I got my Sofle V2 in 2022 as a job change present for myself. I’ve since changed jobs again, but the Sofle V2 continues to be the keyboard I bring into office.

For a long time I was just bringing it into work in the box it came in, but during the job change period, I bought some fabric, an Apple TV (gen 2) travel case and replaced the moulded foam with a fabric base. Had to do a fair bit of sewing but the result has been pretty great.

It gets a lot of curious comments in the office, and I’ve gotten fairly proficient at Colemak DHm. I’m planning on upgrading the microcontrollers so I can enable tapdance soonish.

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.

How is your experience with the framework? I’ve been eyeing it as my next upgrade but it is a bit pricy so I’m saving up for it at the moment.

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

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.

I was definitely a bit put off by the graphics from the Hex, and didn’t really get the references to it in Inscryption. I might give it a try since you’re recommending it.

Pony Island was a hell of a game, though. I remember watching the gameplay videos and being impressed at how innovative Daniel Mullins games were.

The FATE series. No, not the anime, the Diablo ripoff computer game with stolen music sold by WildTangent. I was a kid that got by playing only demos, and this game was one I reinstalled over and over again to get those free plays.

It’s a pretty simple dungeon crawling game with procedurally generated floors where you have to get to floor 5x and defeat the named boss there so you can reincarnate and start it over again.

I reinstall it every couple of years to play it. It’s got hardly any story, quests are generated for the floors you’re about to reach, stats are randomly generated. It’s just pure gameplay, though a bit repetitive as it can be. I love that it has a similar fish mechanic to Torchlight for your pets.

I remember seeing a nostalgia post on the game on Reddit and the developer of the game series had commented on the post. It was like meeting one of your heroes. Definitely very memorable for me.

The third game supposedly has all the content from the first two, so here’s the steam link if anyone’s curious.

Yes. I’m looking forward to better search functionality on instances though. It’s kind of hard to search if something’s been asked or posted already on mobile (using Liftoff, but I’ve also tried Jerboa and Connect)

The madlads! (I’m sorry I had to)

does it rely on the DS’ dual screen much?

Not really. However, gameplay gets you to use the touch screen to move the main character in the game, so I anticipate that the switch version will either support touch, or make movement possible with joystick control.

I haven’t tested it yet myself, so I can’t confirm this though.

It’s sunk cost fallacy, skinner box loops and more. It starts out fun, somewhat enjoyable. Then eventually it turns into a slog, and grind and you lose sight of why you even find it fun to begin with.

By then you’d be hundreds or thousands of hours in, and you end up commenting about your crappy experience here, I guess.

Pokémon Reborn has been one of the best Pokémon fangames I’ve enjoyed. Never thought I’d see the day it was completed, but it was last year. It supports wondertrade, online battles, trading and more, and has custom terrain effects.

I only bought a 3DS in the last couple years, but you bet Ghost Trick was one of the games I have on my SD card!

(we had distribution right for Capcom in Australia)

That’s hella cool, for one. Please introduce me to your job /jk

It kind of faded away since Capcom just stopped porting it to newer and newer devices. The DS was a long time ago.

I remember a couple years back when I saw an artist selling a sticker of one of the characters and we shared that brief moment of enthusiasm. I’m really happy to see that it will receive love again. The newer generations will probably also come to appreciate this game.

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.

Ghost Trick: Phantom Detective. I played it a decade ago on iOS, loved it, and thought it was never going to see a modern release again.

I’m thrilled to see its recent release on the Switch and PC because it truly deserves a try if you like a good story and time traveling based puzzles.

Both are great games! Inscryption was the only game I’ve ever bought on launch after seeing gameplay videos and I had no regrets. Hope you enjoy it too!

I quite enjoyed the Horizon series! I found the world building and enemy design really kept my interest, even if the game follows the Ubisoft formula (though I admittedly do not play that many open world games, and thus lack that jadedness).

Now I’m partway into Forbidden West after a half year break post Zero Dawn, and my partner’s just finished ZD. I can’t state how much I enjoy shooting components off enemies without getting trampled into the ground, like shooting apples off a tree.

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.