@Julie Check out Itch.io --

https://itch.io/

It's an indie game site with so many options. You can search by exactly the criteria you listed and get a taste of the world of virtual gaming / game design without too much commitment. I've been so delighted by the creativity and range of what's available there; I'm sure you'd have fun exploring too.

@Julie Disco Elysium is definitely worth looking into. The core mechanic of the game is the dialogue and story, which weaves a fantastically rich, albiet quite bizzare, narrative.

From a mechanical standpoint clicking a mouse, reading and making a lot of moral decisions are all that's required.

There are some violent themes and it can get quite dark (the main character is a very damaged individual) but your never actually involved in acts of violence.

@Julie I'd say maybe The Stanley Parable as the controls are pretty simple and the story-telling is the only real thing about the game and it demonstrates the immersive story-telling that video games could (and should) be doing more of (IMHO). Then again it's not to everyone's tastes and I don't know how well some of the concepts translate to a non-gaming-native person.

Broken Age should be pretty good in that context, though I recall some puzzles being a little on the hard side and not very obvious, but its art style is something to behold.

Similar the To The Moon series is quite engaging and focuses on story-telling (it has like a dozen puzzles in the series total) and it's basically arrow keys and one button. The topics tend to be rather heavy though.

Game Dev Tycoon doesn't really have much of a story, rather it introduces one a little to the history of consoles and whatnot and it's a nice little game that showcases the Tycoon genre in a neat way, so I'm not really sure about that one either. However it does showcase some of the properties of games and how they developed over the years (like deciding whether to make a game open world or not) which could be used as a grappling point to then suggest games based on those genre, or to explain them and prod the interests of the person further, but all in all the game's more of a fun lil' indie thing for gamer nerds I guess.

Most others that I really liked are pretty heavy on violence (Yakuza Like A Dragon, the NieR series, the older Far Cry games, XCOM: Enemy Unknown, Brütal Legend) or are heavy on game mechanics or very fast paced (everything above save for Yakuza, plus the Portal series, Battleblock Theater, FTL), lack story (Antichamber, Astroneer), or are just questionable Japanese Visual Novels. From the SFW and kind of adorable Visual Novel department I could recommend Crystalline, but IMHO that's too close to being a book to really qualify as a full-blown game.

Except for The Stanley Parable I got all of my copies of the four games I suggested on sale so I'd be glad to chip in and gift it to someone as a way to pay forward the joy those games have given me ^^

@Julie Third draft

Eastshade: low barrier to entry, wonderful world with a history to discover

Heaven's Vault: some adventure gamey-ness, more focus on language, I haven't played this one

@Julie There's one by Rhianna Pratchett called Lost Words: Beyond the Page - it didn't quite grab me past the early stages but I did like it and it sounds like it might be a good fit!

Others: Unavowed, old-school style point-and-click adventure, occult mystery. To The Moon (top-down adventure) and Firewatch (walking sim) - mostly story-focused with minimal "game-y" action elements if I recall correctly.

Also do want to mention SOMA - terrifying and violent in places, but amazing story IMO.

@Julie Myst

Yes, still.