The putt putt line of games. They run on scummvm and my kids love them. Later kings quest, and stardew valley. The lego marvel super heroes on Xbox 360 (I think there's a pc version) has an entire Manhattan island that they can roam around freely and interact with.
this post was submitted on 04 Feb 2024
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Slime Rancher might be worth looking into.
There's a few short indie adventure games that may fit the bill:
- The First Tree
- Spirit of the North
- Abzu
- Aer
- Proteus
- Untitled Goose Game (Not an adventure game, but good goofy fun)
- Donut County (Not adventure, but a very simple and accessible puzzle that spans an entire town)
I haven't played Stray, but it may be a good fit. I also haven't played past the opening scene of Firewatch, but if your daughter can manage walking around Skyrim then I think it should be okay.
I searched for indie exploration games. City of Muse came up.
There's a list of 3D exploration games on Itch.
Putt-putt, pajama sam a.d freddy fish are great!
Maybe Stardew valley would scratch that itch. Or some old rpgs like FF or chrono trigger.
These aren’t exactly exploration games, but they’re simple games that my toddler likes too:
- Animal Crossing is easily her favorite. She loves “helping” my wife pick outfits and fish.
- A Building Full of Cats is short, cheap, and cute. She likes making up stories about each apartment and cat. There’s also tons of similar games in different locations.
- Cats in Time has simple puzzles that she can do with a bit of help.
- Slime Rancher might be a good fit. It’s simple and cute with a focus on exploration.
- Dorf Romantik is a relaxing and cute game that’s a good introduction to resource management. She might not be good at the actual goal of the game, but she likes placing tiles.
- Subnautica in creative mode might be interesting for exploration, depending on how sensitive your kid is about some of the darker areas and creatures.
The Peppa Pig game is surprisingly open. If you just walk off screen it lets you keep going and you end up in new locations. Hop on the bus and end up in another location. There aren't many blocks to stop you from going where you feel like going and there's a variety of activities at each location.
Sounds like "The witcher 3" world will be a good fit for your daughter curiosity, the guest line however is too dark for her age.
Doesn't that game feature fully nude characters at times in the vanilla base game? And sex? And violence? And brothels?
You don't have to do any of that, but just walking around you will get attacked by all manner of creatures so I would take Witcher 3 off the list on that basis.
tchia is listed on steam to release in march
No one said Journey, but it's one of the best immersive games that let you wander in really cool environments. Might be a little frightening in some parts but under your supervision it should be fine
WALKING SIMS
I fucking love the genre, and while a lot deal with heavy topics (struggling to understand ones identity, death of a loved one, accepting loss and grief), most don't get violent or sexual. I love loading into them and just exploring the world.
Minecraft, 100%. You can set it to peaceful mode so no enemies spawn, and even mess with the world settings so more structures generate in your map.
Since she is very young and has no social pressure towards microsoftcraft, I‘d suggest mineclone, its free, open source and in opposition to bedrock mc not bloated with ingame purchases.
Minecraft used to be good though.
Could just play Java edition...
You mean besides the advantages that mineclone has?
If you could list one that isn't just "Microsoft bad" sure, I've never played it, but I've played literally thousands of hours of Minecraft Java, along with several thousand more on mod packs for Java.
Not to mention the very large community of Minecraft let's players, tutorials, etc that exist for Minecraft, and it's huge cultural influence.
Not saying mineclone is bad or anything, I don't know much about it aside from the site listing it's features, but MC is the OG and huge for a reason, and I agree bedrock is full of garbage MTX, but Java is not.
One?
- mandatory telemetry
- mandatory microsoft account
- modders literally had to reverse engineer minecraft to mod it (closed source)
- you cant download the game without logging into mojang despite the fact that you have to log in to your microsoft account anyway
- constant changes that make the game more approachable but barely any that make it more complex ie redstone (subjective)
- cant be played offline easily
Those are just the first ones I can come up with.
I have started playing minecraft in the browser. Had to pay for it using paypal since it wasnt available in shops. I definitely played thousands of hours as well, made lets plays, have multiple servers.
The reason I dont recommend it anymore is the initial minecraft was very different from today. It used to be about creativity. Today it feels like a race for content. Mostly like a game as a service thing.
You don't have to login to a mojang and ms account, it's just Microsoft accounts, which if you dislike Microsoft sure...
The telemetry is far from insidious and is used in many many games as a way to provide data about what people interact with (or don't) so devs have a better idea of what to focus on. https://minecraft.fandom.com/wiki/Snooper
Modders seemed to have made due with the closed source nature... Again talking about Java specifically, not Bedrock.
Not sure if you're aware but the 1.21 release includes an auto-crafter, pretty big addition for Redstone related automation. Though this post is also about a 4yo so... It's not super likely they'll be interested in Redstone anyway.
Can be played offline if you've logged into the mc launcher at least once before being offline afaik.
I don't really understand what you mean by "a race for content" if anything it feels like the game hasn't changed enough considering how long it's been out, they'll add one or two new kinda nifty things per release, but compared to mod makers... The pace is much slower.
Sure, you can turn around everything as you like. You wanted to hear one, you got many. Feels kinda disrespectful of you to try this hard to be right.
What? You said use MineClone instead, I asked for any reasons why one would prefer MineClone over MIneCraft, you gave some reasons, I argued my points and agreed with some of yours.
How is that disrespectful lmfao, that's how people discuss differences in opinion.
I did. Besides the obvious „dont expose your children to microtransactions if avoidable“ I have brought many more that are my concerns.
If you reread your text, you said this, in short:
- telemetry no problem
- closed source no problem
- offline no problem
Which is just taking the facts that you asked for and putting them into the trash. This I found disrespectful. Even before when you said „find one“ was disrespectful but I chose to keep talking since it might be a misunderstanding.
They might be no problem for you but consent is quite a huge problem. Being able to use the product you bought (over a decade ago) in the way you want to and are used to. There is an argument that prolonged sales and development cost money and such but we‘re on lemmy, a FOSS program (where telemetry is opt in btw) and we‘re discussing why telemetry without opt out is bad?
Also, to play offline is pretty much impossible, I checked multiple sources. If you dont have internet and cant login, youre f*cked.
Its also not a point to say modders got around it. Repacking games for piracy reasons isnt much different from what they had to do and I think its legitimately a big plus that the minetest engine is so easily moddable.
I think the problem is you seemingly don't know how a discussion and difference of opinon works.
I'm not taking your "facts" and throwing them in the trash, I was point for point giving my take on your concerns.
I was genuinely curious why someone would play minetest over MC and wanted to know what pros/cons exist, and the pros/cons you gave didn't resonate with me.
Lemmy has forced telemetry, for example, every time you upvote or downvote something, that information is easily seen by instance admins. The question becomes is that telemetry harmful in any way to the end user, in Lemmys case, I can very easily see how that could be used to harm another user. In Minecrafts case... I don't see it.
MTX again aren't in Java, which is again why I stated to just use Java in my first response.
It's not impossible to play offline, there are many very easy workarounds available.
There are tens of thousands of mods minimum for minecraft, so yes it is fair to say that modders got around it. I'm not talking piracy, I mean large content additions such as Mekanism, Create, etc..
Yes it is a plus that minetest is more open source, but does a 4 YO looking for a game to play, who will likely socialize with other children who are more likely to know what minecraft is vs minetest really understand or care in the slightest that their knockoff mc game is open source? Come on man.
I'm also going to point out I didn't downvote you at all, and wasn't at all trying to be rude or disrespectful, simply stating my opinions as a long time MC player, my first paragraph of this response being an emotionally charged/rude response not withstanding, as I was irritated at the strange emotional response you had to what I thought was an innocuous discussion.
I do apologize for the first paragraphs rudeness, but am leaving it there to not hide my misstep.
Monkey island!
I haven't played it, but that Crayon Shin-Chan game seems to fit what you're looking for. Not sure if it's on the platform you want, though
Minecraft, if you play online and enter a server like Cubecraft the default lobby is very kid friendly and has a large interesting map to explore. And of course the game itself has tons of single player content and you can build your own stuff in survival or creative modes.
Try Grand Theft Auto 5 and see what you think. If you don't actually do any missions it's really a very nice and alive world to explore. The pedestrians make some rude comments though.
Also Arma 3, the base map is a sandbox of a real life island with most buildings enterable, and no people or traffic or anything offensive by default. You can enter the editor, place a civilian player and some vehicles, and explore the island completely peacefully. There are also lots of mod maps some are very good.
If only driving around is acceptable then the Forza Horiizon games are great for driving around.
I agree with Minecraft, just not online and put it on peaceful. But GTA? That must be a joke. Even outside of the missions there is plenty of driving over people, shooting and other events that are inappropriate at that age.
I don't know, I used to let my young niece play GTA 4 at least, supervised the whole time of course. The rule was you could drive around until you crashed or hit someone, then we switched players. Generally there is no trouble unless you make trouble. The pedestrians can make rude comments but having the volume low solves most of that.