If you don’t have an Epic Games account, you should make one to take advantage of their weekly free games. Thoughts about the company aside, you occasionally get access to some great games like Borderlands 3 and Prey.

I recommend Daniel Mullins games if you like games that challenge the forth wall. Pony Island and Inscryption were fun. I’ve bought The Hex but haven’t sat down and committed the time to it yet, but it was very highly recommended to me.

If you like games like Undertale, it’s sequel Deltarune is free on Windows. Two chapters out so far.

If you happen to be a Pokémon fan, it’s not really AAA stuff that needs a gaming machine, but I recommend Pokémon Reborn. It’s a fully complete fan game that I’ve been following for years during development. It’s also free to download and supports online PvP and wonder trade.

Congratulations on your gaming pc!

I’ll split it into games your daughter could play, and some that could be fun to watch and get her to interact with. This is coming from someone who was playing Pinball 3D in preschool, so your mileage when bringing up a gaming child may vary.

One thing I haven’t seen here is casual games. The less deep stuff that can still provide a lot of entertainment for kids that may just be starting to get a hang of things like computer mice and keyboard controls.

Alice Greenfingers (1 and 2) is a casual farm game featuring the titular character starting her own farm and selling the produce. No keyboard controls, just mouse controls and it was a pretty great introduction for me as a kid to finer motor movements.

The Diner Dash series is also a pretty good one to start. They have some variations, I know there’s a detective game under the franchise that you could get input from your daughter on as you go through to encourage interaction.

There’s the FATE (the WildTangent one, not the anime one) games, where it was one of the first games I remember that let me create my own female character. It’s a diablo ripoff with much simpler mechanics. Gameplay can be repetitive but it’s still a very fun, mouse-heavy game I still go back to. You can also choose between a cat and dog pet, and feed them special fish you find to turn them into awesome creatures like flaming unicorns!! (I’m sorry, I really love this game) i it’s certainly playable with not much reading skill and therefore should be okay for a child, even if there’s your standard combat violence.

For games that are fun to watch, I remember playing a Hello Kitty game for the PS2. There’s still elements like hitting things, but it’s overall a much cuter aesthetic.

There’s also a PS2 Avatar: The Last Airbender video game that’s based on the show (highly recommended watch even for kids), so you could relive the show you’ve just watched by playing the game with them. It’s 2 player.

Crash Bandicoot Warped - while you play often as Crash, in the latest game I think it’s possible to play everything as his sister Coco, who was already the only choice for some stages in the original game. Violence is mild, and was also one of my early games growing up. Fun to watch and play for kids.

I think there’s a game called Infinity Nikki (PS4, PS5, PC, Android) that’s a dress up platformer game. New outfits unlock different skills. The only issue is I’ve never played it, and it seems like microtransactions may inevitably come into play. Take caution. It’s a crazy pretty game, though…

The Marvelous Miss Take (PC, and some consoles iirc) is a stealth game about a young woman trying to pull off several art heists. It features a female main character and is generally quite fun.

Hope this helps :)

I wish you guys all the fun!

Man, I remember laying my hands on Pokémon Blue before I could even read most of the words there. My uncle had bought it for my cousin brother who was 4 years younger than me, lol.

The older Pokémon games are a linear enough experience that literacy helps, but isn’t required since as a child they’ll likely explore everything anyway and will eventually trigger the right flags to allow for progress. I played like that up till RSE.

Looking at the pricing for the Framework 16 (prebuilt with Windows, to benchmark), it’s just under x2 the price of the Acer Nitro 5 my partner bought last year with a 3050. Not the worst proposition assuming most of the laptop’s components make it 10 years and the only upgrades/replacements are to CPU, GPU and battery.

The main concern is longevity since it’s a relatively new company. It needs early adopters to commit that initial investment and pay the extra now for the company to survive and scale, and it needs staying power and time in the market in order to attract more confidence and convert sales.

I would like to see it succeed since my personal goal is to just reduce the e-waste I contribute as a heavy tech user. Laptops are just e-waste walking at the moment so I think any reduction to throwing out the whole thing every time it starts to fall behind current developments is good.

Awareness is growing and there is a demand. We just have to see if the demand is great enough to push user repairability in tech.

I have been following the developments for Framework, and really hope the modular design for laptops will go the way of the usb in adoption throughout the industry. We could benefit from less becoming e-waste.

Based on the coverage I’ve seen and what I understand, likely there would be a new motherboard and larger base to house bigger parts and the screen would be maintained.

I do believe they’ll be able to achieve the goal of making laptop lifespans last beyond 10 years, which is why we’d like ways to upgrade. I’m cautiously optimistic about developments here.

I learned to crack open my laptop shell and replace the battery, which saved me 30 bucks when capacity was dead and I was getting a spicy pillow in the works.

My model had an easily searchable servicing guide, and I’d followed it to replace the thermal paste as well. That being said, I am looking for a future replacement as it no longer runs some indie games I have and there’s no way to upgrade its internals to newer standards. My dear laptop is future e-waste, as it pains me to say.

This industry needs to go back to focus on repairability. It would push for more sustainable part and product designs, which has become a big factor in purchase consideration lately.

I have not, actually. I’ll give it a try. Thanks!

The controversy was one thing, but the game itself really could’ve used more optimisation. I played through once and now occasionally go back and play with mods on, and the performance issues really does make you wish the game ran better.

I was definitely a bit put off by the graphics from the Hex, and didn’t really get the references to it in Inscryption. I might give it a try since you’re recommending it.

Pony Island was a hell of a game, though. I remember watching the gameplay videos and being impressed at how innovative Daniel Mullins games were.

The FATE series. No, not the anime, the Diablo ripoff computer game with stolen music sold by WildTangent. I was a kid that got by playing only demos, and this game was one I reinstalled over and over again to get those free plays.

It’s a pretty simple dungeon crawling game with procedurally generated floors where you have to get to floor 5x and defeat the named boss there so you can reincarnate and start it over again.

I reinstall it every couple of years to play it. It’s got hardly any story, quests are generated for the floors you’re about to reach, stats are randomly generated. It’s just pure gameplay, though a bit repetitive as it can be. I love that it has a similar fish mechanic to Torchlight for your pets.

I remember seeing a nostalgia post on the game on Reddit and the developer of the game series had commented on the post. It was like meeting one of your heroes. Definitely very memorable for me.

The third game supposedly has all the content from the first two, so here’s the steam link if anyone’s curious.

If you follow the side quest introducing that area, I think there’s an NPC that mentioned that tidbit. Though, my friend didn’t remember that until I brought it up too, so you may have just not encountered it.

The glider placement was a lot less obvious in TOTK for sure.

Similarly, I was completely ignorant about what the chasms were for until 2 days in when my friend casually drops that she’s been exploring [redacted because spoiler markdown isn’t working for me] and I went “Wait, there’s a WHAT?”

I’d missed a pretty critical side quest and I probably wouldn’t have noticed if my friend hadn’t told me.

Times like these are when our inclination to ignore quests for later really bites us in the behind…

As an 8 year old without much of a guide at all, I was a very proud Magician on MapleStory… one who dealt violence with her trusty magic wands and staves… physically.

I didn’t understand what skills and hotkeys were until several years down the line when reading comprehension and life experience improved.

does it rely on the DS’ dual screen much?

Not really. However, gameplay gets you to use the touch screen to move the main character in the game, so I anticipate that the switch version will either support touch, or make movement possible with joystick control.

I haven’t tested it yet myself, so I can’t confirm this though.

I only bought a 3DS in the last couple years, but you bet Ghost Trick was one of the games I have on my SD card!

(we had distribution right for Capcom in Australia)

That’s hella cool, for one. Please introduce me to your job /jk

It kind of faded away since Capcom just stopped porting it to newer and newer devices. The DS was a long time ago.

I remember a couple years back when I saw an artist selling a sticker of one of the characters and we shared that brief moment of enthusiasm. I’m really happy to see that it will receive love again. The newer generations will probably also come to appreciate this game.

I played most of TOTK with a controller because my joycon camera drift really messed with the gyro. Got the hall effect sticks installed last week and I’m hoping this is the end of drift for me.

I saw a few posts on twitter about these hall effect sticks still presenting with drift even with calibration. Not sure why, but I hope it’s just user error that can be corrected and not another hardware problem.

I used to subscribe to r/freegames so this rocks! Thanks for creating it!

Ghost Trick: Phantom Detective. I played it a decade ago on iOS, loved it, and thought it was never going to see a modern release again.

I’m thrilled to see its recent release on the Switch and PC because it truly deserves a try if you like a good story and time traveling based puzzles.

Both are great games! Inscryption was the only game I’ve ever bought on launch after seeing gameplay videos and I had no regrets. Hope you enjoy it too!

I honestly haven’t yet. I’ve seen it here and there back when it crossed over with Maplestory.

I think back then I felt like I was too attached to the 2d side scroller style of game MapleStory was to give it a try, though I’m a bit more tolerant of 3D styles now. That, and my computer was too old to even run games like Dragon Nest, so I was out of luck with 3D.

I might give it a go sometime though. Thanks for the suggestion.

I’ve played MapleStory on and off for about 15 years now. I do miss when the leveling curve was so ridiculously high there was a lot more enjoyment in a type of “open world” way where you’d set your own goals in the game and that’s how you spent your time.

I have lovely memories of my maple “boyfriend” at the time taking me to Florina Beach. Us desperately trying not to die because we weren’t going to survive touching the jumping crabs. We ended up pulling our chairs out on a platform, and he’d aggro some crabs so they’d keep jumping up at us. It was pretty romantic, to be honest.

Then there’s the ship to Orbis, the free market, the hidden paths along Lith Harbour, the slime tree, heneseys hunting ground, the sleepywood hot springs, the showa town sauna (which was notoriously hard to return from, given the level of the area, but the TOWELS). All places I remember very, very fondly.

It wasn’t the way the game was meant to be played, but it’s those moments that stick with you. That was in the time when MapleStory was considered more a glorified chat client.

I can still name and place most of the original BGMs, and I still keep up with the latest music (look up studio Necord on YT, they even do versions of songs in different styles!) and it’s a fun Easter egg when creators use them in their videos.

I still remember the very kind people who took me along with them, even though I couldn’t really type or communicate digitally at that age, and was basically a melee magician. Wish it was easier to keep in touch with them back in the 2000s.

Maplestory is more functionally a game today than it used to be, but that’s also why I feel like it’s lost its magic.

As I’ve grown up, the repetition of the grind and dailies ate into my dwindling amount of free time. With ADHD, dailies sometimes feels akin to torture you endure to get a shiny new damage skin or event cash item, and I was stuck in that event cycle loop for a while before I quit again around last year.

I still love MapleStory. The new music they’re still putting out (while occasionally a miss) is still really good, and I enjoy that. But I don’t think I’ll ever grind to 250 and beyond (I was mostly leveling up with level potions before I quit the last time) because it’s just not me.

I sort of mourn that, my loss of patience. I’ve become picky with the games I play, less patient to pick up and learn games that may not suit my stylistic preference.

I’ve tried some MMOs, a bit of Guild Wars 2, some Archeage 2, Eden Eternal, Eve Online (ok Eve is kinda cool but I’m not smart enough for this game) but I think I’m no longer an MMORPG person :(

I don’t have the time to invest in them anymore, and I now prefer singleplayer indie games (because I have no friends, lol).

I also avoid gacha MMORPGs like the plague (Yes, ironic considering MapleStory is often cited as the first gacha game, but to my credit I still have never spent a cent on it), so I’ve never touched Genshin and games in that vein and risk developing a gacha addiction. A gaming dependency is enough for me.

I know my comment wasn’t fully answering what you asked, but thank you (if you’ve read this far) for letting me indulge in my very fond, even formative memories of MapleStory.