It is tough to find the balance between enjoyment and obsession. My kids are obsessed with Minecraft. There are so many ways that game can be used educationally that I don’t want to get rid of it so I also set a limit. In addition, I created a Real and now when they play I only let them play on our shared Realm with Daddy’s rules.
Still, I prefer when they play the board games.
Chicken Cha Cha for iPad is great for younger kids.
I agree on Chicken Cha Cha! My then 6 year old played it so often, he came to beat me a lot with it, which was great enjoyment for him.
Big fan of Scribblenauts here, too (though I wish it controlled better). DragonBox is amazing—quite fun, and about the most educational games I’ve seen. 2048/Threes/Twinfold have been popular with my kids, as have Isle of Tune/LOOPIMAL, but the latter pair are musical toys which might be both short-lived and annoying to listen to. Maybe AlphaBear or Cat Lady? My son quite enjoyed Hashi puzzles for a while, and for pure mind-numbing engagement with no redeeming value, Geometry Wars has gotten us through some periods of waiting which would otherwise have been tough. The Forbidden Island/Desert implementations are solid, too (unless the developers have messed with them since I last played, as I’ve heard happened to the previously superb Pandemic).
Pandemic was messed with because Admodee. I believe the Forbidden games retained the autonomy and still work great.
If any kids like music creators like Isle of Tune, My Singing Monsters Composer (not the free social game) allows you to make fun loops. The Sphero Specdrum app is also a good one, and free at that. Hardware not required for the app to work.
I’ve talked a little before about the Pokémon TCG on iPads; my 7-year-old has been playing it and starting to get the hang of it and it is neat to see the growing comprehension of a relatively complex game (not for CCGs in general, but that are all more complex than many other kids games).
I put in an order for Tiny Town and Draftosaurus for my soon to be eight year olds birthday in July.
I wanted to get PARKS, but was out of stock everywhere.
Hopefully she will enjoy them, age rating appears to not mean much. They like Ecosystem whic is tough to score, but fun to play.
So my six-year old and I finished our year-long quest through Pokémon Red, as well as EarthBound, over the last week. Pokémon Sword has been waiting since February, and I was a little unnerved that it would ruin her for retro stuff. But apparently she wants to play another game alongside it. Namely, EarthBound…again. I am not sure how I feel about that.
I think if you’ve been able to get your 6 year-old that into Earthbound, you deserve some sort of parenting award. That is not a simple or short game. Maybe she loves the soundtrack? It was quite poppy, as I recall.
My older daughter thinks a lot like I do (where the younger one is mostly her mother, which is funny since from a physical features standpoint it is opposite). EB was my first RPG when I was 10, and it enamored me with the realization that things like damage, growth and magic power could all be tracked as numbers. I’m an actuarial soul at heart, and putting values to those things had a strong appeal that overcame the oddity of combat with such limited visuals. I gambled that this might work for her as well after she so thoroughly enjoyed Saturday Morning RPG and Pokemon Red, and I was right.
Pokémon embodies that actuarial philosophy so amazingly well; it is a spreadsheet with a coat of cute mo stet paint. I think that is one of the reasons I love the series so much. That and I clean and organize everything in my life fastidiously and it is kind of cathartic to play a game where you collect hundreds of things and organize them in boxes…
Do you have a Switch? Have you tried the Let’s Go! line of Pokémon games with her? It is not as good as the mainline Pokémon but is absolutely perfect for young kids.
Modern Pokémon intimidates me a bit. It’s a lot more complex than it was in the gen 1 days. The newest one I played was Soul Silver like 10 years ago. But this is the game she got a few months ago as a present, so I am trying to make the most of it. It’s a solid game so far with Sword and I am trying just to not fall down the rabbit hole too much.
Let’s Go would probably be up her alley but we didn’t have it, and it was also a lot like what we just finished.
This morning, completely on her own, I found my 7yo making a notation in a notebook on the price of Turnips in Animal Crossing.
That’s it, I have successfully parented a gamer, my job here is done!
Haha, awesome!
This is a little too old for my son, unfortunately, but it looks pretty neat and should be right for some of the other Junior Stateskids I’ve seen mentioned in these parts. And it’s free:
https://www.findersseekers.com/blog/2020/06/finders-seekers-detective-summer-camp/
We love Sleeping Queens here, it is our go-to after dinner, quick setup and play game before bedtime. But I wanted another game than just that one for that slot.
Since my daughter’s favorite part of Zooloretto is making coins, I figured I would find a game that the goal is to make money.
Picked up Loot and we played 3 games tonight before bedtime, and it was a huge hit. It has some of that ‘gotcha’ feel of Sleeping Queens, Pirate themed and the whole point is to get gold!
Lot’s of fun.
We played a ton of Sleeping Queens and it was the perennial pre-bedtime favorite for both girls (7.5 and 5 next month), to the point that my oldest was able to trade in all 5 cards more than once. We were so impressed we instituted the house rule that if you can make a number sentence out of all 5 cards you get to go again (we also allow subtraction, multiplication, and division sentences).
The latest craze is Unstable Unicorns, which someone else here had mentioned. I was worried it’d be too advanced for both of them, and while my almost 5 year old doesn’t grasp the greater strategies, she is able to read the cards and race for the win. The 7.5 year old is downright devious and any concerns about it being too advanced were misplaced. She’s ruthless, cunning, and conniving at the game and more often than not beats my wife and I!
Plus, they both love the unicorns.
I just played Marvel Legendary with my 7-year-old and it went really well. It was his first deck builder and it was fun to see it click with him how what he buys now will come back around when he shuffles. We played the easiest Mastermind and we did win. Overall it was really fun and the best part of it is that between the base set and the expansion, we have a game that can last us quite a long time. I despise the setup and tear down for Legendary, but that won’t deter me from playing a lot more with my son if he wants.
Any of you play Minecraft co-op with your kids? I was thinking about picking it up on the Switch. How hard is survival mode? Could a 7yo play with me? Or would we just play building mode?
You can make it as easy or as difficult as you want. I have a hard time with it because I am very particular about my stuff and my kids like to build nightmare abominations that offend my sensibilities. Personal problems aside, it can be great fun.
As a plus, it will play multiplayer with iOS devices if you don’t want to play on the same screen.
I haven’t really become enamored with it but it is pretty clearly a game of the highest quality and you’ll get as much out of it as you want to put in.