Hey Guys.
After about ten years my father finally agreed to move to Linux. Because his devices I gifted him are not “supported for Windows 11”.
And it is a blast - He loved Gnome for having his two games: Mahjong and Solitair.
Everything works flawlessly; He observed me updating Debian to trixie within an instant to get him his OneDrive back.
Anyhow: I would like to recommend some alternative Games he may like; Just to show off hisnnew operating system (of choice, yay).
If this isn’t clear: He isn’t gaming “Fullscreen”. He chills for 30 Minutes with just his mice infront of the computer.
Any alternative to games would be appreciated as well.
Cheers
Edit: First Feedback: https://suppo.fi/comment/8182277
You must log in or register to comment.
The obvious answer is the other two casual classics: Space Cadet Pinball and Minesweeper. Possibly also some of the classic board games like Chess, or Go.
Found that pinball Flatpak and it’s nice to occasionally play. Hits you in the memories, if you aren’t like me and actually play with sounds on.
For someone doing solitaire and mahjong, maybe try iagno (reversi), tetravex (tile layout puzzle), or minesweeper.
I haven’t played with vanilla Debian in forever, but if there’s a good “Software Center” style overlay to the package manager, I bet he could find some good stuff on his own. The “Discover” app in Ubuntu actually categorizes the games by genre. Pingus, Minesweeper clones, Sokoban clones, Poker, Chess, Checkers, Go, Reversi.
OpenTTD (Transport Tycoon)
Hedgewars (Worms)
Battle For Wesnoth (awesome turn-based game)
Shattered Pixel Dungeon (Rogue-like)
0A.D. (Age of Empires)
Frozen Bubble (Puzzle Bobble)
Pingus (Lemmings)
Mindustry (Factorio)
FreeOrion (Masters of Orion)I wouldn’t put forward 0 A.D. in this situation. That’s a full-blown 3D game. Even Wesnoth and Orion might be a bit much for this case.
I totally get you but my rather elderly father loves 3D games - they’ve put hundreds of hours into Skyrim at this point haha. Could never get comfortable with keyboard and mouse but took to a gamepad incredibly quickly.
Sometimes a theme like fantasy or history can be the catalyst to give something the time and patience to learn it. My old man was a huge LOTR fan back in the day (the books especially) and thus the desire to play Skyrim was enough for him to suffer through learning a gamepad and analogue sticks.
Townscaper.
Click buttons and build cute, tiny villages.
Zero pressure. Easy to pick up and put down.
Awesome suggestion. It has a browser preview!
Steam may be some indirection he may be troublesome about (hope this isn’t lost in translation).
In the same vein I will name “Tiny Glade”.
Balatro!
Feedback-time:
He had minor hindrances which we addressed today: Printing, Scanning, Icons on the desktop and some windows software for taxes.
Wile loading I showed him some of your selection:
He liked pingus and in a few months he may pick up domino-chain.
Furthermore he may like townscraper but he hadn’t the nerve to figure out the bindings. I think TinyGlade will be more accessible (Nvidia Optimus works otb with Debian + Gnome-Context Menus).
Unfortunately 2048 was too hard for him currently but we tried.
Not 100% sure whether he’d like it or not, but HyperRouge. Can easily be played with just the mouse. At least that’s how I play it since I cannot figure out how to move using keyboard.
There’s the free version, which might be available in whatever default software repository is enabled, available through GitHub for compilation, can probably run the free windows version through wine or proton, or there’s the Steam version if you wanna support the devs and/or like things like achievements or online leaderboards to track your progress.
Not Linux-specific, but if he’s looking for new casual games take a look at:
