super well!

Crokinole looks interesting, looks like a little bit of a rabbit hole I will have to check out a bit later.

Thanks!

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

Wario Ware games on Switch, Nidhogg also.

I dunno that nidhogg would be a good game for us together, but it looks up my alley to play solo sometime.

Thanks!

It's super silly fun, and shouldn't be so expensive. I have it on PC and it's playable on pretty much everything.

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.

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!

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.

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

Death Squared is really nice. I may have a spare key somewhere

Heroes of might and magic 3, hot seat

This seems like a game I would enjoy on my own, but might be a bit to crunchy for my partner at this point.

Stray maybe?

I think stray is a great first pick for if I can get them interested in playing a game mostly on their own.

Thanks!

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.

A weird one if your SO is a fan of anime. Persona 5.

My SO loved playing with me since they had all the guides and stuff ready to min max the game while I did the heavy lifting. It’s a different type of 2 player game, like a Driver and Navigator while driving.

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.

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.

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.

Still play SSX Tricky with my family via an emulator

What's your favorite thing about that game? I still know one of the people who created it

We're competative I suppose. Grew up playing and nothing ever replaced it. There's probably other arcade games we'd enjoy but the closest we've come was the Tetris Effect - but we haven't picked that up again for a while. Tricky is one of those games that has a huge skill difference between being good and actually practicing. It's fun, a bit janky - maybe it's just what we know. My brother has a couple high scores on my steam deck and writing this has inspired me to go spend some time trying to beat them lol

Glad you are enjoying it. Any advice on getting it up and running on a steam deck? Just got one a few months ago and havent looked into emulation yet but intended to, life just got in the way and havent gone back to it yet. Maybe you can inspire me to get my some old tony hawk games running. Loved the ps era skater games

Yeah, there's something called Emudeck, it makes setup super easy. Even comes with tools to add emulated games into your steam library to launch like a regular game.

There is this one funky caveat - the PlayStation and Switch games I emulate didn't run very well, after some research I found out that lowering the CPU cores helps a ton. And it did, they run great for me now. To do that I had to install a Deck extension called Powertools - super easy to do because Emudeck came with a user interface to install plugins, Powertools included. Anyway, with Powertools you turn off this thing called SMT and then can lower the CPU cores. Some people think it's actually a bug in emulation or Steam Deck drivers because using less cores shouldn't have a big impact on performance so it may not be necessary in the future.

Tons of video examples on YouTube make the install and setup super easy. Highly reccomend setting emulation up, I've been playing through games I never finished as a kid and it's been great. The convenience makes it awesome

Can you thank them for defining a huge part of my childhood playtime? My siblings and I bonded over that game. We still quote voicelines from it.

Escape Room Simulator maybe but you need two PCs not sure how well it would run on that old laptop of yours. Also they need to be able to use first person controls and not get simulation sickness from fps games which unfortunately lots of people get who never play first person games.

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.

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

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.

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

Pokemon: Lets Go Pikachu

Diablo 3

Kingdom Two Crowns

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

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.

In the realm of Rhythm games and movement input: Beat Saber.

A bit of an initial investment for the VR setup, but well worth it.

Beat saber and all VR stuff is VERY bad at couch coop.

True.

I've had better luck w/ Beat Saber "multiplayer" in a party type setting where there was turns being taken by 5+ people.

Keep talking & nobody explodes is perfect in VR, though, because the diffuser is in their own world.

We've been playing Walkabout Minigolf on the Quest 3 which is fun. We take turns and play 4 holes each in a row, and during play we discuss how to approach different obstacles and where to search for hidden balls. Obviously casting to the TV while playing.

Neverwinter Nights, but I'm pretty biased.

BG3 has been making me want to go back and play some of the earlier D&D crpgs, but it might be a miss for my partner at this point. Neverwinter Nights is based on 2nd edition right?

You two might enjoy Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons.

https://g.co/kgs/zmYgtb

That's a one player game.

I was thinking they could share the keyboard and each do one side/hand. With a wireless keyboard, they could even play while snuggled up on the couch.

It's not the controls that are the issue. It's literally a single player game, designed for one person to play.

Have you actually played it to the end? It's only a couple of hours, tops.

Yes, I did. I remember using one hand to control each brother, hence my thinking they found each control one with a shared keyboard.

It was just a suggestion. And the fact that it's simple and short I thought was good since she doesn't sound like she likes intense games.

Super Smash Bros. Ultimate is a must have imo. Me and my girl play it almost on the daily. Great competitive experience.

I think this is gonna have the same problem as mario kart, so I probably need to wait until they have some more game experience. Last year when I had my last smash phase they enjoyed the music being on in the background though.