How do you manage the social aspects on Roblox? I haven’t looked at the game at all but I know some of my daughter’s friends play it also… am I mistaken in thinking it’s like a Minecraft style MMO?
It’s more of a collection of MMOs, some are minecraft style, I have seen her play a couple, but there are all sorts I have seen.
She mostly plays Royale High and Adopt Me, the first is like a Roleplay School Dressup Game, the later is kind of like a pet collection and raising game. But she also is fond of the Work in a Pizza Place game…where you work at a Pizza Place (it’s kind of hard to explain.)
As for social management, she only is allowed to friend kids from her school or afterschool program. Some of these games have trading, and she does trade with people outside of her friends list, but she mostly sticks to talk with her friends. Usually she sets up time to play games in Roblox with her friends, so they are like virtual play dates.
I coincidentally was asking her who everyone on her friends list was last night, but I don’t do it often. We are still sticking with the “trust until we are given reason not to” theory here.
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Sounds like there’s some semblance of parental controls though? In terms of limiting who can see them online, chat with them, etc… obviously with my background in law enforcement and my wife’s time spent as a state prosecutor in the “computer crimes unit” (a nice euphemism since they couldn’t exactly call it the “anti kiddie porn and online predators unit”) we’re overly leery of online contacts.
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Yes, there are parental controls and chat controls. We keep her restricted to Friends for communication only, and then just review her friends list on occasion.
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Haven’t let my girls online yet for anything. They are still only mildly interested in video games; the five year old is enjoying an old 360 game called Disney Universe I bought at a yard sale recently, while the eight year old prefers watching games. Right now we are slowly making our way through Secret of Evermore, but I miss the flash save option the SNES Classic games have. Easier when doing stuff with kids.
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Well, I painted up all of the new Descent for my son’s birthday about three months ago, and we played once. I think it was just that I came at a bad time, and we’ll get back to it, but it certainly is a bit of a letdown. But my kids adore Mansions of Madness, which was what made Descent seem so promising (and Imperial Assault, once I get that painted up).
Mice and Mystics has great elements, and I’m glad we have it simply because my son played with those minis for many, many hours, but it’s too long and slow for (my) kids, and too tactically flat for my liking.
If it would be dungeon crawly enough for you, Too Many Bones was an astonishing hit with my kids when they were about 10. The difficulty levels are wide enough that you don’t have to hold the kids’ hands too much—just choose a low level and they can make their own choices and cope with the consequences without absolutely dooming the party. It’s the first game that really drew my kids out of their excessively cautious gaming shells. Previously, they hated to lose (or even take damage), but TMB is just so silly and the characters so flavorfully reckless that the kids were sort of swept up in semi-roleplay. It has all sorts of genius decisions, excessively nice parts, wonky imbalances, rules overcomplications so ornate that I’m not sure whether there are actually big gaps or I just missed stuff—it’s a bit of a messy experience. But it’s also a co-op, so you can just do what seems reasonable and not fuss yourself about it too much, and it sings.
Jaws of the Lion does seem like a superb way to get into Gloomhaven, and we had some fun with it, but interest petered out after 7 or so games.
Awesome! We play Jaws of the lion, will look at too many bones
We have been playing My City as a family and love it as a family game. It is as simple as placing Tetris pieces on a grid and scoring points but the game is a legacy-style game and each game introduces a new rule or way to score. The game also has a catch-up mechanic so if you lose, you usually get a permanent benefit for future games. Great game with kids.
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On a whim Saturday, I pulled the old Xbox360 out of the closet and dusted (and by dusted, I mean literally washed) all of the old Rock Band instruments and taught my 9 year old how to play Rock Band 3. I have like 300 songs I had bought back in the day, so lots to play…and we had a blast all weekend. She loves the keyboard that is in RB3 and really took to it. I mostly played drums and think I got a bit of a workout also playing.
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My friends used to come over every weekend for hours of Rock Band. My wife and I would switch off on the drums, my buddy would play lead guitar, another friend lead vocals, and I’d play bass when my wife wasn’t drumming. We’d play on expert and we’re ranked top 10 worldwide on a few songs. To say we were addicted is an understatement and we aren’t in the least ashamed of that time, lol.
When I switched from PS3 to PS4 there was significant lag with all the hardware and that, plus life, kind of put an end to our Rock Band glory. I think we sold off the hardware in a garage sale some years later.
Now, with a 9 and 7 year old I am absolutely kicking myself that I don’t have my hardware any more. I wish so badly that I had all my things. Heck, I’d take a guitar and Guitar Hero. Alas, even the used stuff is awfully expensive now.
Someone needs to revive the rhythm genre.
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We just got Flash Point: Fire Rescue from the library. The rule book wasn’t the best but the game was fine. However, we own every Pandemic game, Ghost Fightin’ Treasure Hunters with the expansion, and both versions of Horrified; I know Flash Point technically predates most of those but it felt pretty redundant at this point. I’d recommend it if you don’t have much of a cooperative library but not really for any reason otherwise.