Discover Games
Blog Overcoming The Fear Of Online Gaming
08/04/2022 14 months ago Author: Rob Prior
As a parent, one of the worst things about video games is that you often hear about them second hand, through your children or even worse through click-baiting fear-filled headlines. So when my 7-year-old daughter came home from school wanting to play Roblox, I immediately said a very firm “No.”
Over the next few weeks, she continued to ask and I continued to tell her that there were other games that she could play and that I just wasn’t sure that Roblox was “something for our family.” It was only when I observed her missing out on a conversation with school friends that I properly understood why she was so keen to play and I begin to question my own thought process in refusing her this social pleasure.
After reading up about the game on the database and considering my reasoning for a few days, I realised that I was most likely acting out of illogical and most likely ill-informed fears. I decided to sit down with my daughter, so that we could have an open conversation and decide on a positive way forward.
Among Us
First, we would unlock some of the parental settings on her Xbox account, so that she could access Roblox, but in a way that I still felt was safe. Then we would play some of the games together, so that I could see what the games were like, so we could enjoy them together and talk about any challenges that she faced.
I quickly realised that much of the content was completely appropriate and began to like the creativity that the game so obviously inspires in people. We enjoyed trying out some games together.
Among Us
Release Date: 16/11/2018, updated in 2020
Out Now: Android, PC, Switch, Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S and iOS
Skill Rating: 8+ year-olds
Components: 2D Overhead and Hand-Made
Among Us is a strategy game where crew-mates prepare their spaceship for launch by completing tasks. However, one of the players is an impostor intent on sabotaging the ship and killing the crew. As the game progresses in real-time the impostor...
A Short Hike
Release Date: 05/04/2019, updated in 2021
Out Now: Mac, PC, PS4, Switch and Xbox One
Coming Soon: PS5
Skill Rating: 7+ year-olds
Components: 3D Third-Person, Open World, Pixels and Weather
A Short Hike is an adventure traversal game where you play the penguin-like character Claire, who needs to climb a mountain in a beautiful national park to receive an important phone call. Presented in cute pixel graphics, the game invites you to...
Animal Crossing (Series)
Release Date: 14/12/2001, updated in 2020
Out Now: 3DS and 2DS, DS, GameCube, Switch and Wii
Skill Rating: 9+ year-olds
Components: 3D Third-Person, Cartoon, Day and Night, Open World and Weather
Animal Crossing is a role-play collecting game where you live on a small island teeming with life. Insects, fish, trees, vegetation and fossils are represented with cute cartoon visuals. Rather than the scale or grandeur of other game worlds, it’s the...
Webbed
Release Date: 09/09/2021, updated in 2022
Out Now: PC, PS4, Switch and Xbox One
Skill Rating: 9+ year-olds
Components: 2D Side-On and Hand-Made
Webbed is a running and jumping game with a twist. You play a spider who can make webs, swing, climb and all the while creating music as she goes. It follows the story of our happy little spider on an adventure to save her boyfriend from a big dumb...
Stormworks: Build and Rescue
Release Date: 28/02/2018
Out Now: Mac and PC
Skill Rating: 11+ year-olds
Components: 3D Third-Person, Blocks, Open World and Weather
Stormworks is an open world adventure where you design, build and pilot your own air sea rescue service. You create programmable vehicles using it's block-building system and pilot them into dangerous situations to rescue stricken vessels or...
Unpacking
Release Date: 02/11/2021
Out Now: Mac, PC, PS4, PS5, Switch and Xbox One
Skill Rating: 9+ year-olds
Components: 2D Overhead, Blocks, Hand-Made and Pixels
Unpacking is a meditative puzzle game where you unpack belongings into a series of spaces, each representing a stage in life. You get to know the owner of the objects by their possessions and circumstances. To finish a level you need to work out where...
Sneaky Sasquatch
Release Date: 30/07/2019, updated in 2022
Out Now: Apple TV, Mac and iOS
Skill Rating: 5+ year-olds
Components: 2D Overhead, Cartoon, Day and Night, Hand-Made and Open World
Sneaky Sasquatch is an adventure game where you sneak around in campsites and try to find food from coolers and picnic baskets without getting caught. From this simple premise grows a game with endless ways to play and explore its open world: race, play...
The Legend of Zelda: Breath Of The Wild
Release Date: 03/03/2017
Out Now: Switch and Wii U
Skill Rating: 10+ year-olds
Components: 3D Third-Person, Cartoon, Day and Night, Open World and Weather
The Legend of Zelda: Breath Of The Wild departs from the previous Zelda formula with the scale and depth of its world. You walk, fly, ride and climb your way through a landscape that varies in climate, terrain, inhabitants and vegetation. Weather and...
Marvel's Spider-Man: Miles Morales
Release Date: 12/11/2020, updated in 2022
Out Now: PC, PS4 and PS5
Skill Rating: 11+ year-olds
Components: 3D Third-Person and Open World
Marvel's Spider-Man: Miles Morales is an action-adventure game based on the Marvel Comics superhero Miles Morales. It is similar to the first Marvel's Spider-Man game in mechanics although Miles Morales extends this...
Subnautica (Series)
Release Date: 11/04/2016, updated in 2018
Out Now: PC, PS4, Switch and Xbox One
Coming Soon: Xbox Series X|S
Skill Rating: 10+ year-olds
Components: 3D First-Person, Day and Night and Open World
Subnautica is an open-world adventure where you explore the ocean on an alien planet after crashlanding. You collect resources and fight creatures to survive. This enables you to establish an underwater base, gain new craft and equipment and explore...
Teardown
Release Date: 29/10/2020
Out Now: PC
Skill Rating: 14+ year-olds
Components: 3D First-Person
Teardown is a strategic game where you plan and execute a heist in fully destructible environments. Your objective is to claim the key cards that are hidden around the map. However taking one triggers the alarm, giving you only sixty seconds before...
Before Your Eyes
Release Date: 08/04/2021, updated in 2022
Out Now: Android, PC and iOS
Skill Rating: 8+ year-olds
Components: 3D First-Person and Cartoon
Before Your Eyes is a narrative game about an 11-year-old boy revisiting his life before "crossing over" to the other side. You play by exploring scenes that represent snapshots of his life. Unusually, you make choices and interact with the game by...
Alba: A Wildlife Adventure
Release Date: 11/12/2020
Out Now: Apple TV, Mac, PC, PS4, Switch, Xbox One and iOS
Skill Rating: 5+ year-olds
Components: 3D Third-Person and Cartoon
Alba: A Wildlife Adventure is an adventure game where you play as a young girl who starts a wildlife conservation club. When Alba visits her grandparents on a Mediterranean island, she is excited for a summer of exploring with her friend Ines. But when...
Hello Neighbor (Series)
Release Date: 08/12/2017
Out Now: Amazon Fire, Android, PC, PS4, PS5, Stadia, Switch and Xbox One
Coming Soon: Mac
Skill Rating: 11+ year-olds
Components: 3D First-Person
Hello Neighbor is a stealth survival game with a horror feel. You try and sneak into the basement of their neighbour’s house to uncover a "horrible secret". The game responds to your strategy by setting traps along paths the player followed in...
Journey
Release Date: 14/03/2012, updated in 2019
Out Now: PC, PS3, PS4 and iOS
Skill Rating: 11+ year-olds
Components: 3D Third-Person and Open World
Journey is an adventure game set in a desert. Exploring the eerie sandscape, you discover a world abandoned by the race that created it. The sense of space and scale evokes feelings of aloneness and being lost. But then the game pairs you with other...
Lake
Release Date: 01/09/2021
Out Now: PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One and Xbox Series X|S
Coming Soon: Switch
Skill Rating: 10+ year-olds
Components: 3D First-Person, 3D Third-Person and Cartoon
Lake is a narrative adventure where you play Meredith Weiss on a career break in 1986 while she returns to her hometown and ends up delivering the mail. As you talk to locals, meet up with old school friends and even fan a few romantic flames from your...
Rainbow Billy
Release Date: 05/10/2021
Out Now: PC, PS4, Switch and Xbox One
Skill Rating: 8+ year-olds
Components: 3D Third-Person, Cartoon and Hand-Made
Rainbow Billy: The Curse of the Leviathan is a role-play adventure where you save the world from a colourless darkness. Unusually, battles are won through listening and conversation rather than traditional attacks. It combines the excitement and...
Stardew Valley
Release Date: 26/02/2016, updated in 2018
Out Now: Amazon Fire, Android, Mac, PC, PS Vita, PS4, Switch, Xbox One and iOS
Skill Rating: 9+ year-olds
Components: 2D Overhead, Day and Night, Grid, Open World and Pixels
Stardew Valley looks like a farming simulator. That’s partly what it is, but you must also develop relationships with the other townsfolk and delve deep into the mines. Its quirky labyrinthine attention to detail is inviting for young players to try...
Townscaper
Release Date: 30/06/2020, updated in 2021
Out Now: Android, Mac, PC, Switch, Web, Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S and iOS
Skill Rating: 6+ year-olds
Components: 2D Overhead, Blocks and Hand-Made
Townscaper is a creative town-building game where you pick colours from the range available and click to put down a house in the sea. As you continue to add houses of different colours the game automatically orientates the architecture for you.
Sea of Thieves
Release Date: 20/03/2018, updated in 2023
Out Now: PC and Xbox One
Coming Soon: Xbox Series X|S
Skill Rating: 11+ year-olds
Components: 3D First-Person, Day and Night, Open World and Weather
Sea of Thieves is an online game where you are a pirate searching for treasure and adventure. Cast into a large open sea you work with other online players to crew your ship and find treasure. The game has a main story but really focuses on creating...
Mario Kart 8 Deluxe (Series)
Release Date: 27/08/1992, updated in 2018
Out Now: 3DS and 2DS, DS, GameCube, Switch and iOS
Skill Rating: 5+ year-olds
Components: 3D Third-Person and Cartoon
Mario Kart 8 Deluxe is a go-kart racing game on Nintendo systems. You race against other Nintendo characters around different circuits, picking up power-ups, attacks and speed boosts. It is frantic and chaotic but still requires skills to do well.
Rocket League
Release Date: 28/08/2018
Out Now: Mac, PC, PS4, Switch and Xbox One
Skill Rating: 8+ year-olds
Components: 3D Third-Person
Rocket League is a sports action game where you drive futuristic cars to score goals with an oversized football. It’s another game that sounds ridiculous but is actually a huge amount of fun to play and requires a lot of expertise. What’s not...
Stray
Release Date: 19/07/2022
Out Now: PC, PS4 and PS5
Coming Soon: Xbox One and Xbox Series X|S
Skill Rating: 10+ year-olds
Components: 3D Third-Person and Cartoon
Stray is an adventure traversal game about a cat lost in a futuristic city where robots live. You guide your feline friend in and out of buildings, across roads and generally poke your nose in to see what is going on.
It Takes Two
Release Date: 26/03/2021, updated in 2022
Out Now: PC, PS4, PS5, Switch, Xbox One and Xbox Series X|S
Skill Rating: 8+ year-olds
Components: 3D Third-Person and Cartoon
It Takes Two is a running, jumping and exploring game that tells a story of a young girl, Rose, whose parents are divorcing. The girl creates two dolls to represent her parents, which unexpectedly traps the clashing couple in them. You and a friend...
Astro's Playroom
Release Date: 19/11/2020
Out Now: PS5
Skill Rating: 6+ year-olds
Components: 3D Third-Person and Cartoon
Astro's Playroom is a running and jumping game that launched with the PlayStation 5. It not only showcases the PS5's new DualSense controller but offers a loveable adventure with novel interactions and considerable substance.
Firewatch
Release Date: 20/09/2016
Out Now: Mac, PC, PS4, Switch and Xbox One
Skill Rating: 11+ year-olds
Components: 3D First-Person, Cartoon and Open World
Firewatch is an explorative adventure where you play a fire lookout in America’s Shoshone National Forest. It has a relational and conspiracy undertone similar to the podcast/radio drama and Netflix show [link to...
Florence
Release Date: 14/02/2018, updated in 2020
Out Now: Android, Mac, PC, Switch and iOS
Skill Rating: 9+ year-olds
Components: 2D Side-On and Hand-Made
Florence is a little puzzle game that tells the story of a relationship, following the usual stages of loneliness, meeting, dating, falling for and moving in with another person. At first, the puzzle interactions seem trivial and the game doesn’t...
Marvel's Spider-Man (Series)
Release Date: 07/09/2018
Out Now: PS4
Coming Soon: PS5
Skill Rating: 11+ year-olds
Components: 3D Third-Person and Open World
Marvel's Spider-Man is a series of superhero adventures where you swing through an open-world city fighting crime and advancing a film-like story. There are also many side quests and missions you can take along the way.
New Super Lucky's Tale
Release Date: 08/11/2019, updated in 2020
Out Now: PC, PS4, Switch and Xbox One
Skill Rating: 7+ year-olds
Components: 2D Side-On, 3D Third-Person and Cartoon
New Super Lucky's Tale is a platform game where you play a fox on a quest to recover pages from a magical book that will save his world. It takes gameplay in a more action-oriented direction but the islands and characters are full of quirky characters...
Terraria
Release Date: 25/11/2013, updated in 2019
Out Now: 3DS and 2DS, Amazon Fire, Android, Mac, PC, PS Vita, PS3, PS4, Stadia, Switch, Wii U, Xbox 360, Xbox One and iOS
Skill Rating: 8+ year-olds
Components: 2D Side-On, Day and Night, Pixels and Weather
Terraria looks like a 2D, lesser, version of Minecraft. However, this is a game every bit as complex and creative as the better-known block building game. To the world-crafting and survival it adds hundreds of items to collect, characters to defeat and...
Super Mario Odyssey
Release Date: 27/10/2017
Out Now: Switch
Skill Rating: 7+ year-olds
Components: 3D Third-Person and Open World
Mario has starred in running and jumping Super Mario games on Nintendo hardware since the Nintendo Entertainment System in the 80's. The formula remains unchanged. Explore a level, jump on enemies, collect coins and get to the flag at the end to inch...
Halo (Series)
Release Date: 15/11/2001, updated in 2020
Out Now: Android, PC, Xbox, Xbox 360, Xbox One and iOS
Coming Soon: Mac
Skill Rating: 10+ year-olds
Components: 3D Third-Person
Halo is the longstanding sci-fi shooting video game series that started when Halo: Combat Evolved launched alongside the Xbox in 2001. The franchise has featured on every Xbox platform since then, with Halo 5: Guardians serving as the latest entry in...
Bugsnax
Release Date: 12/11/2020, updated in 2022
Out Now: Mac, PC, PS4, PS5, Switch and Xbox One
Skill Rating: 6+ year-olds
Components: 3D First-Person, Cartoon and Day and Night
Bugsnax is a whimsical adventure where you track, trick, catch and eat anthropomorphic food in all shapes and sizes. But as you do, you literally become what you eat. It's silly puzzling fun from the creators of [link to game/Octodad+Dadliest+Catch...
Kena: Bridge of Spirits
Release Date: 21/08/2021
Out Now: PC, PS4 and PS5
Skill Rating: 10+ year-olds
Components: 3D Third-Person and Cartoon
Kena: Bridge of Spirits is an adventure about a young girl who travels to an abandoned village in the hope of finding a sacred mountain shrine. To get there she must find and grow a team of charming spirit companions called the Rot, enhancing their...
Lego Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga
Release Date: 05/04/2022
Out Now: PS4, PS5, Switch, Xbox One and Xbox Series X|S
Coming Soon: PC
Skill Rating: 8+ year-olds
Components: 3D Third-Person, Blocks and Cartoon
Lego Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga is the latest in a series of Star Wars-themed Lego running, jumping and building games. You work your way through all 9 of the Star Wars films unlocking new locations and characters as you go.
Osu!
Release Date: 16/09/2007, updated in 2021
Out Now: Mac, PC and iOS
Skill Rating: 12+ year-olds
Components: 2D Side-On
Osu is a rhythm action game where you tap the screen in time to the music similar to the Elite Beat Agents games. This starts as a simple challenge but develops in speed and complexity. At higher levels, the games is an esport with people competing to...
The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt
Release Date: 19/05/2015
Out Now: PC, PS4, Switch and Xbox One
Components: 3D Third-Person, Day and Night, Open World and Weather
The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt is an action-adventure game where you play monster-hunter Geralt in a vast open world as he searches for his missing adopted daughter. The game responds to your actions and has dynamic environments, weather and day–night...
Pokémon (Series)
Release Date: 27/02/1996, updated in 2019
Out Now: 3DS and 2DS, DS, GBA, Game Boy and Switch
Skill Rating: 7+ year-olds
Components: 3D Third-Person and Cartoon
Pokémon Sword and Shield are role-playing games where you explore a fictional world and collect different creatures called Pokémon. You progress through the game by exploring the world, talking to characters and winning turn-based battles with the...
Fable (Series)
Release Date: 14/09/2004
Out Now: Mac, PC, Xbox, Xbox 360 and Xbox One
Skill Rating: 11+ year-olds
Components: 3D Third-Person, Day and Night and Open World
This is an adventure role-playing game set in a fantasy world where your interactions with the world and villagers, and decisions about your use of magical power, substantially alter the story and the environment.
The Last Of Us Part II
Release Date: 19/06/2020
Out Now: PS4
Skill Rating: 16+ year-olds
Components: 3D Third-Person and Day and Night
The Last of Us Part II is an action-adventure game set five years after The Last of Us. You control two characters in a post-apocalyptic United States. Ellie is out for revenge after suffering a tragedy, and Abby is a...
My daughter loves the simplicity and social nature of the games. She has started to add her school friends to her online roster, which has allowed her to feel more connected to conversations in school. I have also been able to see how mature and able to self-moderate she has become (despite her still relatively young age).
Combining this with regular joint play sessions has allowed me to overcome my initial fears and given my daughter new experiences in a safe environment.
