A list of games my daughter and I have played.
Currently playing: Minecraft!! Yes, we’re doin’ it. After watching Katherine Elizabeth’s 4.5 hour “movie” StarQuest, we got this on the iPad and started playing in creative mode. It is a steep learning curve but fun nevertheless.
Under Leaves
Under Leaves by Circus Atos. It’s a hidden object game. The best bit is you can replay it because the position of the objects change when you revisit each scene. It has beautiful artwork, lovely colors and relaxing music.
Monument Valley 1 and 2
Monument Valley by ustwo games. This is a beautiful game with mesmerising, mind-bending puzzles. The graphics and sound are wonderful.
I liked number one best, but my daughter preferred the second edition because it has a lovely story about a mother and daughter. When you finish each chapter, a wise elder shares wisdom to help the child learn. Then you cap off the level by drawing a beautiful design in the sky with your finger that looks like a firework. Highly recommend! Great for two players working together.
CHUCHEL
CHUCHEL by Amanita Design. Less of a game, more of an interactive movie. Very funny with slapstick sequences and delightful artwork. This grumpy dude just wants his cherry! Sometimes it was difficult to work out the controls. Anything by Amanita Design is well worth the money.
The Room
The Room by Fireproof Games. We thoroughly enjoyed this game (with the help of a walkthrough guide). You have to solve puzzles on a box to get inside. Then there’s a smaller box inside with more puzzles! It was a bit dark on our device. Warning: One of the items you find is a long-forgotten photograph of a spooky image that is disturbing for young players.
isoland
isoland by Cotton Game. In this game you’re walking around an island, and there are different building and rooms. This game was cool because we could see clues on screen and write (or draw) them on a piece of paper to use them later in the game when we needed them. No other games have really had that, and it was like keeping our own inventory of clues - rather than the game keeping them for us. Lots of symbols and shapes.
Milo and the Magpies
Milo by Second Maze. We got through this in two sittings. We did the walkthrough. We enjoyed it - a cat who goes through the backyards of the neighbours houses to get home. Not as sophisticated as some of the other games we’ve played, but still enjoyable.
Putt-Putt saves the zoo
Putt-Putt saves the zoo by Humongous Entertainment. I found this too easy. We played it in one sitting, with me skipping through all the dialogue (yawn) and looking forward to the end. You can press a lot of things on screen and interact with them, which is fun. My daughter has gone back and played it several times on her own so maybe not too babyish after all? Once she’d gone through it twice, she was proud to be able to show her Dad how to play.
Botanicula
Botanicula by Amanita Design. The “tree game”. My favorite of all the games we’ve played so far! There is a group of five little characters and they each have different powers. They were trying to save their tree from lots of baddie creatures - one a scary black spider creature. Beautiful and fun and I can’t wait to play it again.
Machinarium
Machinarium by Amanita Design. The “robot game”. My daughter’s favorite out of the games we’ve played so far. She liked it because first you move the main robot, and then later, you get to move his friend. It was cool the way we changed characters. I liked that is lasted a long time - so it’s good value. It had lots of mini games and an overarching story. Every now and then the robot has memories of when he was little and played with his friend. It was cool to get the backstory of different robots in the game.
Samorost
Samorost 1, 2 and 3 by Amanita Design. Surreal and beautiful. Very enchanting and lovely audio. A little gnome and a spaceship. Lots of flaura and fauna. Do yourself a favor and play these games - we definitely needed our walkthrough for some of the puzzles, but we’re still new to gaming.
Windosill
Windowsill by Vectorpark is a beautiful, award-winning game. We completed this in one sitting (just over an hour). It was sooo good; and fascinating to see how my five year old picked it up intuitively. She quickly grasped how to interact with things on the screen. This was a charming, inventive, wondrous game that ended too quickly. Highly recommend! You’re just alittle car, and on one screen there are creatures that like to play wiht you, an dif you try to roll away a big creature comes and picks you up and gives you back to the little creature so she can play.
Tiny Bang Story
Tiny Bang Story from Calibri Games is a point-and-click game that involves solving puzzles. You click around until you’re given a kind of ‘shopping list’ of things to gather to unlock a puzzle. You collect the things, unlock the puzzle, do the puzzle, then you get another list of things to find. This was an ideal game for us to play because it has chapters that follow a predictable pattern. Within each chapter, you can collect flies to earn hints. My daughter quickly grasped the structure of the game and when we got stuck, she was happy to click flies to earn hints.
At the end of each chapter, there is a jigsaw puzzle to complete. Fun! The best thing about this game was that two of us could tap the screen at once. We could solve the jigsaw together at the same time.
I totally recommend this game! After we played it once we went through and played it all over again a second time. I think once enough time has passed, we will definitely play it again. Super fun!