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.

      • Jakeroxs
        11·
        11 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
          31·
          11 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
            7·
            11 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
              14·
              11 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
                4·
                11 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
                  12·
                  11 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.

                  • Jakeroxs
                    3·
                    11 months ago

                    I think the problem is you seemingly don’t know how a discussion and difference of opinon works.

                    I’m not taking your “facts” and throwing them in the trash, I was point for point giving my take on your concerns.

                    I was genuinely curious why someone would play minetest over MC and wanted to know what pros/cons exist, and the pros/cons you gave didn’t resonate with me.

                    Lemmy has forced telemetry, for example, every time you upvote or downvote something, that information is easily seen by instance admins. The question becomes is that telemetry harmful in any way to the end user, in Lemmys case, I can very easily see how that could be used to harm another user. In Minecrafts case… I don’t see it.

                    MTX again aren’t in Java, which is again why I stated to just use Java in my first response.

                    It’s not impossible to play offline, there are many very easy workarounds available.

                    There are tens of thousands of mods minimum for minecraft, so yes it is fair to say that modders got around it. I’m not talking piracy, I mean large content additions such as Mekanism, Create, etc…

                    Yes it is a plus that minetest is more open source, but does a 4 YO looking for a game to play, who will likely socialize with other children who are more likely to know what minecraft is vs minetest really understand or care in the slightest that their knockoff mc game is open source? Come on man.

                    I’m also going to point out I didn’t downvote you at all, and wasn’t at all trying to be rude or disrespectful, simply stating my opinions as a long time MC player, my first paragraph of this response being an emotionally charged/rude response not withstanding, as I was irritated at the strange emotional response you had to what I thought was an innocuous discussion.

                    I do apologize for the first paragraphs rudeness, but am leaving it there to not hide my misstep.