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Stardew Valley would be my vote. Some others that come to mind are Slay the Spire or Skyrim. My adhd wife plays cracked sims 4 with every mod known to mankind. She doesn't even play the game. Just creates characters and builds houses.
https://store.steampowered.com/recommended/morelike/app/960090/
Slay the Spire and Monster Train get my votes. She likes strategy like BTD so I think she'll like these ones too. I think both are free on Game Pass.
Also Monster Sanctuary is a great Pokemon -like
Oh yeah she loved StS. I think Monster Train might of been on the shit list, i'll double check. There were some other popular pokemans rip offs too that we looked into but they were also on the shit list. It's like trying to roll a max on d20 :P Thanks
Another card-based one that I don't see getting a lot of attention is Cultist Simulator. I find it really fun/cool.
Some games that flip that focus switch and suck me in without heavy gameplay :
-Stardew Valley (honestly, probably the most fitting recommendation here)
-Factorio (turn off the bugs for a more casual experience), alternatively there's Satsfactory
-OpenTTD or Transport Fever 2
Diverging from the top-down style:
-Oddly enough, Farming Simulator 22 (there's always that next thing to do so you can build up)
-Space Engineers
-Minecraft
Space engineer I couldn't get into, wasted my money there =/
Vampire Survivors, Minecraft, Terraria, Elder Scrolls Online, Guild Wars 2, Monster Hunter World
I see GuildWars2 I upvote. I'm a simple man.
But truth be told maybe not the best here, might be a bit on the more complex side. But absolutely worth a try. And they'll release an expansion soon™ so it'll be more lively during release.
You could spend hours a day managing the loot alone!
Started Valley, for sure.
If she wants a grundy, but casual game, get her playing a MMO like Guild Wars 2. It's horizontal progression so you are not competing to get better gear all the time. It's just casual grind to get fashion, new titles, achievements etc. I am sure she will be addicted.
Sadly Started Valley didn't get started, it got the 'meh' treatment (Even i was surprised!). I think it may of been the heart-fuckery and talking she wasn't too invested in, despite the game being amazing.
You can play the game without doing any of that friendship stuff. I do.
My time at Portia has that hook, I bet she will like that, I've seen slay the spire suggested too that took 500hours from me, my most played casual game is the Battlegrounds on hearthstone, it's free too
I keep seeing My Time at Portia and think I might like it, but I haven't taken the plunge yet.
It's a great little game, it's casual, charming and fun. If you enjoy it, they've also released My Time at Sandrock which is almost identical (gameplay wise) but with a brand new town, people etc.
Might take a look at Temtem and Cassette Beasts to get that Pokemon fix.
The Creeper World series, or Kingdom Rush for tower defense a la Bloons... possibly Mindustry or Factorio as well. Start with Mindustry and if it does it for her then you can grab Factorio as well.
She might also vibe with roguelikes considering she liked Vampire Survivors so Enter the Gungeon, Binding of Isaac, Realm of the Mad God, Slay the Spire, or 20xx/30xx might be up her alley as well.
My suggestion, since you mentioned classic Pokemon and RPG Maker, is Pokemon Infinite Fusion, a fan made Pokemon game.
It is mostly a remake of the plot of the first games (Red/Blue/Yellow) but with a twist that you can now fuse any two Pokemon into one. For example, you could fuse your Bulbasaur and a Pidgey to make a new single Pokemon called Bulbagey, a flying grass type that has all the moves of both Pokemon, and can even evolve!
It is available for free and runs on PC, or with some effort it can run on Mac or Android.
Yeah, I've got it working on Android, but not very well. It crashes 100% of the time when a water battle starts (such as when surfing or fishing) maybe I'll try futzing around some more and patch it up a little more, but I have other fan games to play on my phone.
If she liked Vampire Survivors, check out Brotato. It just released version 1.0 and is quite fantastic both in theme and gameplay.
I'd add 20 Minutes Till Dawn to that list as well.
Halls of torment is another good one in that genre though it's in early access and still a little feature scarce
Every few years I download a windows 98 emulator and install my copy of the 90s Blade Runner game, and see if I can replay it. But it always crashes at the same point early on (using the "enhance!" thingy) and is unplayable. When I search it up there's all kinds of posts of people stuck at the same point and somehow nobody has been able to find a way to fix it.
It's too bad, that game was a lot of fun. The branching plot and randomization of who turns out to be a replicant made each playthrough unique.
Okay this is weird. This post was about a new Blade Runner game when I started typing it but it turned into someone asking about grindy games for his wife? Is Lemmy like hogwarts staircases?
Blade Runner was re-released with two versions not too long ago.
The Enhanced Edition:
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1678420/Blade_Runner_Enhanced_Edition/
Largely disliked by the community because they changed too much.
The Original Version:
https://www.gog.com/en/game/blade_runner
The original version is the same old game that you remember but now powered by ScummVM, so no more loading up emulators.
Since you own the game, you can just download ScummVM and point it to the folder where you have it installed. More info here.
I can't speak to the portal that brought you here, but the Blade Runner PC game was a formative experience in my life, so we can agree on loving it, wherever it is you're from/supposed to be.
Ffxiv has a free trial that allows you to play up to level 60 and includes the first expansion. Story is fantastic and you can easily spend hundreds of hours just in the free trial.
And FFXIV can be good for everyone. Like grinding? Grind every jobs, it will take you hundred of hours. Just like the story? You can only do that with no problem
Maybe it's too out of the box but cities skylines is pretty accessible but you can get lost in details when you get into it and add some mods.
Lots of great suggestions but one that I haven't seen is rimworld. It's difficult to explain but it's sort of like a mix between a base builder and a story generator. It's incredibly addictive once you get going though.
Shin Megami Tensei / Persona are like a dark themed Pokemon.
Mindustry! Its essentially tower defense but with a lot more options and open play style and actual progression. Theres also The Perfect Tower which is kinda weird but can be very addictive. If she likes trains theres Train Life which is a train simulator but its quite simcade like in that its not too complex. If She wants a little more complexity theres derail valley. If she likes building vehicles Terra Tech is pretty fun to pick up and put down. Istrolid is a pretty vibey simple game. Theres a few others I cant recall right now
Monster Hunter Rise might be good. It's more simplified compared to other Monster Hunters, so it's perfect for someone new to the series. The basic gameplay loop is pick a monster to hunt, go find it, fight it, loot it, go back to town, upgrade gear, repeat. But it's single player or 4 player co-op, so you're completely free to enjoy at your own pace. No need to worry about grinding for the best gear or anything like that, but you can spend hours getting the meta armor too if that's your thing. Plus, jumping around like a ninja is pretty cool
Try Graveyard Keeper https://store.steampowered.com/app/599140/Graveyard_Keeper/ and it’s only $7 right now
If she likes old-school and RPGs, check out Another Eden, by Masato Kato the scenario screen-writer for the beloved cult classic Chrono Trigger. The latter is one of if not THE best RPG games of all time (the art was pixellated but it was in the 90s and also a stylistic choice even at that time), while the former is a mobile game (there's a Steam version but it... is not as easy to work with). A warning that the installer craps out most of the time but maybe try to not download everything at once to begin with anyway if you aren't sure about it, and once you get past that, it's a GREAT game!:-P
It offers a gorgeous graphics & sountrack especially: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mx-WenrEI-8.
Edit: I just looked it up, and there is a PC version of Chrono Trigger! Do NOT get it though - it apparently sucks really bad. Anyway CT is a short game, while AE constantly has content being added to it.
Any of the Dynasty Warriors games
I can recommend backpack hero
of course, if you wanna maximize grindiness and low intensity, oldschool runescape will top the chart. Just mouse clicking.
Kingdom Two Crowns. Deceptively simple controls but highly addictive gameplay with self discovery of the mechanics
Vampire Survivors? Each game is no longer than 30 min, but you'll be playing for hours..
Actually came here to mention that as well.
OP's SO seems to have played that already.
Yeah I can see that now, I wonder if that was edit in.
Might not be quite the grind she's looking for but I can't enough of stardew valley lately.
Bought DiabloIV, played for a week, my gf convinced me to go StardewValley and I haven't touched Diablo since... 70€ well spent. /s
I played Plants vs Zombies and BTD5 a lot, and if she's like me I think she'd like the Kingdom Rush series (tower defense). Kingdom Rush is one of the few towards which I am eager to throw money for any new release. There are 4 right now. In release order:
-Kingdom Rush
-Kingdom Rush Frontiers
-Kingdom Rush Origins
-Kingdom Rush Vengeance
Try the first. If it hooks, she'll like burning through them all.
Also, a free in-browser game from the way back times is MotherLoad, here: http://www.xgenstudios.com/play/motherload
There have been remakes, some on Steam, which I've never played. This is the original and can be beaten in as little as an hour. I replay it every year or so.
Stardew Valley, Terraria, Graveyard Keeper come to mind.
I played Astroneer with my wife, who's not really a gamer. She had a blast and got so into it.
Incredibly biased suggestions, but...
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1584090/Touhou_Mystias_Izakaya/ - A cozy little management similar to Cook/Serve/Delicious and those old... Diner Dash??? flash games.
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1637730/Crystal_Project/ - Takes a lot of cues from the older Final Fantasy games and has a super enjoyable world to explore (at least in my opinion). The recent addition of mod support means you can maybe??? help tailor it to her liking.
edit: You might also want to look into some of the better RPG Maker games that were around before the genre(??) started popping up on Steam! A lot of them were hobby projects and totally free.
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She doesn't like ARPGs, she's not going to like Dragon's Dogma. And that's from someone who put well over 500 hours into the game.
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