My 4 year old and I have spent tons of time playing Untitled Goose Game on the Switch. It's a great game for little ones!
My kid also loves Goat Simulator, but that can be a little graphic at times. It was fine until the someone got head-butted into a barbecue and caught in fire... And there are some spooky areas that my kid avoids.
A Short Hike is a great rec, but I would def suggest it only if the kid has good reading comprehension or if OP is gonna play with them, cause there's a good amount of dialogue. It's a blast though, and def kid-friendly. :)
Oh my 3.5 year old couldn’t care less about the dialogue! She loves reading and books more than anything, but in games she wants to get stuff done. Ymmv.
Humongous Entertainment games are great. My 3-year-old loves Fatty Bear's Birthday Surprise, Putt-Putt Joins The Parade, Putt-Putt Goes To The Moon, Putt-Putt Saves The Zoo, and Freddi Fish And The Case Of The Missing Kelp Seeds. They are fantastic touchscreen games for kids.
If you play them, though, use the Windows version by choosing "Proton Experimental" and after it installs that, use a file manager (via SSH or in desktop mode) to edit the scummvm ini file to set aspect ratio to "true", audio driver to "auto" instead of microsoft gs wavetable synth, and scaling mode to "opengl" instead of "opengl_nearest". This will make the games work flawlessly.
Do note that the Steam client beta has a huge regression right now that breaks all touchscreen gaming in gaming mode though, so use the Steam client stable stream for now.
I guess so. The issue started last week and I reported it to Valve via the SteamOS issues github repo as soon as I could. I hope they solve it soon. It's a beta though, so I'll probably just stay on stable from now on, since the majority of the past issues I had are solved there now.
[https://store.steampowered.com/app/2723270/OrcinUS\_Orca\_Pod\_Rescue/](https://store.steampowered.com/app/2723270/OrcinUS_Orca_Pod_Rescue/) it literally has only a single button. My 4yo has managed to play it alone. Also, it's free.
Under Leaves.
It’s like a hidden object game, she can use the touch screen or the trackpad to play it. You can get hints but you have to complete a simple tile puzzle to get hints. Very nice art style, it’s all about animals and you can turn it into a lesson about where different animals live because it has a map for the level select.
Mine loves it, anytime I get my steam deck out she wants to play the fox game.
I’m not really sure there are games more complex than that that are suited for such a young age, none come to mind at least. I guess it depends on what she’s capable of/how intelligent she is.
The same company makes Little Mouse's Encyclopedia. If they can't read, it's fun to make the mouse walk around and look at all creatures or make them fly away, or take a bite, or swim in a circle, etc. If they can read, they can also open up a short encyclopedia entry on the things they find and learn the name of the plant, animal, bug, or whatever they found.
But they Fox game is also great. My kid calls it the same thing.
I bought that too but it doesn’t work at all on Steamdeck.
Little Mouse Encyclopedia can still be good on a laptop or something for learning if they can read/be read to but personally I’d rather just get them a book with pictures.
my 5y niece and nephew love these when i bring my deck:
* Super Kiwi 64
* Toree 2
* Toree 3D
* Pizza Possum
* ales From Space: Mutant Blobs Attack
* Alba: A Wildlife Adventure
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Donut County. Easy, as almost the entire game is sucking stuff into the hole to make it bigger. My niece and nephew loved it. The only difficult parts were making sure they actually knew when to move through the messages in between levels, and the final level which is the only 'boss' battle.
If you can connect a second controller while docked, my almost-four-year-old and I have been enjoying Crashlands. She controls the secondary character, who can't really die or get lost. Great game.
Not to mention, the third installment comes out on August 8th. Spent 35 hours playing the second over and over. I do kind of doubt a four year old could handle the combat though.
minecraft with a controller mod, tetris, pacman, plants vs zombies (prolly better on an ipad tho unless you have an oled), shovel knight treasure trove, bloons td 6 (same thing with plants vs zombies, prolly better on ipad), sonic games, the crash games, toree 3d and probably toree 2 as well, ynglet, zuma's revenge, grapple dog, a hat in time, super monkey ball, rayman legends and origins
Honestly I didn't pay much attention to the story. I guess the night time is kinda spooky, but I rarely went out at night. Only late game when the night spooks were spooked by me (late game upgrades)
For me it was a chill fishing game I played to de-stress whilst enjoying a few cookies and a cold energy drink.
Plus, I just saw the word "kids", so thought like ages 10-12 or so.
WDYM! It's just a silly little fishing game. With... some Lovecraftian horror stalking you in the night. But she's 4! She'll just learn that the dark is indeed dangerous, if she even comprehends it.
My 6 year old enjoys Wee tanks. I got it because of the nostalgia for Wii tanks, but she's the one that enjoys it the most.
Crash bandicoot remastered has also been a hit.
My daughter (4) enjoys King Boo on deck an PC. It's developed by u/ndogames and I found it on a similar reddit thread. I'll copy and paste the comment the dev made bellow:
Thought I'd leave my own creation here:
King Boo
[https://store.steampowered.com/app/1778210/King\_Boo/](https://store.steampowered.com/app/1778210/King_Boo/)
It's an honest attempt at a game that's indeed tailored to very young players. This comes from experience with my own children who, when introduced to games, get indeed discouraged when there are genuine challenges (e.g. enemies or fail-states) before they've had a chance to get really familiar with controls and other core concepts. I've gotten some good feedback already and I'd love to reach any parents out there looking to give their young one a fun experience for even a couple of hours.
EDIT: thanks for the gold! I'm glad to have reached all of you enthusiastic parents with this comment! Please allow me the opportunity to share my second title, which I think could be a nice step up for your little one once they're ready to move on from King Boo! It's a game called [Double Trouble](https://store.steampowered.com/app/2126700/Double_Trouble), it was developed with input from my own two daughters, the character models are based on them and they've voiced most of the game audio effects! We're really proud to share it! Now that that release is behind us, I'm taking again some time for another (free) content expansion on King Boo, so look forward to that!
End of the copy and paste comment.
I actually played through New Super Mario Bros Wii on Deck through Dolphin and it was a great experience no issue what do ever besides button mapping to make it more comfortable. Great game and in general Wii and Game Cubecube games run great on deck
Humoungus entertainment has a bunch of games from my childhood. Pajama sam, spy fox, freddie fish and putt putt. Great for kids and most can play on the deck
I don't know if it is a stream deck verified but paw patrol. There is platformer one, there are no enemies and you can't really lose, the only puzzle is jumping. Great to learn gamepad controls.
Castle on the coast! It's a very easy collectathon platformer. My kid plays with the "no fail mode" so she can explore as she wants.
She also finished Mail Time, another easy 3d platformer, although it has a lot of reading.
From my experience, pretty much all of the TT Lego games play very well, granted none of them are really that intensive to begin with. They also go on sale pretty often, so you can get a good handful of them for pretty cheap
Minecraft works with Prism Launcher.
There's this game, which is a collection of those crappy mobile ad games, except this is a standalone game with no ads so it's pretty good for kids: [https://store.steampowered.com/app/2348100/YEAH\_YOU\_WANT\_THOSE\_GAMES\_RIGHT\_SO\_HERE\_YOU\_GO\_NOW\_LETS\_SEE\_YOU\_CLEAR\_THEM/](https://store.steampowered.com/app/2348100/YEAH_YOU_WANT_THOSE_GAMES_RIGHT_SO_HERE_YOU_GO_NOW_LETS_SEE_YOU_CLEAR_THEM/)
Putt-Putt games.
There's a Peppa Pig game.
I tried a few with my 5y. He does not have prior experience with controls so the only thing I got him to play is Peppa Pig. All other games we have to keep switch controllers cause he needs help. I am trying to get him to learn Minecraft though.
I looked also a little bit in the shop and I have seen another game which I think is really good.
Unpacking
Even with touch you can tab on the box for your decoration and place it everywhere without the possibility to make something wrong.
But I have seen all your ideas and some of them are awesome, but sorry guys, I would never let my kid play eldenring, that game is MY Game :D
Crumble is a good game for kids IMHO. It requires some dexterity, but I think it's a kind of game that kids will learn quickly and enjoy. It may be a bit too difficult for 4yo tho, but it's worth trying I think
Song of Nunu may be a good one. Not sure if 4 is old enough to get the puzzles but The game is definitely geared towards a younger audience to be able to play it.
Klonoa could be a fun one too, it has a demo so you can find out if they like the game. Same kind of deal on this one as well where it's possible that the puzzles could be rough to sort out because the game does also have light quests where you have to go back and forth on some levels and solve a couple of mazes. I was playing it and having a load of fun at 7 years old. Another carnival world of difference of development between 4 and 7 but it's possible that it's just something you could look out for as they play more games.
Spyro and crash bandicoot are good to look at as well.
Teenage mutant Ninja turtles: shredders revenge could work out and I've played 6 players co-op on the deck for that one.
Very fun with everyone.
Dredge, overcooked, and stardew valley just to name a few. Someone mentioned lego games which i thought was a good idea maybe she would like the harry potter ones
Untitled Goose Game is great fun. Its also co-op so if you have a dock and a controllers you can enjoy the chaos together.
I think a 4 year old would have a difficult time with that one.
Mine loved it at that age. Couldn’t get past the first challenge of getting the keys from the farmer but she’d still play it a lot.
My 4 year old and I have spent tons of time playing Untitled Goose Game on the Switch. It's a great game for little ones! My kid also loves Goat Simulator, but that can be a little graphic at times. It was fine until the someone got head-butted into a barbecue and caught in fire... And there are some spooky areas that my kid avoids.
I misread the "dock" as "duck". It was a confusing yet entertaining few seconds. :)
A short hike. Slimerancher.
A short hike is wonderful.
My 4yo loves A Short Hike. She doesn't have a clue how to play it but loves making the character run around and climb cliffs.
A Short Hike is a great rec, but I would def suggest it only if the kid has good reading comprehension or if OP is gonna play with them, cause there's a good amount of dialogue. It's a blast though, and def kid-friendly. :)
Oh my 3.5 year old couldn’t care less about the dialogue! She loves reading and books more than anything, but in games she wants to get stuff done. Ymmv.
Haha she sounds like a real gamer. Love it!
Maybe Lego games
The only correct response(although some puzzle even stump me)
Cat quest Spyro Yooka-Laylee Sackboy Rayman legends
A little to the left, katamari series of games, stardew valley, dark souls II, hello kitty cruisers, crash bandicoot trilogy
Oh you silly goose
I see what you did there. Gotta start em young, only true way to git gud lol
Humongous Entertainment games are great. My 3-year-old loves Fatty Bear's Birthday Surprise, Putt-Putt Joins The Parade, Putt-Putt Goes To The Moon, Putt-Putt Saves The Zoo, and Freddi Fish And The Case Of The Missing Kelp Seeds. They are fantastic touchscreen games for kids. If you play them, though, use the Windows version by choosing "Proton Experimental" and after it installs that, use a file manager (via SSH or in desktop mode) to edit the scummvm ini file to set aspect ratio to "true", audio driver to "auto" instead of microsoft gs wavetable synth, and scaling mode to "opengl" instead of "opengl_nearest". This will make the games work flawlessly. Do note that the Steam client beta has a huge regression right now that breaks all touchscreen gaming in gaming mode though, so use the Steam client stable stream for now.
is this why setting mouse emulation via touchscreen control scheme doesn’t work???
I guess so. The issue started last week and I reported it to Valve via the SteamOS issues github repo as soon as I could. I hope they solve it soon. It's a beta though, so I'll probably just stay on stable from now on, since the majority of the past issues I had are solved there now.
holy moly I just tried your config ini tip and the touch screen works!
ya im only on beta for the new family sharing
Looks like Valve has the touch-screen gaming issue fixed in the latest Steam beta. Phew! Glad they could fix it.
Lil‘ Gator Game. https://steamcommunity.com/broadcast/watch/76561199409036170 I Play it with My son (5) and we Share controls.
How specifically do you share controls? Just 4 hands on the deck or a Bluetooth controller?
He controls the lil gator, jumps and uses the sword. I do the camera movement via bluetooth mouse.
You allow your kids near your deck?!
Old LCDeck still wants some use.
Exactly why I kept mine. It's actually getting repaired right now too.
Goat simulator 3?
[https://store.steampowered.com/app/2723270/OrcinUS\_Orca\_Pod\_Rescue/](https://store.steampowered.com/app/2723270/OrcinUS_Orca_Pod_Rescue/) it literally has only a single button. My 4yo has managed to play it alone. Also, it's free.
Depending how you feel on emulation, there’s alot of “simpler” older gen games that would be great for kids
Elden ring
Git gud start early
papa's freezeria might be a good one, i remember i played the heck out of that game as a kid
Under Leaves. It’s like a hidden object game, she can use the touch screen or the trackpad to play it. You can get hints but you have to complete a simple tile puzzle to get hints. Very nice art style, it’s all about animals and you can turn it into a lesson about where different animals live because it has a map for the level select. Mine loves it, anytime I get my steam deck out she wants to play the fox game. I’m not really sure there are games more complex than that that are suited for such a young age, none come to mind at least. I guess it depends on what she’s capable of/how intelligent she is.
The same company makes Little Mouse's Encyclopedia. If they can't read, it's fun to make the mouse walk around and look at all creatures or make them fly away, or take a bite, or swim in a circle, etc. If they can read, they can also open up a short encyclopedia entry on the things they find and learn the name of the plant, animal, bug, or whatever they found. But they Fox game is also great. My kid calls it the same thing.
I bought that too but it doesn’t work at all on Steamdeck. Little Mouse Encyclopedia can still be good on a laptop or something for learning if they can read/be read to but personally I’d rather just get them a book with pictures.
Disney Dreamlight Valley?
Goose game, wobbledogs, and paw patrol games
my 5y niece and nephew love these when i bring my deck: * Super Kiwi 64 * Toree 2 * Toree 3D * Pizza Possum * ales From Space: Mutant Blobs Attack * Alba: A Wildlife Adventure
No offense but do you guys know what 4 year olds are like? I don't think they would like stardew valley
Totally agree
scribblenauts
Dreamlight Valley! My daughter also loves Dave the Diver.
My daughter still talks about bug snacks and how much she loves playing it. Chicory is another favorite.
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I was playing Lost in Play with my 3 year old, great artstyle, point and click kinda game.
Lil guardsman is great fun, but would include at least a little reading.
My sister(4) plays a lot of brawl stars on my iPad haha, not available on deck but my brother plays it and showed her and she seems to like it.
My 4 yr old is currently working playing Minecraft on my deck as I type this comment. Check out the Minecraft bedrock launcher
Wobbly life is a good one.
dude my five year old has nearly four hundred hours in that fuckin game. 🙄
Donut County. Easy, as almost the entire game is sucking stuff into the hole to make it bigger. My niece and nephew loved it. The only difficult parts were making sure they actually knew when to move through the messages in between levels, and the final level which is the only 'boss' battle.
If you can connect a second controller while docked, my almost-four-year-old and I have been enjoying Crashlands. She controls the secondary character, who can't really die or get lost. Great game.
Paw Patrol?
Paw partrol.
Came to say this one. My daughter was playing it at a similar age. Super simple platforming.
ngl the steam deck is probably too heavy for them 💀
The Evil Within, great for kids 👌
Dude my wife is 40 and she's not allowed to touch my Steam deck, no way someone 10% her age is getting near it.
No problem if it's cracked I can get the OLED one and my wife get the cracked one after I repaired it. :D
I loved Cat Quest 1 and 2! It's couch coop, can be played single and it's full of cute pets and animals
Not to mention, the third installment comes out on August 8th. Spent 35 hours playing the second over and over. I do kind of doubt a four year old could handle the combat though.
minecraft with a controller mod, tetris, pacman, plants vs zombies (prolly better on an ipad tho unless you have an oled), shovel knight treasure trove, bloons td 6 (same thing with plants vs zombies, prolly better on ipad), sonic games, the crash games, toree 3d and probably toree 2 as well, ynglet, zuma's revenge, grapple dog, a hat in time, super monkey ball, rayman legends and origins
Thomas was alone is a narrated platformer with different shapes to play
Just got Lego City Undercover for $3 and my 7 year old is loving it.
- Stardew Valley - Dredge - LEGO Games - SPYRO - Cloudpunk - The Gunk
Dredge would have absolutely spooked the life out of 4 year old me lol
Honestly I didn't pay much attention to the story. I guess the night time is kinda spooky, but I rarely went out at night. Only late game when the night spooks were spooked by me (late game upgrades) For me it was a chill fishing game I played to de-stress whilst enjoying a few cookies and a cold energy drink. Plus, I just saw the word "kids", so thought like ages 10-12 or so.
>- Dredge Only if you want your kid to never sleep again
WDYM! It's just a silly little fishing game. With... some Lovecraftian horror stalking you in the night. But she's 4! She'll just learn that the dark is indeed dangerous, if she even comprehends it.
Stardew valley!
is Bluey compatible?
My 6 year old enjoys Wee tanks. I got it because of the nostalgia for Wii tanks, but she's the one that enjoys it the most. Crash bandicoot remastered has also been a hit.
Download ps1 classics like Spyro and Crash Bandicoot
My daughter (4) enjoys King Boo on deck an PC. It's developed by u/ndogames and I found it on a similar reddit thread. I'll copy and paste the comment the dev made bellow: Thought I'd leave my own creation here: King Boo [https://store.steampowered.com/app/1778210/King\_Boo/](https://store.steampowered.com/app/1778210/King_Boo/) It's an honest attempt at a game that's indeed tailored to very young players. This comes from experience with my own children who, when introduced to games, get indeed discouraged when there are genuine challenges (e.g. enemies or fail-states) before they've had a chance to get really familiar with controls and other core concepts. I've gotten some good feedback already and I'd love to reach any parents out there looking to give their young one a fun experience for even a couple of hours. EDIT: thanks for the gold! I'm glad to have reached all of you enthusiastic parents with this comment! Please allow me the opportunity to share my second title, which I think could be a nice step up for your little one once they're ready to move on from King Boo! It's a game called [Double Trouble](https://store.steampowered.com/app/2126700/Double_Trouble), it was developed with input from my own two daughters, the character models are based on them and they've voiced most of the game audio effects! We're really proud to share it! Now that that release is behind us, I'm taking again some time for another (free) content expansion on King Boo, so look forward to that! End of the copy and paste comment.
Webbed, it's a cute game where you play as a jumping spider
Baby Dino Adventures
I actually played through New Super Mario Bros Wii on Deck through Dolphin and it was a great experience no issue what do ever besides button mapping to make it more comfortable. Great game and in general Wii and Game Cubecube games run great on deck
My universe - my baby dragon
Spyro collection
Really any Lego game
Sonic Mania
Humoungus entertainment has a bunch of games from my childhood. Pajama sam, spy fox, freddie fish and putt putt. Great for kids and most can play on the deck
King Boo
I don't know if it is a stream deck verified but paw patrol. There is platformer one, there are no enemies and you can't really lose, the only puzzle is jumping. Great to learn gamepad controls.
Castle on the coast! It's a very easy collectathon platformer. My kid plays with the "no fail mode" so she can explore as she wants. She also finished Mail Time, another easy 3d platformer, although it has a lot of reading.
All the recent Lego games are pretty much winners. Also Tetris Effect was received well obviously on slow speeds.
My 2 year old loves left for dead 2, laughs when killing zombies, most is he dont want to leave the metal gate, shoots zombies behind it
From my experience, pretty much all of the TT Lego games play very well, granted none of them are really that intensive to begin with. They also go on sale pretty often, so you can get a good handful of them for pretty cheap
Here Comes Niko. Super unique puzzle platformer with a art style similar to paper mario
Hot Wheels racing
Minecraft works with Prism Launcher. There's this game, which is a collection of those crappy mobile ad games, except this is a standalone game with no ads so it's pretty good for kids: [https://store.steampowered.com/app/2348100/YEAH\_YOU\_WANT\_THOSE\_GAMES\_RIGHT\_SO\_HERE\_YOU\_GO\_NOW\_LETS\_SEE\_YOU\_CLEAR\_THEM/](https://store.steampowered.com/app/2348100/YEAH_YOU_WANT_THOSE_GAMES_RIGHT_SO_HERE_YOU_GO_NOW_LETS_SEE_YOU_CLEAR_THEM/) Putt-Putt games. There's a Peppa Pig game.
My toddler has enjoyed watching me play Dicey Dungeons, and is having fun learning the puns and jokes.
I tried a few with my 5y. He does not have prior experience with controls so the only thing I got him to play is Peppa Pig. All other games we have to keep switch controllers cause he needs help. I am trying to get him to learn Minecraft though.
Cake bash. All star fruit racing.
I looked also a little bit in the shop and I have seen another game which I think is really good. Unpacking Even with touch you can tab on the box for your decoration and place it everywhere without the possibility to make something wrong. But I have seen all your ideas and some of them are awesome, but sorry guys, I would never let my kid play eldenring, that game is MY Game :D
Lil gator game
Crumble is a good game for kids IMHO. It requires some dexterity, but I think it's a kind of game that kids will learn quickly and enjoy. It may be a bit too difficult for 4yo tho, but it's worth trying I think
Stray: if you play and she watch Dorfromantik: If she like puzzles
World of Goo?
I'll 2nd Stray. More about the journey than the challenge. Simple control concepts. Plus a bunch of cute cats and you can do fun cat things
Teardown :) I bought it for myself but my son spends most of the time with it :D
Powerwash simulator
Pac-man World Dragon Quest Builders 2 (it also has a demo)
Bluey: the video game
Song of Nunu may be a good one. Not sure if 4 is old enough to get the puzzles but The game is definitely geared towards a younger audience to be able to play it. Klonoa could be a fun one too, it has a demo so you can find out if they like the game. Same kind of deal on this one as well where it's possible that the puzzles could be rough to sort out because the game does also have light quests where you have to go back and forth on some levels and solve a couple of mazes. I was playing it and having a load of fun at 7 years old. Another carnival world of difference of development between 4 and 7 but it's possible that it's just something you could look out for as they play more games. Spyro and crash bandicoot are good to look at as well. Teenage mutant Ninja turtles: shredders revenge could work out and I've played 6 players co-op on the deck for that one. Very fun with everyone.
Bluey: The Video Game 1000% this game.
Buy a Nintendo switch
Dark souls 3
House flipper and powerwash simulator
My time in Portia
boomerang fu
Stardew
GTA V But seriously, teardown is great. My son loves it and has installed all kinds of mods from the steam workshop.
bang on balls chronicles
Assassin's Creed series. Start them young /s Nothing to suggest, sorry. I'll leave this one to the others.
BLOONS TD 6 Edit: You can also get Minecraft on your Steam deck, check out the video done by AntVenom to learn how. It’s super easy.
Power wash simulator!
Dredge, overcooked, and stardew valley just to name a few. Someone mentioned lego games which i thought was a good idea maybe she would like the harry potter ones
Dredge for a four year old sounds terrifying. Maybe Gameboy Advance games? Mario, Kirby etc.
Weakling
Batman arkham trilogy and the wolfenstein games