I’m a 30 year old woman who’s only really played card and puzzle games on my phone. Im considering new hobbies. Is it worth trying to get into video games for the first time. Where would I even start.
… Yes?
Start wherever. Buy games with interesting covers or play free demos.
You are already a gamer!
I’m a 36 year old woman who grew up playing them with my dad. My sister is a year younger than me get than me. She grew out of it a bit but she still plays “cozy”, low to no pressure games. I like long role playing games with interesting stories.
If you want any recommendations or a new friend to play with, I’m here! I also know of several gaming groups for women.
I’d like to know more about what you’re interested to give better suggestions but here are a few that might pique your interest.
Balatro is a recently popular card game. You can play it on your phone or on a computer. It works sort of like poker, but you apply effects to the cards to multiply your score.
A Little To The Left is a puzzle game. You play the owner of a mischievous cat and your goal is to reorganize the messes that your cat made throughout the house, like sorting the mail, organizing a battery draw, displaying sea shells you collected etc
Unpacking is also a puzzle game. You literally unpack boxes in various rooms. Sometimes it’s hard to make everything fit. As you progress through each level, you learn about the main character’s life.
If you want something more traditional, Ori and the Blind Forest is absolutely beautiful. In that, you play as a small guardian spirit and you navigate through a forest solving puzzles, collecting items, and jumping between platforms (sorta like Mario).
My wife didn’t typically game in the traditional sense, but games she’s enjoyed in the past are the older Mario games, the Sims, and project zomboid (which she describes as the Sims but with zombies).
She’s also got like 100 hours in power washing simulator and she’s too scared to try Stardew valley because she knows it’ll consume her life.
What gaming is like for a non-gamer
This guy had his non-gaming wife try different games, very enlightening for your purposes
Now I don’t feel so bad for struggling with later Rockman bosses and stages.
Holy crap there’s a ton of these that they’ve made?!
Excellent video!
I’m a 30-something woman myself. I’ve been gaming longer than I’ve had a phone. Here’s my two cents:
You’re already into videogames. Fuck what the haters say about mobile gaming not being “”“true”“” gaming (whatever the heck that means), they’re just sour they can’t game whenever wherever without investing a ton of time. Then again, maybe I’m just mad because I’ve recently invested a ton of time into Youtube’s playables.
If you want to get into PC or console gaming, I recommend starting off with popular E rated games in the genres you already know you like. Generally these games are more complex than mobile games, but this type will usually introduce difficulty curves to gradually transition you into their mechanics and complexity and teach you to be a master without having to look up training online.
If you want to branch out, start with genre-bending/-blending games. I’m personally a fan of puzzle-platformers, as those are my two favorite genres; while I’m not big on card games, they recently had an explosion in popularity, so there’s a blend of just about every genre you could want.
Get a Switch Lite and go from there. If you already have a midrange PC with decent iGPU, download Steam and play an older but highly rated game.
Don’t spend too much before deciding if it is for you. Find the cheapest entry point.
This is like asking if you should get into books or movies! The answer is absolutely! 💜 There are so so many games.
The genre “cozy game” is a pretty good place to start, I think. They focus more on the vibe than challenges.
Definitely stay away from games that use phrases like “souls like”. Those are games that are trying to be intentionally difficult for the sake of being difficult.
A lot of this depends on what sort of console or computer you have access to. A lot of indie games are not very taxing and you can probably play them on your computer easily even if it isn’t a gaming computer. Things like Stardew Valley and Spiritfarer come to mind.
A lot of women I know who aren’t the typical “gamer” type really enjoy Stardew Valley. It’s a little farming game where you live in a town, foster relationships with the townspeople, and generally go about small town life. Very cute game, especially fun with friends.
Also Minecraft, it’s very open ended and there are many ways to play it.
As for how to start, an affordable laptop will run both of these fairly well, if you want Nintendo games you’ll probably have to get a Nintendo Switch.
Definitely make a Steam account though, you’ll find pretty much all the games you could want in one place there (Minecraft is separate).
This game recommendation thingy might be helpful: https://apps.quanticfoundry.com/surveys/start/gamerprofile/
In the profile you choose what you are looking for in a gaming experience - it doesn’t matter if you don’t know yet or need to make up some answers. There are questions like “How important is working towards a common goal with other players?”
It’s a place to start anyway.
I’m 31 and I only really started playing games around 4 years ago, apart from playing on bootleg NES consoles or C64 as a kid.
It is worth it if you have fun doing it, and you probably will!
If you don’t know where to start, you probably still haven’t figure out what genres you’d be into.
You might like Steam Deck, an affordable console-like handheld PC, because:
- It offers a wide variety of games from all generations, so if you want to experiment with different genres you can always find something for yourself - you can purchase a game on Steam store and if it’s not for you, just return it below 2h of gameplay
- Very user friendly, easy to navigate for non-techies, despite being PC, for the most part it just works, great entry for folks with no prior experience with PC gaming
- It’s a handheld! Take it with you anywhere easily, play in bed, on couch, toilet, whatever. If you’re used to playing on a phone, this might be appealing
- you can still dock it as a regular PC and have mouse+keyboard+external screen if you want to try gaming this way
- if you want to tinker to explore even further, you can emulate older consoles, play with 3rd party launchers, use it for other things than gaming, even replace the software completely - it is all possible
Other choices are perfectly valid like Nintendo Switch, Xbox or PS5, but they’re within their respective closed ecosystems. With Xbox and PS5 you’re also stuck with TV. Consoles have limited backwards compatibility, so for example Switch only supports games for Switch, PS5 supports games for PS5 and PS4, and it’s a bit better with Xbox iirc.
If you want Nintendo Switch (if games like Mario or Zelda are appealing to you), maybe wait a little bit as they’re cooking new generation for release soon-ish, and the current one is old and miserable in terms of performance.
I’d say start with some of the most popular games, like Mario and Pokemon. Those are the two biggest video game franchises in the world, they’re very accessible and even decades later still a ton of fun.
edit: FWIW, Nintendo is a problematic video game company and trying to destroy video game preservation of their games (and trying to prevent community-run video game competitions/tournaments of their games), but they still have made some of the best video games of all time.
Yes. Start with Stardew Valley or Animal Crossing. From there, post threads asking for suggestions based on what you liked.
Just avoid games that cost a lot or have lots of micro transactions. Its like smoking cigarettes, better to not start.
Worth getting into? Absolutely. It can be very cheap, too.
Where to start? That’s the trick question. It will depend on whether you start with console or PC, the latter having a much more extensive catalogue of games, plus emulation of older systems.
My personal recommendation is getting a PC, it doesn’t even need to be a gamer one, anything that isn’t a piece of shit and was released in the past 4 or so years will do good for playing low end games and emulate anything up to N64 and possibly Dreamcast games (2003 and earlier). You can use a variety of console controllers on computer, so it’s fine. Whe searching for ROMs, be sure to have uBlock Origin installed on your web browser.
If you have any friends, talk to them, see what they’re playing or would recommend you to play. If you don’t, download steam and download demos of games that look somewhat interesting to you. Check GOG as well, it tends to have some older PC games as well, plus demos and whatnot.
Try out a variety of genres. It’s possible one game of a certain genre might not “click” with you, but another might.
If you like puzzle games I suggest trying portal. Portal 1 is inexpensive on Steam and playable on any modern PC including on Linux. It’s low pressure, has some humor, not very violent, and you can restart from anywhere you like.
Stardew Valley.
