Molly 🏳️⚧️ (art edition 🎨)I have released my video game! It's a cozy, kid friendly farm simulator called Farm Hand. It's available on Itch for Mac, Linux, and Windows and free or pick your own price. It's also open source and you can find out all about it here:
Maria Gatta@MostlyDrawing ooh I'm interested in the "game for toddlers" angle. How old is your LO? And how old would you say a kid needs to be to play this game?
My munchkin is about 3 and a half. He struggles using the controller, but likes moving the vehicles around and likes watching me do it. We do very little screen time in the house but a child that has played some games may have developed the coordination to steer the vehicles.
Other design decisions I made for young ones is that the quests can be repeated by just restarting the game. You can do any quest in any order. I try to use icons instead of words in most places.
1/n
It is also completely non-violent. There are quests to feed animals, but they will never be animals in the game that will be used for food (either they are sanctuary animals, like the horses, or used for eggs or wool production, like the chickens). Other quests like checking in on the bluebird boxes are there because they serve ecological purposes. The whole premise of the story is about helping others.
Let me know if that answers your questions!
2/2
Another thought, lol. I should toss in the caveat that I'm not an expert in childhood development, nor has such an export reviewed the content of the game, so my statements are based upon my parenting and what I believe to be solid common sense. The game is calm, peaceful, and hopefully just offers a lovely environment with some rewarding, nature-themed activities.
3/3 (for real this time)
@MostlyDrawing thanks! We do no screens so far, but LO is about to be 2 yo so I started checking out TV options. Of course that led me to checking video game options 🤭 I doubt we'll introduce video games any time soon, but as both parents are gamers, we definitely want to game with our kid. It is really hard to find an appropriate first video game (or TV show tbh... 🥲😒🫣)
Yeah, it's really hard. PBS kids has lots of content that is at least well thought out, but still not perfect if you're looking for more ideas. Good luck!
@MostlyDrawing thanks for the rec, but I am raising my kid bi(+)lingual, so I speak my native language to her (Spanish) while my partner does in Dutch. We live in NL so the plan is to use tv time for more Spanish exposure at least at first 🤞🏼
@MostlyDrawing I did find what looks like a great program with short run times (philosophy based focused on going deep into a topic, from what means that something is big to what is love), but not available in English. We'll see if kid likes it, but my other choice is to just put nature doc clips 🤭
We do a fair amount of nature documentaries too. It may still not apply but PBS definitely has at least some Spanish language stuff.