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February 13, 2011 12:00 PM

Women of Reddit! Mrs. Funmonkey1 is looking for new pc or internet based games. Difficulty level: PopCap has been exhausted and farmville facebook type stuff not interested in.

Hi All. The SO has recently been a game rut after completing the Peggles series, Zuma, Plants and Zombies plus a couple others.

Looking for windows/internet games that can appeal to a 35+ year old women. Your help is greatly appreciated.

Popcap, card games and the facebook type stuff doesn't work for her.

posted by Funmonkey1 to computers & internet (25 answers total)

Women of Reddit!

?

Anyway, browse around Kongregate. There's almost 40,000 games on there, so presumably at least a few will fit the bill. Other folks may have more specific recommendations.
posted by jedicus at 12:07 PM on February 13, 2011 [1 favorite]

Well, has she checked out Jay Is Games? That would be my first stop.

After that I would look at Kongregate. My personal favorite game there is Cursed Treasure, though there are tons of games there to enjoy.

I tend to enjoy Internet based game recommendations from Not Martha and kottke.
posted by shesbookish at 12:11 PM on February 13, 2011

Oh, I must recommend BugWave
Absolutely played that game to death. Learning curve: not bad.

A recent fun game, similar to SimTower (though only good for one playthru):
Corporation Inc
Learning curve: Pretty easy if you played SimTower.

Other favorite Tower Defence games:
Little Protectors
Bloons 4
Garden Inventor

These are all rather silly, rather addictive and have pretty damn cute graphics. So hopefully that type of thing appeals to her. ;)
posted by Glinn at 12:18 PM on February 13, 2011 [1 favorite]

Does she like Time Management games? I'm a fan of the Dash games -- wedding, hotel, diner etc. Also the Sally's Salon/Spa ones.
posted by sugarfish at 12:27 PM on February 13, 2011

pogo.com It's better with a Club Pogo subscription, but it's not necessary. It has a lot of the popcap type stuff, but at least check it out to see if anything at all interests here.

If she hasn't discovered the world of tower defence games (rereading, if she liked Plants & Zombies, then she has), I highly suggest it. Start with the Bloons series - you can find it at Kongregate (link goes to kongregate search).
posted by cgg at 12:32 PM on February 13, 2011

WORLD OF GOO
posted by nadawi at 12:32 PM on February 13, 2011 [1 favorite]

Mumbo Jumbo makes a bunch of games that she might like.
posted by Uncle Jimmy at 12:35 PM on February 13, 2011

I enjoy various of the eyezmaze games, especially the Grow series. The games are a variety, but the Grow series specifically is a sort of puzzle - you have to try to click on various things to figure out the optimal order to "grow" things in, in order to get the highest score and have them interact with each other in the best way.

Kingdom of Loathing is also a lot of fun, if you have that type of sense of humor, it's quirky and absorbing, opening up more and more to a player as their character progresses and accomplishes more.

Then there are some I've found from them being linked on here already, but not on this page, such as the dismantlement series (solving smaller puzzles along the way to dismantle various objects), Psypets (a pet raising thing, but it doesn't usually eat up much time at a go), or Haven and Hearth, where you basically craft things, farm, and live your little character's life and develop him or her, although there's also a PvP aspect, thievery, etc., which may be off-putting.
posted by Stormfeather at 12:36 PM on February 13, 2011 [1 favorite]

Get Steam, buy Trine, Tidalis, Shatter.
posted by Sebmojo at 12:39 PM on February 13, 2011

Bubblez is my all-time favorite - relaxing but still challenging. For a little more brain involvement, Blocks with Letters On is great.
posted by still_wears_a_hat at 12:42 PM on February 13, 2011

World of Goo, definitely.

My Kingdom for the Princess (and MKftP 2), which is time management but doesn't really feel like it--it is not nearly as repetitive as most time management games.

Playing daily games (for example, Shockwave daily stuff) can be fun. I'm not actually any good at word games, but the daily ones are bite sized so I don't get frustrated and I'm actually getting better. I like Word Roundup Bingo, Picturiffic, Hidato, Quote Slide, Daily Diff, Hitori, Daily Jumble, Jumble Crosswords, Kakuro, and sometimes others depending on what mood I'm in.

Oh, I also liked Oasis but it's not as polished as the Popcap games.
posted by anaelith at 12:45 PM on February 13, 2011

This site has helped me waste a fair amount of time lately.

Not sure this is the best place to get a response from the women of Reddit, btw.
posted by J. Wilson at 12:47 PM on February 13, 2011 [1 favorite]

I'm 39, female, and addicted to Sushi Cat and its sequels.
posted by Daily Alice at 12:48 PM on February 13, 2011 [4 favorites]

I'm reading this because Haven and Hearth has crashed on me AGAIN and I am taking a break to sulk. It has issues. I don't know quite what these issues relate to and whether it's something to do with my computer (I've spent quite a bit of time playing a different Java game with more people and better graphics that occasionally hung on me for a few seconds, usually when in a really busy place; this one hangs when ANYTHING else comes on screen*) but there are also a few server issues too. And the whole thing of your little person not being able to work out how to run round trees on its own requires a degree of patience that shinier things ... don't.

* Wild boar are aggressive. They will run up and stomp all over you with their great big pointy hooves and there is nothing you can do but lie there stunned and hope they get bored before killing you, leaving you to teleport home and cry, instead of perma-killing you and leaving your skeleton to decorate the landscape forevermore. YMMV as to whether you think this is fun.
posted by Lebannen at 1:06 PM on February 13, 2011 [1 favorite]

oh, and i know i should be ashamed for it and it's pandering of the highest order, but i love, love, love diner dash and cake mania. i'm 29, female, and love a lot of the same types of games you talked about.

i might also mention that a DS would be a perfect handheld for her - there are a lot of great casual games on it.
posted by nadawi at 1:11 PM on February 13, 2011

Check out the game and games tags over on the Blue.

And, of course, Minecraft.
posted by Gator at 1:26 PM on February 13, 2011

A recent fun game, similar to SimTower (though only good for one playthru): Corporation Inc

Sounded fun and looked fun, until I got a couple of achievements in. The next one was "place a supervisor" and although I could choose that option on screen and see the supervisor on my cursor, it wouldn't let me place them anywhere. Same thing with an additional janitor. Plus, there's all these emotion thought bubbles with no clear explanation of how to make the people happy in the specified way. I enjoy these type of games, but not when it's "do this, except we're not actually going to let you do it and we won't explain why. ha ha!" Presumably I missed clicking on something somewhere which would explain things, but I was too annoyed, so I quit.
posted by booksherpa at 1:38 PM on February 13, 2011

I can spend hours playing Strike A Match-it's a vocabulary game that you can play against other people, but not a spelling game or word search, more logic than anything else.

Also, I'm 44 and absolutely love all the dash games. If you register at Playfirst you'll get emails about once a week with $2.99 games.
posted by hollygoheavy at 1:52 PM on February 13, 2011

Ah, I did find Corporation, Inc a bit buggy at times. To make folks happier, you need to hire HR reps (which need to be researched) and/or put nice things in their offices (plant, water machine, coffee machine, vending machine). Or upgrade their office, or promote them, but those things also take research. You need to place researchers in order to research stuff.

Also, you have to place each employee at a desk, and only one employee per desk. So even though a supervisor doesn't stay at her desk, she has to have her own. And since the janitors are only in at night, it's hard to tell which desk they belong to. So, generally, try all the desks and then place a new office with new desks if none seem available. (Also, with an employee selected, you can click through to pick different hair/gender types. You can also shift-click to place multiples of the same thing.)

(Dunno if you were looking for help or just wanted to vent. Sorry you got annoyed! It took me a bit of messing around with it to figure those things out.) Hm, this should probably go in a private mail? I have never actually done one of those so apologies for being a noob. :D
posted by Glinn at 1:59 PM on February 13, 2011

Your best bet is probably to go to BigFish, which is basically the most comprehensive site for casual PC games. You should be able to find most of the previous recommendations there, plus a lot more.
posted by tau_ceti at 2:09 PM on February 13, 2011

Oh hell yes. Seconding Minecraft, which, btw, is in beta and can be a little buggy. Play it on singleplayer though to get the hang of it, then multiplayer to really have fun. And make sure you get somewhere safe before nightfall!

Also, Plants Vs. Zombies. Very addictive.

You might enjoy Portal (singleplayer, I believe), if you enjoy puzzle games where there is a chance that you could die, in the later levels. The game rather teaches you how to build your skills though, if you go level by level.
posted by DisreputableDog at 3:46 PM on February 13, 2011

How about Big Fish Games? They usually have a sale every around every holiday and they are pretty inexpensive. I like the hidden object games personally.
posted by Calzephyr at 5:09 PM on February 13, 2011 [1 favorite]

I am going to nth World of Goo. Also check out:

Puzzle Quest Series
You Don't Know Jack
Club Pogo

You may want to consider a Wii with Ms. Funmonkey. It has a "pick-up-and-play" feel to it and a wide library of casual titles.
posted by AloneOssifer at 6:53 PM on February 13, 2011

While it hasn't been updated in years, Little Fluffy has a nice search/category system for these type of games and plenty of them still hold up.

There's also the Flash Friday tags here on Metafilter.

(Although, since I do have an account over there, I guess I also count as 'Women of Reddit')
posted by the latin mouse at 6:24 AM on February 14, 2011

I have very similar tastes as your wife and am currently (temporarily) unemployed. So I've been giving a lot of attention to this exact question recently. The problem I have with big game listing sites like kongregate is that there are so many games, I have no idea which ones I should play and it's a bit overwhelming. Then the problem I have with places like Big Fish etc is that I don't really want to pay for games (being unemployed etc), so all I can do it play the one hour demo. Although that does give an extra edge to the time management games!

There are still plenty of great games though. Firstly, I've worked my way through the top ten lists from indiegames.com in this FPP. I haven't liked all of them but I did love many, and they were all worth at least trying. It's a good blog in general.

From there I figured out that I like metroidvania games, so I googled for more of those. My favourites in that style were:
Endeavour - my absolute favourite, definitely try that one
Level Up
William and Sly
Knytt Stories - my second favourite, and Nifflas' other games are good too
There are plenty of others around in the same style and I spent basically a week just playing free browser versions of this genre.

I also specifically liked Octodad but it's more of a downloaded game style than a browser game (both in reality and in feel).

Lastly, I also spend time playing games on neopets.com. The account is free and you don't have to interact in any other way than play the games (the pets don't die if you never feed them so you can just ignore them), and there are many popcap take offs and similar style games.

I was going to answer this yesterday but got caught up playing Corporation, so thanks for asking the question!
posted by shelleycat at 1:02 AM on February 15, 2011