cross-posted from: https://lemm.ee/post/40448411
Hi, I have a primary school girl who wants her share of gaming on the family android tablet.
While finding open source or commercial games with no ads that boys like is doable, I haven’t been able to find the kind of games a girl wants:
- with cute graphics
- where you care for dolls or pet
- no ads or subscriptions, no endless DLC.
Do you have any recommendations for android games that fit the bill?
The image is a screenshot of cry babies, a game that she’d like to play very much but constantly nags you to buy new content.
here’s a neat trick:
EVERY GAME IS A GAME FOR GIRLS
oh and also: android games for “primary school children” are just scams 99.99% of the time. buy games, don’t do ad-based games, no micro-transactions.
I 100% agree. But she wants cute dolls with big eyes.
Bloons Tower Defense 5/6 are great for kids. They do have microtransactions but they don’t nag you to buy anything, and everything is easily obtainable just by playing. Also, nothing that you can buy is “content.”
If you’re able/willing to download ROMs and emulators, the first handful of generations of Pokemon games are great for touchscreen/mobile. My favorite was always Pokemon Emerald (GBA) but you can easily emulate all the games up to about X2/Y2 (DS) on any modern Android device. (I use “MyBoy!” for the GBA games, but PokeMMO is good for combining both the DS and GBA games into more of a mobile game experience rather than an emulator experience, if that makes sense. Everything is just easier, and probably a lot more accessible for a primary school kid.)
It’s also worth noting that girls like a lot of the same kinds of games boys like. 🤷♀️ Just give her as many good options as you can find and let her decide what she finds fun. Me and my sister had a blast playing CoD Zombies on our aunt’s tablet when we were kids.
Id say Scribblenauts would fit
Currently next to my partner who is playing/using a app called Finch thats a mix between Sims decoration and a habit tracker, and of checks all your boxes. The artwork is adorable.
That said, all of the games I play are for girls, because I am a girl
I don’t think they do actual games for kids anymore, they are money-traps most of the time.
I’d search instead for old console games and play them on an emulator on Android.
It might be very confusing for a child if she has never played on a console though, since no touchscreen support and having buttons on the screen instead.
I strongly believe that different games are like different subjects in school: it does not depend on gender, but rather how that person thinks and what types of tasks they enjoy.
That being said, I would highly recommend Stardew Valley. (Minecraft and Terraria are pretty great too, although, I don’t know if I’d consider them ‘cute’).
Shattered Pixel Dungeon is a perfect game for girls. And yes, you can care for pets there.
Ahahah, but no, she doesn’t like it.
Depends on age a lot.
My girls have mostly played Toca Boca World and Roblox (playing Adopt Me or Brookhaven).
What is your experience with Roblox? I have only glanced at it and it seems cool, but I am worried but the liberal use of in game transactions.
Roblox is a mess, but in an alright way. There are many different games and investing into it is useless, because kids will move from one game to the next soon enough. I have never paid for Robux and never intend to. The kids keep playing it without the buy in. It’s something everyone in school does, so they play together and change game constantly to whatever is trendy.
I’ve only barely played it myself to see what it is like and if the chat was problematic. It seems safe enough, but there are limits to the gameplay when not paying. Most of the games are pretty pointless anyway and don’t require Robux, but the kids are still entertained for a while in each game. Robux might make sense in the more complex games, but I refuse to pay for it.
As for paid games, I’ve paid for Minecraft for pc and android and that’s worth it on both platforms. I have accounts for the entire family so we can join each other and they can have friends over who don’t have their own accounts or don’t know the logins. It’s relatively cheap and only a one time purchase. It can be tricky with the Java and bedrock editions not playing along, so that’s why I just bought more accounts. There are free clones of Minecraft for android that are soo close that my youngest didn’t even realise that it wasn’t the original.
My oldest has also herself paid for the horse game Star Stable for pc, which is a great game, but also expensive. This is more like buying an actual game. It’s basically an 3D adventure game with horses. No microtransactions if fully paid for. The account also works for android, but she uses the pc mostly. Again, this is because her best friends are playing it. She has no interest in horses, but the game is good. It’s sort of like GTA but instead of driving cars and shooting guns, they ride horses and run errands for the stables or something. It’s possible to play for free, but only until it gets more interesting.
It does not require great screen-tapping skills, characters are designed by Disney, and it’s premium.
