My daughter (4) is very into exploring cities, homes and villages in Skyrim, feeding aliens in No Man’s Sky, and cleaning houses in House Flipper. She gets annoyed in games like House Flipper because she can’t leave the property to explore all of the visible houses on the block. I’d like to find other PC games that are relatively kid-friendly (or at least with my guidance and supervision) and easy for her to just wander about and be nosy.

Any suggestions? Simple adventure/fantasy would be great and provide us with something to progress through together, but anything that lets you explore a neighborhood and/or poke around in buildings and such would be perfect. I’m picking up Goat Simulator today for that exact purpose.

I appreciate it in advance.

  • haui@lemmy.giftedmc.com
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    10 months ago

    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.

        • Jakeroxs@sh.itjust.works
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          10 months ago

          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.

          • haui@lemmy.giftedmc.com
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            10 months ago

            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.

            • Jakeroxs@sh.itjust.works
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              10 months ago

              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.

              • haui@lemmy.giftedmc.com
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                10 months ago

                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.

                • Jakeroxs@sh.itjust.works
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                  10 months ago

                  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.

                  • haui@lemmy.giftedmc.com
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                    10 months ago

                    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.

    • Carighan Maconar@lemmy.world
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      10 months ago

      Still in early development, probably not that suited for a kid. The bespoke and enclosed experience of Minecraft would be better, assuming you can turn the shop off or limit it in some way.

      • haui@lemmy.giftedmc.com
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        10 months ago

        I dont know where you have your information from but it works just like minecraft does, no difference. Especially for a really young kid that probably barely would press „play game“ there’s no issues afaik.

        Why do you suggest something that you have to assume things about? You cant turn off the shop in bedrock minecraft. It is part of the ui (made to pull kids into microtransactions) exactly the reason why I would not suggest it to kids - or anyone - in the first place.

          • haui@lemmy.giftedmc.com
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            10 months ago

            I checked the page and your claim is false. It is not in early development and the list of missing features has 4 points in comparison to 40+ points that are on par with minecraft.

            Its also incredibly easy to install and free so no harm in trying.