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Stardew Valley would be my vote. Some others that come to mind are Slay the Spire or Skyrim. My adhd wife plays cracked sims 4 with every mod known to mankind. She doesn't even play the game. Just creates characters and builds houses.
https://store.steampowered.com/recommended/morelike/app/960090/
Yeah, honestly Stardew should be higher up. It's the most chill grind you can have and is perfect for ADHD as you can do so many different things: fish, forage, garden, farm, dungeon brawl, decorate and so much more. Plus all the hidden little secrets.
Stardew valley is definitely a good choice here I would think. Also Starbound, also by Chucklefish, might fit the bill too.
Some games that flip that focus switch and suck me in without heavy gameplay :
-Stardew Valley (honestly, probably the most fitting recommendation here)
-Factorio (turn off the bugs for a more casual experience), alternatively there's Satsfactory
-OpenTTD or Transport Fever 2
Diverging from the top-down style:
-Oddly enough, Farming Simulator 22 (there's always that next thing to do so you can build up)
-Space Engineers
-Minecraft
Vampire Survivors, Minecraft, Terraria, Elder Scrolls Online, Guild Wars 2, Monster Hunter World
I see GuildWars2 I upvote. I'm a simple man.
But truth be told maybe not the best here, might be a bit on the more complex side. But absolutely worth a try. And they'll release an expansion soon™ so it'll be more lively during release.
You could spend hours a day managing the loot alone!
It doesn't have to be complicated, you can just run around and explore if you want.
Slay the Spire and Monster Train get my votes. She likes strategy like BTD so I think she'll like these ones too. I think both are free on Game Pass.
Also Monster Sanctuary is a great Pokemon -like
Oh yeah she loved StS. I think Monster Train might of been on the shit list, i'll double check. There were some other popular pokemans rip offs too that we looked into but they were also on the shit list. It's like trying to roll a max on d20 :P Thanks
Another card-based one that I don't see getting a lot of attention is Cultist Simulator. I find it really fun/cool.
Started Valley, for sure.
If she wants a grundy, but casual game, get her playing a MMO like Guild Wars 2. It's horizontal progression so you are not competing to get better gear all the time. It's just casual grind to get fashion, new titles, achievements etc. I am sure she will be addicted.
Sadly Started Valley didn't get started, it got the 'meh' treatment (Even i was surprised!). I think it may of been the heart-fuckery and talking she wasn't too invested in, despite the game being amazing.
I actually don't like the talking to people and offering gifts and crap... I installed a mod that's called "part of the community". You passively gain hearts.
The logic is, if you live near the people and do work around town and stuff, they must gain some appreciation for you. Makes the relationship grind way more bearable. (I'm diagnosed with ADHD too).
You can play the game without doing any of that friendship stuff. I do.
Maybe it's too out of the box but cities skylines is pretty accessible but you can get lost in details when you get into it and add some mods.
If she liked Vampire Survivors, check out Brotato. It just released version 1.0 and is quite fantastic both in theme and gameplay.
My suggestion, since you mentioned classic Pokemon and RPG Maker, is Pokemon Infinite Fusion, a fan made Pokemon game.
It is mostly a remake of the plot of the first games (Red/Blue/Yellow) but with a twist that you can now fuse any two Pokemon into one. For example, you could fuse your Bulbasaur and a Pidgey to make a new single Pokemon called Bulbagey, a flying grass type that has all the moves of both Pokemon, and can even evolve!
It is available for free and runs on PC, or with some effort it can run on Mac or Android.
Yeah, I've got it working on Android, but not very well. It crashes 100% of the time when a water battle starts (such as when surfing or fishing) maybe I'll try futzing around some more and patch it up a little more, but I have other fan games to play on my phone.
Every few years I download a windows 98 emulator and install my copy of the 90s Blade Runner game, and see if I can replay it. But it always crashes at the same point early on (using the "enhance!" thingy) and is unplayable. When I search it up there's all kinds of posts of people stuck at the same point and somehow nobody has been able to find a way to fix it.
It's too bad, that game was a lot of fun. The branching plot and randomization of who turns out to be a replicant made each playthrough unique.
Okay this is weird. This post was about a new Blade Runner game when I started typing it but it turned into someone asking about grindy games for his wife? Is Lemmy like hogwarts staircases?
Blade Runner was re-released with two versions not too long ago.
The Enhanced Edition:
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1678420/Blade_Runner_Enhanced_Edition/
Largely disliked by the community because they changed too much.
The Original Version:
https://www.gog.com/en/game/blade_runner
The original version is the same old game that you remember but now powered by ScummVM, so no more loading up emulators.
Since you own the game, you can just download ScummVM and point it to the folder where you have it installed. More info here.
I can't speak to the portal that brought you here, but the Blade Runner PC game was a formative experience in my life, so we can agree on loving it, wherever it is you're from/supposed to be.
Might take a look at Temtem and Cassette Beasts to get that Pokemon fix.
The Creeper World series, or Kingdom Rush for tower defense a la Bloons... possibly Mindustry or Factorio as well. Start with Mindustry and if it does it for her then you can grab Factorio as well.
She might also vibe with roguelikes considering she liked Vampire Survivors so Enter the Gungeon, Binding of Isaac, Realm of the Mad God, Slay the Spire, or 20xx/30xx might be up her alley as well.
I played Astroneer with my wife, who's not really a gamer. She had a blast and got so into it.
Shin Megami Tensei / Persona are like a dark themed Pokemon.
Incredibly biased suggestions, but...
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1584090/Touhou_Mystias_Izakaya/ - A cozy little management similar to Cook/Serve/Delicious and those old... Diner Dash??? flash games.
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1637730/Crystal_Project/ - Takes a lot of cues from the older Final Fantasy games and has a super enjoyable world to explore (at least in my opinion). The recent addition of mod support means you can maybe??? help tailor it to her liking.
edit: You might also want to look into some of the better RPG Maker games that were around before the genre(??) started popping up on Steam! A lot of them were hobby projects and totally free.
Might not be quite the grind she's looking for but I can't enough of stardew valley lately.
Bought DiabloIV, played for a week, my gf convinced me to go StardewValley and I haven't touched Diablo since... 70€ well spent. /s
If she likes old-school and RPGs, check out Another Eden, by Masato Kato the scenario screen-writer for the beloved cult classic Chrono Trigger. The latter is one of if not THE best RPG games of all time (the art was pixellated but it was in the 90s and also a stylistic choice even at that time), while the former is a mobile game (there's a Steam version but it... is not as easy to work with). A warning that the installer craps out most of the time but maybe try to not download everything at once to begin with anyway if you aren't sure about it, and once you get past that, it's a GREAT game!:-P
It offers a gorgeous graphics & sountrack especially: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mx-WenrEI-8.
Ffxiv has a free trial that allows you to play up to level 60 and includes the first expansion. Story is fantastic and you can easily spend hundreds of hours just in the free trial.
Monster Hunter Rise might be good. It's more simplified compared to other Monster Hunters, so it's perfect for someone new to the series. The basic gameplay loop is pick a monster to hunt, go find it, fight it, loot it, go back to town, upgrade gear, repeat. But it's single player or 4 player co-op, so you're completely free to enjoy at your own pace. No need to worry about grinding for the best gear or anything like that, but you can spend hours getting the meta armor too if that's your thing. Plus, jumping around like a ninja is pretty cool
I can recommend backpack hero
of course, if you wanna maximize grindiness and low intensity, oldschool runescape will top the chart. Just mouse clicking.
Try Graveyard Keeper https://store.steampowered.com/app/599140/Graveyard_Keeper/ and it’s only $7 right now
Lots of great suggestions but one that I haven't seen is rimworld. It's difficult to explain but it's sort of like a mix between a base builder and a story generator. It's incredibly addictive once you get going though.
I can't recommend Disgaea enough. 5 was the one that I played and I feel like has the right balance of nearly infinite grinding vs interesting content vs reason to actually grind, with also having a relatively achievable and observable ending. All the games follow the same basic gameplay premise so pick the one you like, I think D2 has a lot of old school fans and 6 was poorly received. Disgaea 5 as far as I know is the fan favorite "modern" Disgaea game.
It even has a demo if I recall so you can try it before committing to it. Just know that the demo can only go into the very basic gameplay loop because an awful lot of things are locked behind the first 10 or so hours of story gameplay. But if you like the loop (and the general gist of how the gameplay works, that will remain) then it's totally worth it. It's a game that one could easily sink 2,000+ hours into if it catches their fancy. It's also a game that's easy to pick up and put down because they're always some bit of something that you can do. An hour spent anywhere doing anything will get you a bit of an upgrade, and you just pick the things you like and craft them into the most obscenely overpowered bullshit you could ever conceive of. Stat points regularly reach into the quadrillions. By endgame you're expected to have spells that destroy the entire battlefield being spammed multiple times per turn. It's loads of fun.
Stardew Valley, Terraria, Graveyard Keeper come to mind.
Kingdom Two Crowns. Deceptively simple controls but highly addictive gameplay with self discovery of the mechanics
As someone with ADHD Pokemon fan games have been my thing, especially side loading them to my phone.
Pokemon Infinite Fusions has by far been the stand out, filled with endless "ooh, but what about this?!" Moments. It's a new, fun twist on the classic Kanto story, and even features Johto as an absolutely massive post game. It's the only one I have to play on my PC though.
Pokemon XenoVerse is great as well, unique designs, a compelling story and a surprisingly well balanced new type. This one works very well on phones except for Pokemon centers becoming T H E V O I D.
Pokemon insurgence has been the latest to join my collection. It's far and away the most maturely themed Pokemon game I've played (though I've heard uranium is more mature) I'm not finished yet so I can't comment on quality. In lieu of fakemon they opted to instead create a massive number of Delta species, a take on regional variants which have all been interesting at the very least. It's the one that runs best natively on my phone, with only the occasional glitched text
Ollaan pelattu tyttöystävän kanssa Lego Star Wars Skywalker Sagaa!
Any of the Dynasty Warriors games
My time at Portia has that hook, I bet she will like that, I've seen slay the spire suggested too that took 500hours from me, my most played casual game is the Battlegrounds on hearthstone, it's free too
I keep seeing My Time at Portia and think I might like it, but I haven't taken the plunge yet.
It's a great little game, it's casual, charming and fun. If you enjoy it, they've also released My Time at Sandrock which is almost identical (gameplay wise) but with a brand new town, people etc.
My time in Sandrock is still in early access, but they expect to release in September