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!
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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.
Stray maybe?
It takes two is the obvious suggestion, and I’d personally also recommend vampire survivors
what about Yoshi’s Crafted World? easy gameplay, cute aesthetics and good co-op
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
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.
Neverwinter Nights, but I’m pretty biased.
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.
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. /sWife an I split time on RDR2. Her doing most of the fishing/hunting, me doing the rootin/tootin parts.
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.
Video games: Lovers in a Dangerous Spacetime, Pizza Opossum, PlateUp!
Physical game: Crokinole
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.
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 genuinely think getting a Wii U would be an awesome idea too, massive libraries made of just games that are perfect for this situation.
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.
