So far I’m enjoying it! It has a soft progression limiter where you get cursed in such a way that monsters get increasingly more damaging every encounter… this goes away after you run into this person a few times.

My only concern is that I’ll feel the need to replay it once all of the content is there… which I guess isn’t too bad!

Ah yeah I could see that. My family got into it for a few months and was a lot of fun. I did have pretty good experiences with randos though.

Maybe give FFXIV a try! There’s a pretty expanded free portion that lets you play through a large portion of the game. I enjoyed the gameplay and there’s something resembling a story.

Gotcha! Thanks for the clarification!

I just recently started playing OW2 again after several years. I was able to unlock all of the heroes just by playing. I didn’t pay anything. My kids also have unlocked the vast majority without paying anything.

Is the only difference here that you won’t have to get to level 30 or whatever on the free tier battle pass?

Since everyone’s mentioned the standards.

I’ve really enjoyed playing Tails of Iron (metroidvania with a focus on learning bosses attacks) lately. For programming games, I really liked Shenzhen IO (You create hardware with something resembling an Assembly language and a printable manual) and Human Resources Machine (drag and drop assembly programming)

I also have a soft spot for anything from Ska Studios (I maed a game with zombies in it, salt and sanctuary, salt and sacrifice, dishwasher, Charlie murder, and a bunch of older games that are probably not playable anymore)

Also looks like everyone else forgot to mention the great game that is Undertale as well.

Apparently it’s called AI Shark now! Because it uses AI to cheat!

For anyone confused about the Netflix bit. If you’re subscribed to Netflix, they offer a bunch of free mobile games that you can download and play. This works pretty similar to Apple Arcade. If you log into Netflix on your phone you should see a row of games that you can play.

I agree! I’ve never been able to play the newer patch because I have the switch but I’ve spent many hours playing this game with the family!

CounterStrike 2 came out last Wednesday. Basically the same game as CSGO but with some quality of life and graphical updates. Might be worth taking a shot at getting back into it.

There’s some platforming but Hollow Knight is an excellent game if you enjoy metroidvania types.

If you have someone to play with you may want to give local couch games a try. I’m ignoring a few of your thematic dislikes because they aren’t really a critical part of most of these games.

Games like:

Lovers in a dangerous space time

Boomerangfu

It takes two

Untitled goose game (single player is also fun if you enjoy harassing people as a goose)

Unravel

Duck game

Portal 2 (single player is great)

Cup head (single player is also great)

Haven’t played that particular Shantae game, but I found the series off putting to play in front of my kids due to the high amount of fan service. Seems like not what op might not be going for here.