SvennoJ said:
HoloDust said:
Yeah, my wife's oldest son bought It Takes Two specifically to play it with her, but he massively overestimated her gamepad skills...she really liked the idea, but was pretty much unable to play it...I guess I could try to install a few walking sims or such less stressful games and see if she'll get better in time.
Depending on your kids' age, there are plenty of games out there to play with them...I've dropped mine right into Settlers and Ticket to Ride when they were around 6-7, and they caught on fairly easy…not that I would recommend either game from my current POV, they are too long for such age (Ticket to Ride London/New York is a condensed version of TTR, which runs for about 20-25 minutes, so I would easily recommend that, or for even lighter game Ticket to Ride: First Journey US/Europe, which is kid's version of TTR).
I'm not so up to date on what's good for very young kids these days (I have heard of Dragomino, Rhino Hero, Karak, Brandon the Brave, Icecool, Zombie Kids Evolution and few others, but have no experience with any of them), but if you have time (and interest), BGG list is great jump off point:
https://boardgamegeek.com/childrensgames/browse/boardgame?sort=rank&sortdir=asc
As for P&P RPGs (my roots are in AD&D as well, played it back in 80s) I got my wife hooked on them a few years ago with DnD 5e, though she never played anything like that in her life and was somewhat reluctant at first (and now she likes to play elf wizard exclusively, which is a problem on its own, since we moved away from DnD) and I started with my kids when they were around 4-5 years old with Hero Kids, which has very simple resolution system of comparing D6 dice, which is quite easy even for very young kids if you use dice with pips (plus pdf comes with grid maps and standees)....so maybe you can kill two birds with one stone, so to speak.
https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/106605/Hero-Kids--Fantasy-RPG
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Having to control the camera at the same time as the character is a big hurdle. When I look at my wife's side of the screen, 90% of the time the camera is at a 90 degree angle to the action :/ Zelda always got me annoyed by not giving you control over the camera but I see the advantage of that. She does do well with twin stick shooters, yet movement plus camera is a hurdle.
And you really need to know the layout of the gamepad. I can help here with instructions like X X Square for double jump air dash. But she's only familiar with the PS layout, hence we didn't get far in Gears 5. A at the bottom instead of X and X on the left is just too much while trying to get to grips with a new game. So we'll stick to PS5 for co-op games. (Plus the prompts are color coded on XBox which doesn't help at all)
They are past the age that Settlers and Ticket to Ride were interesting to them. We played those but now they're 11 and 13 and far more interested in playing online with their friends (Terraria, Rust, Fortnite, Roblox). It's hard to get them to play couch co-op. The new generation is all about online co-op. The pandemic cemented their online habits, destroyed the last ounce of couch fun. (cabin fever was a pain) So now the first question is, how long does it take... Hence Battleship and Sorry. (And even those last too long for their liking lol) Carcassone used to be a hit as well, too long now. Very different from when I was their age. Then it was all about going to friend's houses to play!
Maybe one day I can get them into 1830. It's my favorite game after all, played it so much back in the day. My wife doesn't like it as it takes 5-6 hours for a full game. I've wasted many many hours of sleep on that, made extra tiles, alternative rules and still have it all in the original box. The follow ups were fun as well yet the first one is still my favorite. Another great board game was Dune (1979). My friend had it and I ended up painstakingly copying the game as we couldn't find it anywhere in a shop (before online shopping). I see there is an updated version now, might be fun to play again. (Of course young me copied everything but the instructions since we knew them by heart lol plus it's kind of a faded mess now) Civilization board game was good as well. Oh well can't compete with their online school buddies...
Cards against humanity is what our teenager wanted to play with us... (Picked it up at a garage sale) It's racist/sexist with lots of smut, not recommended. And no clue why you would want to play that with your mother lol. We played it once. Sure it got the laughs going, but relies too much on 'shock' value. Probably why it was just a toony at a garage sale haha.
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Oh, I thought your kids were much younger, hence some of my previous suggestions for games... I feel your pain, mine are 16 and 14, and they've lost interest in board games a few years ago, apart from some very light and quick games (like King of Tokyo) or party games (like Codename Pictures, Dixit and Pictures) - though I had success with 2 player tactical games like Memoir 44 and Summoner wars. Now it's all about online games with friends as well, though they do still play single player games as well. The last thing we played together as couch co-op were Outward and Minecraft Dungeons, though only at 2 player count, and the last thing that was 4 player couch coop (with my brother) was Helldivers (twinstick shooter), but that was quite a bit ago. I don't know, maybe they'll get around to board games again, my wife's eldest son (18) is not far from their age, growing up with the same online mentality as them, yet he loves playing boardgames, especially mid-weight Euros.
Cards Against Humanity is, for some reason, a massively popular game, along with Exploding Kittens... I must say, I don't find appeal in either (though honestly, I'm not that big on party board/card games in general), but hey, to each their own, I guess.
If you have some time, maybe take a look at Shadowdark P&P RPG. It's a throwback to early D&D, it has free starter kit, digest size pdf, so it fits great on 10 inch tablets (if you don't want to print), with exceptionally quick character creation and very light rules - you can read all the rules in 20-30 minutes and has one dungeon crawl included, so it's great for pick up and play kind of thing.
https://www.thearcanelibrary.com/pages/shadowdark
