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[miauw62]

See above for my opinion on puzzle pirates. Protip: Most fun is had if you hop on a ship.

[itisnotlogical]

If you don't mind doing a little bit of preparation and learning, you can play board games via Roll20, a virtual tabletop. Most of the work will be on your end; your mom will just have to create an account. You will have to gather resources (namely images) to represent the board and pieces for say, Monopoly or Clue or some other board game. I doubt there's very many really good board games for two players though.

If your mother is still in to Tetris, there's Tetris Friends. The tokens you have to buy with real money are entirely for cosmetic purposes, so you don't have to spend any money to get the full experience. I haven't had any experience with inviting friends, but since there's a friends list on my account it's reasonable to assume that you can play together.

[ansontan2000]

If you guys would like to play Puzzle Pirates I could probably set you up in my crew (The Forgiven)and help you get started. I would like to say that it is largely a game that rewards players who spend gollets of time practicing the same puzzles over and over again.

[BigD145]

The free games sticky at the top of the page is not entirely up to date but has some things you might want to try. I've heard of these but don't know much about them:
Animal Forest
Island Forge
Perhaps someone else can give their experiences.

[werty892]

I would suggest City Of Steam. It just entered closed beta and I've been playing if for a bit, and even on my craptop it runs really well. Its also pretty funny and has decent graphics. Its also pretty much free. Don't know about house building though. If you sing up you will get a key pretty fast, or you can pay and join instantly.

[Azated]

I'd just like to add my support for minecraft. If you find a good server with no children or general pains in the ass, it's alot of fun to play. I've racked up hundreds of hours, and that was back in the alpha when only one guy was working on it as a hobby.


Puzzle pirates is a brilliant game, too. It's a lot more quiet now than it used to be, but it's still great fun. I spent around two years playing non-stop in a really great crew. It has houses, you can purchase and run a store that makes items to sell to other players, you can buy a ship, all the things you'd expect from a pirate-based game, however, this does include fighting too.

The game itself isn't very demanding on a computer and the graphics are pleasing to look at. Almost every action in the game is based on some type of classic puzzle. For example, the swordfighting puzzle is based on tetris. You can also play regular cardgames with normal rules, like poker or hearts.


Runescape may be what you're looking for, to a certain extent. You can play for free indefinitely, but if you pay something like $5 a month, you gain access to houses, more skills and more quests (which are always fun to do). A large portion of the game is combat based, but PVP is entirely optional. One of the good things about it is that if you choose to, you don't have to ever pick up a sword. You can focus entirely on non-combat skills, like herblore (potions and whatnot), crafting, farming, and other similar skills. Many people do this, actually.

[Sappho]

I suggested Puzzle Pirates to her before but I think she never got around to having a look, so I sent her the link again. City of Steam looks a bit too combat-oriented for us. I already suggested board games once and she rolled her eyes. This is a woman who has never touched a paper-and-dice type of game and has no real interest even in classic board games. Tetris would be great but again, there's the 6-hour time difference. We really need a persistent world because we very rarely have time to play together.

I tried Runescape once ages ago and was really turned off by the perspective and the graphical style. I suppose it doesn't hurt to have a look and see how it is these days.

Thanks again for all the suggestions. She's not online now but she'll have a lot to look at when she gets back to the computer!

At the moment I have a feeling we'll end up playing either MapleStory, Graal Kingdoms, or possibly Minecraft. We'll see what she says. Of course if there are more suggestions, I'm happy to hear them as well.

[Sappho]

OK question: I just spent 3 hours downloading Maple Story and I want to try it out and see if I can tolerate it in case my mom wants to play. When I try to launch the program it just says "you have been disconnected" without even giving an error message. Presumably it's booting me because of my European IP. I know it's possible to use a proxy to disguise myself as an American - can anyone recommend a program for this that isn't riddled with viruses?

EDIT: Tried using Hotspot Shield and it didn't work. I get a "bad gateway" message. I'll be profoundly annoyed if I spent 3 hours downloading this thing and can't get it to work!

[MrWillsauce]

Would Space Station 13 be too difficult for her? It's the most fun multiplayer experience I've ever had.

[Neonivek]

Would Space Station 13 be too difficult for her? It's the most fun multiplayer experience I've ever had.

That is certainly NOT a game that sounds like it would be useful in this situation.

Besides Space Station 13 is less a game game and more Roleplaying with a computer handling the rules.

[Rakonas]

You could try any of the major mmos which are free to play, also, unless download speed is a real obstacle. LotRO and such.

[Azated]

Would Space Station 13 be too difficult for her? It's the most fun multiplayer experience I've ever had.

That is certainly NOT a game that sounds like it would be useful in this situation.

Considering the poo-napalm-thermite-vomit-smoke grenades, I don't think so.

[Flare]

http://www.graalonline.com/kingdoms/about/kingdoms-feat - I dumped countless hours into Graal when it was new, and I haven't touched it for years. I can see my mother really enjoying the newer versions of this game. There's housing, crafting, cute graphics, some combat, minigames, lots of interaction... The only downside is the whole pay to play thing. I can't find any info about the actual cost of subscription - does anyone know?

There's always haven and hearth which sounds a lot like it. All without the subscription or buy thing. The entire world is pretty much player run, as with most of the value of things.

[Trapezohedron]

Well, maintaining a server with Terraria is easy, although finding trustworthy players is the hard part. And it is quite outdated now, but still fun.

[dei]

I don't know what state it is in or even if it still exists since I haven't touched it for ages, but how about Haven & Hearth?

Too much combat, based on my first impressions. I would suggest not.

The combat is completely optional. You can just build yourself a hermitage in the middle of nowhere and chances are you'll be at least somewhat safe. In reality the only combat you should be experiencing on a regular basis if you're not looking to raid settlements is hunting - which is entirely optional.

Personally though I would rather recommend Minecraft. It's pretty much a huge Lego set. Just set up your own server and make sure it's password-protected from the griefers and goons that like to go around messing with other people's creations and you'll be fine.

I also would not recommend MapleStory as the combat is more complex than Mario Mario jumping on Goombas as you've got to still deal with menus and set up skills, equipment, hotkeys, builds, and a lot of other stuff that isn't appealing to the casual gamer. I also would not recommend Furcadia solely on my experiences with their community and the administrators. It is a good game for building though, but only if you can pick up DragonScript and/or spriting.

Honestly though there is hardly anything out there that happens to be massively-multiplayer that would work in this situation from my experience. Essentially all you've got is Minecraft and maybe Haven and Hearth. Either way I hope you find a game for you and your mother to enjoy. All you can get my mother to play video game-wise is Angry Birds so I'm kind of envious of you.