Hi, I have a primary school girl who wants her share of gaming on the family android tablet.
While finding open source or commercial (i.e. I’m happy to pay) games with no ads that boys like is doable, I haven’t been able to find the kind of games a girl wants:
- with cute graphics
- where you care for dolls or pet
- no ads or subscriptions, no endless DLCs.
Do you have any recommendations for android games that fit the bill?
Edit: I should have been more clear: I literally typed the description she gave me of the game she wants.
I don’t like gender stereotypes and I am not pushing her towards anything. I’d be perfectly happy for her to play any game she likes, as long as it has no adds or micro transactions.
She can play with puzzles, RPGs, tower defense, sims… She wants cute dolls, and I am looking for a game with cute dolls that does not suck.
No such thing as “girl games” and “boy games”. Just ones they like and ones they don’t.
I absolutely agree. I just typed the description she gave me of the game she wants.
Hah, sorry everyone jumped down your throat on the choice of words. Stardew Valley would be good for anyone old enough to read who would enjoy taking care of their own farm and building a relationship with villagers. I would call the graphics “cute”, but not gratuitously so (which might be preferred). Cooking Mama is another one that has a good reputation on non-mobile platforms, and it looks like they made an Android version. (Haven’t played the Android version, hopefully it’s not full of micro transactions).
If she has a Switch, I would say Animal Crossing.
There are definitely games where the primary/target demographic is boys or girls though.
The arcade classic “Centipede” is a good example of this. It was designed to try to attract women to play it. The colors were pastel shades and its sequel Millipede took it further by having a “story” about an elf archer protecting a mushroom forest from a bug invasion. Centipede was partially programmed by a woman (one of four people who made the game), Donna Bailey, who was also responsible for choosing the games vibrant pastel color palette.
Now, is Centipede or Millipede only for girls? No of course not. No video game is only for a single demographic. But real world data showed that girls/ women generally played Centipede and Millipede more than boys/men did. Some things just have a general appeal to some demographics more than others. So typically when a person asks for “girl games,” they just means games that will have a high appeal to girls or games that were designed with girls as the primary demographic.
Otome visual novels are this way as well. They target a female playerbase with a story-based romance game and generally feature a female protagonist who romances male characters in the game.