Help my girlfriend has been infected by my gaming [suggestions please]

Aldo

Hi guys,

My girlfriend expressed an interest in playing games with/against me when we're apart. Unlike me she hasn't grown up with games, only played The Sims and she enjoyed playing Audiosurf with me. We hate horror and ultra-violence, but enjoy kicking each other's asses or being kickass together.

Ideally the game would be turn-based because of diverging schedules and if it can run on a Macbook that would save us some setting up (we can make it work, though). The game should be easy to pick up, but we don't want to offend our intellect by playing Facebook-games tailor-made for idiots (no offence, mom).

We already looked at Minecraft and Sim City, but I don't think that's very enjoyable.

PS: I read through some similar threads, but thought that our situation is kinda different from the recent ones (of people living together or girls who enjoyed different stuff than us)

TychoCelchuuu

Frozen Synapse!

Steev

Yeah, while I haven't played much of it myself, Frozen Synapse sounds like it could be perfect since you can play asynchronously.

There's also Greed Corp. It's pretty much a board game. Turn based, but I don't believe it does asynchronous play.

Siska

A Tale in The Desert (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Tale_In_The_Desert) might fit. It's crafting, puzzle and skill oriented. Cooperation and working together is very important. All about self improvement in a gazillion different ways. No combat at all. Not sure how big and active the player population is atm. They restart the world and launch a new "tale" every other year or so. There is always some changes to the way the game plays, but essentially it remains mostly similar.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AJR1lLnM-a0


Me and my hubby has played previous tales, but he hated the changes they did to the last one since it made his favorite past time of surveyor/prospector (locating rare resources and trade the mines/quarries) redundant. So we are currently waiting for the next tale (if there is one) and hoping next game change will let him get back to that.

There is a monthly subscription, but they have or at least had a free trial. 24 hrs of play time (if I recall correctly). So, for example, if you play for 3 hrs a day the trial will last 8 days.

Aldo

We tried the demo of Frozen Synapse but she didn't like it at all. She disliked how you're just killing red dudes and the whole tactical gameplay thing was way too complex. I didn't play enough to form an opinion. We also looked at Greed Corp, but that looked like it'd be the same level of complexity, which is fine for when you want to spend time understanding the basics of TBS with shrinking maps.

I know I've looked into ATITD before (it's somewhere on my free MMO list) but I don't think I like a game that's basically about building a little community with way more people than my girlfriend and me. I understand the draw and the concept is pretty cool, but we're looking for something more entry-level I suppose.

This talk about videogames did make my girlfriend remember a game she used to play with her brother: Krush Kill n Destroy Extreme. It's on gog.com, but unfortunately it doesn't have multiplayer any more, which got me thinking about Red Alert 2, which you can still play via LAN without too many problems.

We're very much open to other suggestions, and thanks for the suggestions so far.

Screampunk

Hero Academy! It's kinda like chess. Also it's turn-based.

Also it's awesome.

flowerhoney

Do you have an ipad by any chance?

I really like to play small world! Its really fun, not that complicated, turn based, and you get to yell "DECLINE" in a dramatic voice

ceres

Torchlight 2! Not turn-based but if you can get some time to sit down together it's very fun, and good single-player too.

Bowen

What, no Civilization 5/Free Civ? Heathens.

Aldo

Hero Academy looks cute, but I'm not sure about how much you gotta pay to play it properly, there's a lot of stuff on Steam and I have no idea what that is all about. Do you know what we would need @TehSpectre ?

We don't own iPads, so those are out.

I own Torchlight 2 but haven't played much of it, so maybe we can check that out some time.

Civ is interesting, but "hey, wanna play a game together? We're going to build a civilization from the ground up and manage a whole country" is a bit too far out there.

Thanks for all the suggestions so far!

Bowen

Civ5 has a speed thing so games can take less than an hour if you crank it up, btw :-P

kime

If you have iPhones, you can play Hero Academy for free.

On Steam, you don't need to purchase much to play. There are...five teams? Only one is free. They are all balanced (more or less, but definitely on a casual level). The different teams you can buy just have different styles and abilities from each other and the free team, but they aren't stronger. Just different.

You can play against all the teams even if you haven't bought them, so you both don't have to buy the same teams to play with each other.

To play on Steam you have to pay, like $5, and it also gets you the Team Fortress team along with the normal free team. After that the teams will be a bit cheaper I think, if you find yourself wanting to buy them.

There are also lots of cosmetic things to buy, should you want that, but they are entirely irrelevant to the gameplay.