Games

"It Takes Two", check it out.

Lovers in a Dangerous Spacetime - coop, a bit actiony but less chaotic than Overcooked. Beautiful and cute artstyle.

Stardew valley

My partner and I like to play the Lego games together. Lego Star Wars (2005ish) was a favorite, but the newer ones are fun too.

The Trine series is pretty fun. It's a 2.5d puzzle platformer game. There are some combat bits, but most of the game is puzzles. I'd recommend the second one.

Divinity: Original Sin 1 and 2. It's not on the switch, but I'm guessing it should run fine on your old laptop since D:OS1 came out in 2014. My wife and I love these games since she isn't very good with fast action, and these are turn based fighting so she can take her time figuring out what to do to whom.

It's also got great couch co-op.

Late to the thread, and you already have loads of suggestions, but Portal and Portal2 may help your partner with their spatial issues. I've heard that those are the games to use to introduce someone who doesn't play videogames in general, but specifically FPS, to the media and basic controls that most of us gamers take for granted.

A lot of people have mentioned It takes Two, which really is great and you get to try many different mechanics.

You can also check out Fling or Keywe on steam. Only 2 players max (as compared to 4 players on Overcooked or Plate Up), but less complicated controls. Bread & Fred is another I've been meaning to check out too.

Unrailed has simple controls but more objectives to accomplish, and Out Of Space is similar to Overcooked but not in a cooking setting.

Edit: Didn't realise I used a shortened name. Fling refers to 'Fling to the Finish'

Try out It takes two

Portal 2 has a coop mode which I hear is great. I adore portal 1 and 2, but never got a chance to try coop.

Overcooked is only fun if everyone is terrible or everyone is great. It's a great concept but definitely not going to work out for most groups.

For Mario kart, did you put on some bots? Without the NPCs, 2 player is lame, even if you are both quite good.

Have you played It Takes Two? This sounds like it hits your requirements.

For couch coop, I'd actually suggest Mario Deluxe over the very recent Mario Wonder if you wanted to try a side scroller. Wonder is great, but it's couch coop is poorly implemented unless you are both good or both terrible as with overcooked. Deluxe doesn't have that issue, in my opinion, due to the way the scrolling works in game. It might feel odd spending $60 on a 10 year old game from the WII U, but Nintendo originals always hold up well.

We Were Here and its sequels seem like the perfect slowish paced coop puzzle games for you guys.

Operation Tango and Escape Simulator are similar and also great.

A Way Out is similar to It Takes Two, with a more serious story.

Monster Prom/Monster Camp and The Yahwg are co-op visual novels.

Clandestine is a Co-op stealth game where one player plays as a spy, fps style, while the other plays as a hacker providing overwatch by controlling cameras and doors, giving directions, etc.

Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes is another asymmetrical co-op game where one person is trying to defuse a bomb by solving puzzles and the other is trying to help by reading the manual. The defuser has to tell the other person what’s going on so they can give the right instructions, much sillier than it sounds.

It takes two is the obvious suggestion, and I'd personally also recommend vampire survivors

Serious answer:
If it doesn't have to be digital, there's an entire world of board games available. Dominoes, Magic: The Gathering
Funny answer:
If it has to be digital, Table Top Simulator is fairly cheap and can play an entire world of available board games. /s

Wife an I split time on RDR2. Her doing most of the fishing/hunting, me doing the rootin/tootin parts.

I found this really difficult to read/understand this in places with the neutral pronouns. Anyway a cool little coop puzzle game is Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes. It's an asymmetrical puzzle game where one of you is trying to defuse a bomb (played on a computer) while the other is trying to give directions without seeing the bomb. It might fit your asymmetrical needs you described.

It Takes Two is probably the best jumping off point (as you’ve already been informed). It has enough variety that you can discuss what parts they liked and maybe find the games in that kind of genre.

My partner isn’t big on games, but loves The Binding of Isaac for coop. The latest DLC adds a better coop mode, but the original coop mode with coop babies works well too (and there’s advantages like them being able to fly so they don’t need to worry about floor hazards). I think the fact that they grew up in a catholic household but aren’t religious helped them get into it lol.

My partner was never really into games growing up, and especially had trouble with the spatial aspect and controllers.

The tipping point came when we played Minecraft together and they got to use a keyboard and mouse rather than a controller. Since then, they’ve done tons gaming on their own with hundreds of hours in Stardew Valley and a more recently a deep dive into Fallout 4.

Destiny 2 played a big part in learning shooting mechanics, sense of space, and especially precision platforming.

Thrilled to see that you’ve found and enjoyed It Takes Two because that’s our all-time favorite co-op game and we recommend it to everybody.

Since yours is into puzzling, I want to second the recommendation for the We Were Here series. The first one is free and each is better than the next. It’s an asymmetrical puzzler that requires two computers with each player unable to see the other’s screen. Communication is critical to solve each of the puzzles.

Lego games like Lego Starwars has already been mentioned and I will second those (especially the newer ones that have split screen).

Divinity Original Sin is also great.

Honestly most games I can think of have already been mentioned and those who have not seem like they might not be that great of an option since it seems your partner isn't normally into gaming. (RTS in particular might be too hard)

But I will suggest some anyway just in case

Starcraft 2 has free online multiplayer which includes a COOP vs AI mode.

There's also a 2 player campaign adaption of Warcraft 3's normally single player campaign. Although it might only be available for pre-Reforged.

Also I didn't know about it before now, I googled it just in case, but apparently SC2 also has COOP mods for its campaigns.

You mentioned having a Switch so I will recommend Advance Wars Reboot and Wargroove 1 & 2, although there are no COOP campaigns but you can play multiplayer maps.

Besides Advance Wars Reboot Camp on Switch (or the originals for Gameboy, which you could play with emulator), there's also an online fan site called Advance Wars By Web where you can play advance wars in the web browser, although there's no single player.

Wargroove is also on Steam and besides the campaign and regular game itself there are puzzles.

And speaking of Puzzles, card games tend to have Puzzles. I haven't actually played Magic, Yu Gi Oh, etc. so I can't say for sure whether they have any, but there's puzzles in Faeria. (I would've recommended Might and Magic Duel of Champions, it had some great puzzles, but Ubisoft shut that game down many years ago)

what about Yoshi's Crafted World? easy gameplay, cute aesthetics and good co-op

If you have two displays for you PC and are willing to do a bit of fiddling, I think you can set up split screen two player stardew valley which is a great chill game

I genuinely think getting a Wii U would be an awesome idea too, massive libraries made of just games that are perfect for this situation.

I have been recommending Farm Together as a co-op game a lot lately because it is so damn simple but so good. The controls are immediately accessible, the game doesn't give a flying fuck about stressing you out but at the same time there are a lot of systems to discover (making money isn't trivial in this game) and the crops take realtime to grow so it naturally sets up a simple ritual with your co-op partner to play. There is not really any story to get into, but at the same time this makes it a bit more accessible to someone who isn't already invested in video games since the gameplay loop is so immediate and unframed by any cutscenes, story setup, long tutorials or forced activities. You pick it up and start playing immediately, you decide completely how to interface with the game whether it be crunching out the numbers to figure out which crop, fish etc.. to go for to maximize money, just zoning out watering, planting and harvesting or spending all your time placing cosmetic buildings and props to make your farm look cool. Want to take a break and just watch your partner play? Sure! Walk away for a half an hour if you want, you will probably have a bunch of crops waiting for you to harvest once you come back. The game really doesn't have an opinion on how you should play it and it is great.

(It looks like a game like farmville, but there is zero manipulative microtransaction crap, just buy the game and play)

If you want more story and thematic framing, you absolutely have to try Stardew Valley, it is a co-op classic for a reason.

Also if you liked the idea of Overcooked but found it too focused on stressful energy that isn't necessarily fun for everyone than check out PlateUp! YOU design the kitchen in plateup and add various components to it as you progress. It puts a lot more agency in the players hands instead of throwing players through a chaotic theme park ride that overcooked feels like in the harder levels. It also brings strategizing about kitchen design with your co-op partner into the gameplay loop which is great fun. You can also automate some stuff, so players can dig into that if they want to avoid feeling like the game is so focused on stressful action.

I play a lot of games with my 10yr old daughter. Here are some of what we liked:

-Any lego game(there are sooo many and they often go on sale)

-trine series, much more puzzley

-sackboy a big adventure

-brothers a tale of two sons

-it takes two

-portal 2

-degrees of separation

-putty pals

-ibb and obb

-toodee and topdee

-bleep bloop

-battle block theater

-chariot

-pikunuku

We also loved going through the monkey island games. They are not mumtiplayer but they are slow point and click games that we bounced ideas off one another.

The biggest hit for us has been Baba is You because it is slow paced, and combines words and logic and spatial reasoning. Our biggest problem was that its not actually coop, so we would just alternate who played, which can disengage the other person. My partner also thought its aesthetic is cute.

Portal 2 might be fun. It has a co-op mode and is similarly a puzzle game where you need to work out the logic of each level and then sequence your actions in the correct order.

Secret of Mana (SNES)

As one of the consoles most famous titles, there's a number of ways to play it.

It'll help develop some of her hand-eye, but in a slower, calmer way she will probably be more than equal to. There's also a lot of character development and plot, it is a jrpg-influenced game after all.

2 player co-op kicks in about an hour-ish into the game, if memory serves, once the second character enters the story.

Video games: Lovers in a Dangerous Spacetime, Pizza Opossum, PlateUp!

Physical game: Crokinole

May be hit or miss but Moving Out (1 or 2) is a lot of fun. You spend most of your time failing to do anything and just laughing about how goofy it is.

My wife and I really enjoyed playing The Quarry together. It's one of those games where it is more of a movie with decisions so I would do all of the controls and she would do the decisions.

Out of Space: it's very similar to Overcooked, but a lot less chaotic, me and my wife love it and play it all of the time because Overcooked, while great, can be too much action. It is available for PC (and should work even on the crappy one possibly), and switch. Let me know how that goes, I love this game and it is not widely known so I love showing it up to people.

In terms of coop games with cats in them: Aqua Kitty is an option. More of an underwater action game, could be too fast paced.

If you ever return to Overcooked, some versions of the game have a Practice Mode you can go into. You can't progress levels with this, but you can serve out dishes at your own pace, which feels nicer.

An old top-down shooter I enjoy is Assault Android Cactus. Players can revive themselves if they die, the only cost being that dying makes it hard to keep up a certain rate of kills needed to clear the level without the Battery draining out.

At a long stretch, there are visual novels like Pizza Game that are much more fun with your own voice acting applied, largely due to the horrendous stupidity of the whole cast.

I haven't seen either of these mentioned yet, so you might look into Ponpu, and Light Fingers on the Switch.

Ponpu might be a little much, but Light Fingers may be a decent-ish pace, as it goes for something of a digital tabletop-like game design. They tend to go on sale around the holidays, so if you wait a little while you may snag'em on the cheap.