I have ADHD, so music helps me maintain focus when I’m (usually) unmedicated. That being said, I do have a very strong media dependency, so I get where you’re coming from.

I click on titles I find interesting, but I’m personally not a scroller. But I have friends that do go down that rabbit hole for large chunks of time at a time.

Short form content can be scarily addicting.

I’ll split it into games your daughter could play, and some that could be fun to watch and get her to interact with. This is coming from someone who was playing Pinball 3D in preschool, so your mileage when bringing up a gaming child may vary.

One thing I haven’t seen here is casual games. The less deep stuff that can still provide a lot of entertainment for kids that may just be starting to get a hang of things like computer mice and keyboard controls.

Alice Greenfingers (1 and 2) is a casual farm game featuring the titular character starting her own farm and selling the produce. No keyboard controls, just mouse controls and it was a pretty great introduction for me as a kid to finer motor movements.

The Diner Dash series is also a pretty good one to start. They have some variations, I know there’s a detective game under the franchise that you could get input from your daughter on as you go through to encourage interaction.

There’s the FATE (the WildTangent one, not the anime one) games, where it was one of the first games I remember that let me create my own female character. It’s a diablo ripoff with much simpler mechanics. Gameplay can be repetitive but it’s still a very fun, mouse-heavy game I still go back to. You can also choose between a cat and dog pet, and feed them special fish you find to turn them into awesome creatures like flaming unicorns!! (I’m sorry, I really love this game) i it’s certainly playable with not much reading skill and therefore should be okay for a child, even if there’s your standard combat violence.

For games that are fun to watch, I remember playing a Hello Kitty game for the PS2. There’s still elements like hitting things, but it’s overall a much cuter aesthetic.

There’s also a PS2 Avatar: The Last Airbender video game that’s based on the show (highly recommended watch even for kids), so you could relive the show you’ve just watched by playing the game with them. It’s 2 player.

Crash Bandicoot Warped - while you play often as Crash, in the latest game I think it’s possible to play everything as his sister Coco, who was already the only choice for some stages in the original game. Violence is mild, and was also one of my early games growing up. Fun to watch and play for kids.

I think there’s a game called Infinity Nikki (PS4, PS5, PC, Android) that’s a dress up platformer game. New outfits unlock different skills. The only issue is I’ve never played it, and it seems like microtransactions may inevitably come into play. Take caution. It’s a crazy pretty game, though…

The Marvelous Miss Take (PC, and some consoles iirc) is a stealth game about a young woman trying to pull off several art heists. It features a female main character and is generally quite fun.

Hope this helps :)

I wish you guys all the fun!

Man, I remember laying my hands on Pokémon Blue before I could even read most of the words there. My uncle had bought it for my cousin brother who was 4 years younger than me, lol.

The older Pokémon games are a linear enough experience that literacy helps, but isn’t required since as a child they’ll likely explore everything anyway and will eventually trigger the right flags to allow for progress. I played like that up till RSE.

I have not, actually. I’ll give it a try. Thanks!

I enjoy top down stealth games, and haven’t seen this game get discussed much, but it was pretty fun - Serial Cleaner (and sequel, Serial CleanerS)

You play a guy who cleans up murder scenes for an unknown serial killer, all the while evading guards and other security measures. It’s a pretty fun experience, and I do recommend giving it a go if that’s your kind of thing.

There’s also the Marvelous Miss Take, a game where you play a woman on a mission to perform a series of heists. Also a top down stealth game, you get to use some gadgets to distract guards while you sneak past and to your goal.

Both are older indie games, but enjoyable for at least one playthrough.

The controversy was one thing, but the game itself really could’ve used more optimisation. I played through once and now occasionally go back and play with mods on, and the performance issues really does make you wish the game ran better.

The madlads! (I’m sorry I had to)

True, I think in Japan kids weren’t considered human until they survived to a certain age due to how child mortality just worked in the past (the exact number slips my mind atm).

Based on Linfamy’s video here, sometimes parents would even “return” children shortly after birth, just because childbirth was safer than abortion measures of the time.

Good point. I do agree it’s more of a modern idea.

Though in a way, you do have to care for your retirement account. You have to make deposits regularly and ensure investments are done responsibly to ensure the best possible outcome.

If you don’t take care of them, then you’ll only get a poor outcome, like not receiving the best possible care but just the bare minimum necessary or even nothing at all, if things are bad enough.

After all, the bible also says “Love they neighbour as thyself”. When your children grow up and become your neighbour, the way you’ve treated them has a possibility of coming home to roost, especially now.

I played most of TOTK with a controller because my joycon camera drift really messed with the gyro. Got the hall effect sticks installed last week and I’m hoping this is the end of drift for me.

I saw a few posts on twitter about these hall effect sticks still presenting with drift even with calibration. Not sure why, but I hope it’s just user error that can be corrected and not another hardware problem.

Saw your comment and moved from Jerboa to Connect. Loading is so much faster, but I do miss the body text preview square Jerboa has. I can only preview it on Connect using fullwidth I think, which takes up too much real estate per post.

Overall, still a huge improvement.

Where I am WhatsApp is the go to for general communication as well as business. I also use discord for my extracurricular stuff and some game groups.

Wish Signal adoption was better here, but it hasn’t taken yet with WhatsApp being so widespread.

I honestly haven’t yet. I’ve seen it here and there back when it crossed over with Maplestory.

I think back then I felt like I was too attached to the 2d side scroller style of game MapleStory was to give it a try, though I’m a bit more tolerant of 3D styles now. That, and my computer was too old to even run games like Dragon Nest, so I was out of luck with 3D.

I might give it a go sometime though. Thanks for the suggestion.

I’ve played MapleStory on and off for about 15 years now. I do miss when the leveling curve was so ridiculously high there was a lot more enjoyment in a type of “open world” way where you’d set your own goals in the game and that’s how you spent your time.

I have lovely memories of my maple “boyfriend” at the time taking me to Florina Beach. Us desperately trying not to die because we weren’t going to survive touching the jumping crabs. We ended up pulling our chairs out on a platform, and he’d aggro some crabs so they’d keep jumping up at us. It was pretty romantic, to be honest.

Then there’s the ship to Orbis, the free market, the hidden paths along Lith Harbour, the slime tree, heneseys hunting ground, the sleepywood hot springs, the showa town sauna (which was notoriously hard to return from, given the level of the area, but the TOWELS). All places I remember very, very fondly.

It wasn’t the way the game was meant to be played, but it’s those moments that stick with you. That was in the time when MapleStory was considered more a glorified chat client.

I can still name and place most of the original BGMs, and I still keep up with the latest music (look up studio Necord on YT, they even do versions of songs in different styles!) and it’s a fun Easter egg when creators use them in their videos.

I still remember the very kind people who took me along with them, even though I couldn’t really type or communicate digitally at that age, and was basically a melee magician. Wish it was easier to keep in touch with them back in the 2000s.

Maplestory is more functionally a game today than it used to be, but that’s also why I feel like it’s lost its magic.

As I’ve grown up, the repetition of the grind and dailies ate into my dwindling amount of free time. With ADHD, dailies sometimes feels akin to torture you endure to get a shiny new damage skin or event cash item, and I was stuck in that event cycle loop for a while before I quit again around last year.

I still love MapleStory. The new music they’re still putting out (while occasionally a miss) is still really good, and I enjoy that. But I don’t think I’ll ever grind to 250 and beyond (I was mostly leveling up with level potions before I quit the last time) because it’s just not me.

I sort of mourn that, my loss of patience. I’ve become picky with the games I play, less patient to pick up and learn games that may not suit my stylistic preference.

I’ve tried some MMOs, a bit of Guild Wars 2, some Archeage 2, Eden Eternal, Eve Online (ok Eve is kinda cool but I’m not smart enough for this game) but I think I’m no longer an MMORPG person :(

I don’t have the time to invest in them anymore, and I now prefer singleplayer indie games (because I have no friends, lol).

I also avoid gacha MMORPGs like the plague (Yes, ironic considering MapleStory is often cited as the first gacha game, but to my credit I still have never spent a cent on it), so I’ve never touched Genshin and games in that vein and risk developing a gacha addiction. A gaming dependency is enough for me.

I know my comment wasn’t fully answering what you asked, but thank you (if you’ve read this far) for letting me indulge in my very fond, even formative memories of MapleStory.