Play Games With Players Of Different Ability

We are often suggesting games for families to play together. This is a great chance for parents and carers to understand the games their children play, while also having fun together.

However, if you have players of different ability in your family it can be hard to find something to play together. This could be a more experience older sibling playing with a younger sister or brother.  It could be a new-to-gaming parents playing with a child. Or it could be a young child playing with a more experienced parent or carer.

We have spent some time this week looking for games that offer ways to play together that accommodates players of different abilities.

Chicory A Colorful Tale is a game about exploring a world and solving puzzles with your paintbrush. A second player can join and contribute to the painting, while not having to worry about navigating levels. It's a great example of a game for differing abilities.

Super Mario Odyssey lets a second player join and control Mario's hat. This is not only much easier to control, but you play a simple role helping the main player. It's collaboration where one player can be a real novice and still have fun helping out. 

Kingdom Two Crowns is a two player light strategy game. Because both players work on the same world, the more experienced player can get the new-gamer to take on simple money collecting and farming tasks while they deal with more complex upgrading decisions. 

Tick Tock A Tale For Two is a two player game played on separate devices. You solve puzzle by telling the other player the clues on your screen. This means that the novice player doesn't need video game skill or experience, just the ability to share what they see with their more experience teammate.

A Hat In Time is an adventure game where a second player can join and help out. They can battle enemies and collect items, although the main player still dictates where they go in the level. It's a nice way to explore different worlds together.

That's You is a family quiz game where you compete to score points by answering questions. What's nice about it for novice players is that you don't score points by being the best drawer or quickest one to answer. In fact, you don't even need the best general knowledge. Instead, you win points by guessing what the other players will answer or vote for. This makes it a great game for novice and experts alike.

If you want to find more games like this there is a list of Games for Experts and Novices you can check out.