Cute Bird Games with Simple Controls that are Not Boring
Games my wife will enjoy.
C.B.G.S.C.N.B.s
Or: games my wife will play
My wife isn't really into games
and that's totally fine! It's my hobby really, and as far as hobbies in common, we've got plenty we enjoy already.
It is nice though, sometimes, to be able to share the activity I both engage in and develop for, so I've made some effort towards finding some games that would catch her eye.
The first game we played all the way through, and that she couldn't put down, was Duck Detective: The Secret Salami. This was the foot in the door, the success from which I could apply perturbations to find the formula for a successful experience.
And so I derived C.B.G.S.C.N.B.
The first piece of this puzzle is the game's theme and characters. It's gotta be cute, ideally it has birds - which birds? The official top 5:
- Duck
- Goose
- Parrot
- Pigeon
- Peacock
Is this an exhaustive list? No - I just told you this is the top 5, mate.
Now, Duck Detective nailed these criteria out the gate: Bird? Duck. Cute? As heck.
The next piece is simple controls. As veteran players, we often think of games like Portal as great starter games, something casual and funny to get non-gamers into the hobby.
We have no idea what aspects of interfacing with games are hard because our muscle memory is so finely tuned that every conventionally-controlled game is second nature to us.
Let me tell you, the single hardest control element for my wife? Camera movement. If a game is in first person, forget about it. Portal's a non-starter; even Frog Detective's opening scene proved to be quite a high friction experience because of this.
And so we learn: the more autonomous the camera is, the better.
Duck Detective, once again, nails this. It's essentially point and click, no need to finely control your motion or look around with a camera.
The last? The most nebulous of them, although thankfully my wife and I have a lot in common in this regard when it comes to games. Is it... Boring?
A lot of games with simple controls end up at risk of being kinda dull to play. Lots of dialogue, long cutscenes, very basic sequences and puzzles without much to keep you engaged.
My wife's immediate reaction to more than 2 dialogue boxes in a row is the same as mine: start mashing the skip button until you finally get control of your character back.
Duck Detective was at its riskiest here - there is quite a lot of talking to people, but it's funny and engaging, with a focused brevity that keeps it from dragging on or wearing through the tenuous patience in those critical first minutes.
I'll be posting some short reviews on the C.B.G.S.C.N.B.s that we play, including the ones we already beat.
The best of these have a level of accessibility and mindfulness that is so easily absent when games are designed by people like you or me - without the assumption of muscle memory and all the stuff we just take for granted as understood about the ways video game worlds behave.
