My daughter has just turned two, so she’s not playing video games just yet. She’s curious and really likes poking the controller buttons. She can even tolerate sitting on my lap until I find a checkpoint to quit whatever game I was frantically playing while she napped.

Still, a part of me is already anticipating her forays into gaming. Another part of me expects her contrarian toddler mindset to extend to games. Maybe she won’t be into them at all. But if she is, she will need my help—to play and understand, but also to choose. I’m not naive in thinking I’ll have full control over what she ends up playing as she gets older. (Cue memories of wildly inappropriate games I played at a wildly inappropriate age myself.)

A very unscientific self-selection survey that I ran on Bluesky revealed that parents with gamer kids, when in doubt, do their own research on specific games. Looking at reviews on Google, watching playthroughs on YouTube or Twitch, and sometimes researching the studio or developer behind it.

Not a single reply mentioned game ratings, except for this delightful person who recalled their own childhood experience:

“My parents never played video games but let my younger brother and I pick out games based on their ratings.”

My mind rebels at the idea of looking at ratings to determine if a given game is kid-suitable. What am I, my parents? Still, that’s the first thing I think about when imagining making a game purchasing decision. Someone has done the work to review the game, to make my job as a parent easier, so why not use it?

Ostensibly, this is the reason the Entertainment Software Ratings Board (ESRB), responsible for rating interactive entertainment in the US and Canada, exists. I’m used to seeing the black and white rectangle on game jackets at Gamestop and EB Games, as well as in game trailers on Steam and the like.

The ESRB’s rating classification and similar systems in place in other countries, like the Pan European Game Information (PEGI), struck me as reductive and overly broad.

The criteria by which rating authorities determine their ratings include the usual suspects of violence, sexual content, nudity, gambling, and substance use, including tobacco, alcohol, and drugs. There are subtle differences in how the ESRB and PEGI approach different content warnings, but their idea is similar: broadly, the less explicit or realistic these content themes are, if present, the lower the rating.

Within ESRB, there are five ratings possible for a video game: “E” rated for everyone, “E10+” rated for everyone 10 years and older, “Teen” rated for, I suppose, kids 13 years old and older, “Mature” rated for 17+, and “Adults only” rated to folks over 18.

PEGI uses numbers and colours for achieving essentially the same thing: 3 rated for kids over 3 years old (green), 7 rated for kids over 7 years old (green), 12 rated for teens over 12 (orange), 16 rated for teens over 16 (orange), and 18 rated for folks over 18 (red).

Mild cartoonish violence and some mild language are allowed in games rated E for everyone. Blood is rated T for Teen, as are “suggestive themes.” Intense violence and sexual content are 17+. Simulated gambling is A-OK for teens, but gambling with real currency is 18+ only, as is graphic sexual content and prolonged scenes of violence.

Age, as the crux on which the whole system rests, is the ratings’ biggest weakness.

Everyone’s idea of “age-appropriate,” let alone what constitutes a “mature” theme, is wildly, wildly different. Violent content generally falls lower on the rating spectrum than sexual content or gambling, but some parents may feel differently about this hierarchy. It sticks to sweeping generalizations by design—it has to. '

A convenient, clean, and tidy system of five ratings would be impossible otherwise.

Its lack of specificity is even more evident with Roblox, a platform with a mind-boggling user count of upwards of 150 million and millions of user-generated games. Moderating them alone is a gargantuan task. Giving these games an official, board-approved rating? So far, nothing.

Since ESRB et al cannot ignore Roblox, their solution is to slap it and other platforms like it with a “Diverse Content: Discretion Advised” content warning and move on. PEGI does the same with an exclamation mark “!” rating that reads like so: “PEGI!”

Go on, parents, figure it out yourselves.

(At least, PEGI has been rethinking its approach to rating games with in-game purchases. As of June 2026, games with loot boxes and battle passes will be rated at least PEGI 16, signaling a turn towards more control when it comes to spending real currency.)

My daughter will certainly start with games that my husband and I pick for her, games that we have played ourselves or know well. But there will come a point to consider games for her that I have no first-hand knowledge of. There, I’ll need help figuring out if they could scare, confuse, or upset her. If they are, gasp, age-appropriate—the very thing interactive software ratings boards set out to accomplish with their video game rating classifications.

Is it nearly time to call ratings boards obsolete?

They certainly still matter to game publishers, whose reach can be altered by a restrictive rating, but they’re less relevant to consumers than before. Even sites like Common Sense Media are more top-of-mind for parents than ESRB/PEGI. Readily available resources, more tailored to parents’ needs, make direct research of games possible, bypassing some ratings board that cannot account for each child’s specific interests and sensitivities. The ratings boards fail because they’re an attempt at a one-size-fits-all, where one size just isn’t possible.

Game ratings won’t be a surefire way for me to choose games for my daughter. I won’t rely on them to decide what my child does and doesn’t get to play. I’ll look, sure, if they still exist by then, but I’m already resigning myself to researching each specific game, playing it, or at least looking over my kid’s shoulder sometimes when she plays. I don’t know if she’ll take to Roblox or another big gaming platform that comes after.

All I know is that I will have work to do if I want her gaming experience to be safe and entertaining while she’s little.

So, more homework for us parents. As usual!

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Backyard Sports was a popular edutainment franchise that started in 1997, though there hasn’t been a new entry since 2010. Fans have been waiting for a new Backyard about three years longer than the next Grand Theft Auto. (There was, technically, a mobile game back in 2015.) It’s perhaps best known for its cast of diverse and memorable characters, especially the first sports GOAT for many millennials, Pablo Sanchez.

The gameplay in the Backyard is much more arcade-focused than other sports games: less NBA 2K, more NBA Jam. As opposed to the simulation games that dominate the sports game market, Backyard Sports is more focused on fun—after all, it was originally “edutainment.” The focus was teaching the rules of baseball, rather than a challenge.

But after all these years, a new game didn’t come easy. It took a lot of work, including hiring a private investigator. But on July 9, Backyard Baseball will be released on Steam, and is coming to Switch, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X/S at a later date.

“What if you had the opportunity one day to work on your favorite franchise?”

It’s a question that Playground Productions’ Lindsay Barnett (CEO and voice behind four characters, including commentator Vinnie the Gooch) and Matthew Berk (CMO) posed to me during our recent interview. It’s one they get to answer every day, as the company bringing back Backyard Sports.

It’s hard to argue that any game beats Backyard Baseball in terms of inclusion. Kenny Kawaguchi, a boy in a wheelchair, is one of the best pitchers you could ask for. Keisha Phillips, a Black girl, is the best power hitter in the game. And the flagship character, Pablo Sanchez, doesn’t speak English. You would be hard-pressed to find a kid who picks up Backyard Baseball and doesn’t someone who looks like them or acts like them.

“How many other games do kids get to see the representation that they see in the backyard, right?” said Berk. “When they look at this game, they get to see themselves. And especially for those who [are having] their first gaming experience, they’re gonna look at these kids who will become backyard heroes, or legends, or whatever they become to them and know that they can do that too. It’s a wonderful place to start.”

As a teacher, Barnett saw firsthand the lack of fulfilling games for children available.

“I had to see for my entire teaching career, students that were getting taken advantage of by the games that they were playing,” she said. “They had to buy things in order to win them, or they were just exposed to violence and inappropriate themes much earlier. There’s a simplicity to the backyard of, you know, ‘you can play here.’”

“It’s a time suck,” said Berk. “Ask a kid after two hours of playing if they’re happy, if they’re satisfied—if they feel good about it. I’d be hard pressed to find one who doesn’t walk away from playing Backyard and saying, ‘I loved it.’”

In an era where live service games are dominating, both in children’s and sports games, time is the valuable commodity. Keep playing to level up a battle pass. Complete the limited-time challenge today, or miss out on a skin of a cool character.

The team has no such aspirations for Backyard Baseball. Not only are parents and children able to play against each other locally (no co-operative multiplayer options, unfortunately), but Barnett and Berk want this togetherness to go beyond the screen.

“If you are inspired to go and get an actual glove and a ball and go outside and play, that is a huge win for us,” Barnett said.

“For those young fans who have not [played baseball] yet, they’re playing and saying ‘I get it. I can go and do this,’” Berk said. “And for the parents or adults playing with them, it’s ‘I want to go do this with you.’”

Playground Productions is helping enable this with new product partnerships. Pablo Sanchez is a sponsored athlete for Wilson Sporting Goods. Louisville Slugger is offering themed bats, including one based on the Aluminum Power power-up. The best part? These deals were initiated by people at Wilson and Louisville Slugger, aka “fans who have grown up to have now grown up to have cool jobs,” in Barnett’s words.

A fun part of testing the game for the team has been seeing how children, like their own families, react. Would kids be able to see what see millennials fell in love with?

“I was really struck by, when my nephew was picking players, he picked players with positive self-talk, and looked like they were excited to play,” Barnett said. “And you start to realize how important these characters and what they say can be to the development of a child.”

Another way that Backyard Baseball is trying to be inclusive is in the difficulty. Barnett and Berk promised there would be plenty of accessibility modes to get everyone involved, but the way they discussed the harder difficulties was especially interesting.

“Difficulty in our world is different from difficulty in some of the other sports titles out there,” said Barnett. “It’s not… having to click a million different buttons. It’s increased comedy. There are more fireball pitches. There’s more errors, there’s more kids that are falling or spinning around. Even if it’s difficult, you’re going to be laughing and having a good time.”

Near the end of our conversation, I asked Barnett and Berk who their favorite characters in the game were.

Barnett showed a wood carving the Playground Productions team had made for her of the commentary duo: Sunny Day and Vinnie the Gooch.

“She [Sunny] is the one reporting at every single game in the entire Backyard,” said Barnett. “No matter who’s playing, no matter what time of day, what time of year, you’ll see Sunny Day out there. I always imagined… that Sunny was always part of the assembly of how these games all get together. Somebody’s got to be organized in that environment to be reporting and bringing the kids together.”

A fitting answer, for a CEO who hired a PI to hunt down the rights to a franchise.

Berk’s answer, however, was a little more controversial: Ronny Dobbs.

“Ronny’s there because [his older sister] Sally’s there, right?” he began. “He’s not particularly good at any one skill. He falls and he makes errors, and he cries. But Ronny walks up to every at bat, hopping with glee towards the plate with renewed enthusiasm for each new play. I think that that’s so emblematic of the spirit of the backyard. When we fall and trip—and Ronny does that a lot—we get back up and we keep going. And there are players that are better than him, but they play with Ronny, too. They’re both on the same field.”

If that’s the kind of kids that Backyard Baseball helps inspire on the real diamond, the team at Playground Productions will be satisfied.

When Stranger Things wrapped, fans were so upset over saying goodbye, plus the conclusion’s polarization reaction, that “Conformity Gate” was born. The theory was that Netflix was hiding a secret final episode that had yet to air—the real ending. There were no “Conformity Gate” truthers in our household, but I was rooting for it anyway, because it would have given our family more time in the world of Hawkins.

I still wish it was true.

I didn’t need Stranger Things to have a secret ending; the final season was okay, the finale was pretty good, and I do not regret spending time in that world. But it was the first time my entire family—kids and adults—were so collectively enthralled by a TV show that we all did our chores faster, we ate our food faster, and we finished homework faster in pursuit of fitting in another 20 minutes of an episode before bed.

Honestly, it’s surprising it happened at all!

Months ago, my wife and I were watching the final season. It’s a show close to our hearts, because of its throwback nature and because its airing parallels my oldest. (Stranger Things debuted in July 2016; my nine-year-old was born a month later.) Vecna, the Freddy Krueger-like villain that appears midway through the series, is wrecking. Our heroes are getting beat. Vecna is scary as hell. Naturally, this becomes an evening where our youngest, then five, waltzes out of her room and declares she can’t sleep.

Our general policy when the kids are having trouble falling asleep is they can color next to us, but they’re watching what we’re watching. Now, there’s limits, but Stranger Things did not rise beyond it. One reason for this approach is that if the kids determine what we’re watching is boring, they’ll go back to their room and fall asleep.

In this case, my youngest decided to stick around and was immediately transfixed. Grabbing onto my wife’s arm. “Who is this?” “Who is that?” And that evening, a kid who never has nightmares had a nightmare…about Vecna killing her. Of course. Sigh.

Later, when my nine-year-old raised the idea of watching Stranger Things, fueled by a YouTube Shorts algorithm that was apparently funneling her spoiler analysis videos, there was some pause about my youngest. Vecna didn’t show up until later in the series, so by the time he came around, maybe she’d be into the show and not care?

Jackpot.

One rainy afternoon, we watched four episodes in a row. I haven’t watched that much TV since before kids. It was special. I figured it would take us the better part of a year to watch all of it, but after school, the kids would beg for “ramen and Stranger Things,” and suddenly, we’d blasted through five seasons of Stranger Things in mere months.

Then, it was over. Not without tears, gasps, and a few is-so-and-so-gonna-die moments, but the credits rolled and we were left without any. more. episodes.

We tried to watch the behind-the-scenes documentary…but that lasted 15 minutes. We tried the animated show…but it’s aimed at children and my wife and I were bored.

Quickly, I could feel this moment—this connection—slipping.

While we regularly watch and enjoy movies together, it’s usually with entertainment aimed at my kids. Stranger Things was a rare “oh, we’re all having a blast.” And it meant many nights of the family cozied up on the couch, yelling and screaming together.

I searched online for “shows like Stranger Things for young kids” and found a few recommendations to try. I jotted down eight into my phone, queued up some trailers on the TV, and asked everyone to sit down. The plan was to watch every single trailer, poll the family on which ones were their favorites, and come up with a handful of shows to trial. Maybe, if we were lucky, one would grab us how Stranger Things did.

Here’s how that experiment played out! All told, we had eight shows in consideration:

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A few days back, my nine-year-old asked if she could ride her bike to a friend’s house.

This friend’s house is not far, but it’s not exactly walking down the street, or even around the block. It’s less than a mile but, well, almost a mile. She’s been further away from the house with a group of older friends, but it would be the furthest she’s gone alone. It gave me pause. I said no, but also said I would talk to her mom about it, because honestly, I did trust her to make the ride. She’s smart, cautious, and capable.

I have written about wanting to avoid becoming a helicopter parent. I want to trust my kids to be independent, out of sight, and making mistakes the same way I did.

Mostly the same way, anyway. It’s no longer the mid 90s. There is technology at your fingertips to keep an eye on where your child is at all times, if you’d like. You can snoop on their messages. What’s the line between caring parent and privacy invasion?

Anyway, this is all to say: we bought my nine-year-old an Apple Watch.

There were several considerations that went into this undeniably expensive solution.

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Summer is not the kindest time for this roundup; the pools are open, the schools are closed, and there’s just a general downturn in video games targeted at families.

Which is fine, but also has me asking a question: what is your family’s relationship with video games in the summer? This was where I’d spend hours upon hours upgrading my characters in RPGs for the SNES and original PlayStation. My parents would discover this because…uh, I would not wake up until sometime closer to lunch.

If you represent these games and have a potentially interesting story to share about how these games consider kids as part of their audience, do get in touch with me!

• eFootball Kick-Off! (Switch 2) — June 2

Description: Originally known as PES, the ultimate football action game is coming to Nintendo Switch 2! Build an original team and enter tournaments around the world! Take your one-of-a-kind dream team to the very top! Jump right into an action-packed match with friends or family using real national teams and clubs!
Rating: E
Price: $19.99

The launch of eFootball was a disaster, and even after Konami rolled out extensive updates, IGN said the game was “no longer a laughing stock due to its most hilarious visual bugs being resolved, but now it’s just kind of sad.” Woof. It’s hard to tell what’s changed in the years since; mainstream critics have largely been ignoring the series.

• Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth (Switch 2, Xbox Series X/S) — June 3

Description: The second game of the FINAL FANTASY VII remake trilogy. After escaping from the dystopian city of Midgar, Cloud and his friends set out on a journey across the planet. New adventures await in a vibrant and vast world—sprint across grassy plains on a chocobo and explore expansive environments.
Rating: T
Price: $49.99

The first 10 hours or so I spent with this game were jaw dropping. And then I spent entirely too much time trying to do everything in the game and kinda ruined it for myself. I would have been better off just shooting through the story and getting to the other side. Still, Square Enix’s approach to these “remakes” has been more interesting and ambitious than what you usually get and the Switch 2 ports have been excellent.

• Mini Football Legends (Apple Arcade) — June 4

Description: Kick off the ultimate soccer experience with Mini Football Legends! Step onto the field in this premium edition of Miniclip’s hit game, now available exclusively on Apple Arcade. Get ready to compete with teams from all over the world, as you build your team and rise through the Leagues, becoming the Legend you were born to be. Whether you’re playing with friends or diving solo into a full Career, every match brings you closer to greatness.
Rating: 4+
Price: $6.99/month

Adding a “+” typically indicates an existing game coming to Apple Arcade without microtransactions, but Mini Football Legends appears to be that in another form. (If you weren’t aware, the World Cup is imminent; hence the soccer games.) Would you be shocked to learn the many complaints on Google Play are about microtransactions?

• My Talking Tom 2+ (Apple Arcade) — June 4

Description: Every day is an adventure with the cool virtual pet, Talking Tom. The superstar virtual cat is going on the ultimate pet adventure, and with you, it’s going to be more fun than ever! Your favorite funny friend is ready to dazzle you with his new wardrobe, amazing skills, and special features.
Rating: 4+
Price: $6.99/month

This game is massively popular—nearly a million reviews on the App Store. Most people love it, and it’s funny to see reviews that suggest you flip off wi-fi on your device because it cuts down on some of the ads. Mobile games are often gross, friends.

• Coffee Inc 2+ (Apple Arcade) — June 4

Description: Coffee Inc 2+ is the Apple Arcade edition of the hit business simulation game. Build your coffee empire across the world — without limits. Every feature, upgrade, and expansion is fully unlocked, with no in-app purchases required. Start as the founder of a single cafe and grow into a global powerhouse. Craft new products, inspire employees, expand into major cities, and dominate the market. Every decision is yours.
Rating: 4+
Price: $6.99/month

The problem with so many mobile games, and trying to give you a sense of what to make of them, is so few critics review mobile games. You’re relying on the wisdom of the crowd, but in general, people leaving reviews are typically leaving negative comments. From what I can tell, it seems like a totally serviceable tycoon-style game.

• NBA The Run (PS5, Xbox Series X/S, PC) – June 9

Description: Take your favorite NBA stars to iconic streetball courts around the world, in this fast-paced, online 3v3 basketball game. Stack wins, earn cred and become the GOAT of THE RUN. Who’s Got Next?
Rating: E
Price: TBA

At some point, my desire for games like this should manifest in the form of an arcade cabinet in my house. In the meantime, Game Informer enjoyed trying NBA the Run, which apparently comes from ex-NBA Street folks: “While I still miss the Street games, I came away from my hands-on time extremely impressed with not only how well NBA The Run plays, but how the quick-hit structure compelled me to want to keep playing.”

• Monopoly: Star Wars Heroes vs. Villains (PC, Switch/Switch 2, PS5, Xbox Series X/S) — June 11

Description: Assemble your team, build your roster of iconic Star Wars™ characters, and battle with your friends and family for control of the galaxy as you move across storied planets and locations. Choose from a wide array of Star Wars heroes and villains, each with their own unique abilities. Whether you’re teaming up with Luke Skywalker or unleashing Darth Vader, every match is packed with team strategy, surprises, and classic Star Wars moments. No two battles unfold the same way, the fate of your team is yours to shape!
Rating: E10+
Price: $29.99

This is from…Ubisoft? I’m baffled. And also not convinced Monopoly is a good game.

• to a T (Switch 2) — June 11

Description: to a T is a narrative adventure game that portrays the extraordinary life of a 13-year-old teenager, whose body happens to be in the shape of the letter “T.” They live in a modest seaside town that they explore by foot, train, or even their favorite unicycle, and interact with a the charming cast of characters who live there.
Rating: E
Price: $19.99

I missed to a T the first time, but I have an affection for everything designer Keita Takahashi touches. I should just play this. Plus, while reviews were a little middling, places like RPGFan found it worth trying out: “It’s almost poetic (or pretentious, if you’re cynical), but the fact that to a T is an imperfect game is in itself perfect.”

• Barbie: Horse Ride & Rescue (iOS, Android) – June 16

Description: Start your Western horse riding adventure with Barbie at Roaming Hearts Rescue Ranch. Rescue and rehabilitate charming horses, test your riding skills and customize your style as you uncover the mysteries of Moonrise Valley!
Rating: 4+
Price: TBA

The screen shots make this look charming, but then read the fine print and realize the numbers are bleak. This children’s game is charging $2.99 per week, $9.99 per month, or $80 per year. What are we doing here? This is a game meant for kids. Come on.

• The Adventures of Elliot: The Millennium Tales (Switch 2) — June 18

Description: A brand-new action RPG from the creators of Octopath Traveler and Bravely Default – The Adventures of Elliot: The Millennium Tales combines stunning HD-2D visuals and exciting action-adventure gameplay for the first time!
Rating: T
Price: $59.99

Strong Zelda vibes, and perhaps more approachable for youngsters than, say, Mina the Hollower. I’ve had this on my radar, and Polygon said the “relentlessly satisfying and succinct gameplay loop of The Adventures of Elliot made my hour with the game fly by.”

• Destroy All Humans! (Switch) — June 23

Description: Crypto is back and humanity is still very much in trouble. Already wreaking havoc on Nintendo Switch, the cult-classic alien invasion lands on Nintendo Switch 2 later this year with richer visuals, denser worlds, improved shaders, and support for full HD up to 1440p resolution. Unleash chaos with powerful psychic abilities, outrageous weaponry, and a sharp sense of humor. Invade Earth, harvest DNA, and remind the human race exactly who’s in charge. Includes the downloadable content “Skin Pack”!
Rating: T
Price: TBA

Maybe you don’t want to explain what “probing” is, but they don’t make goofy action games like this anymore! No word on the Switch 2 version, but Nintendo Life called it straight last time: “a remake that refreshes the original’s visuals, modernises its controls and adds a few new weapon and traversal upgrades to proceedings, all whilst failing to make any meaningful changes to the game’s rather outdated core gameplay.”

• Wanderstop (Switch/Switch 2) – June 23

Description: From the creator of The Stanley Parable and The Beginner’s Guide comes Wanderstop, a narrative-centric cozy game about change and tea.
Rating: T
Price: $24.99

I enjoyed Wanderstop, but fell off it because these are just not my games! What makes Wanderstop work longer than most was being more character-focused and objective-focused than other cozy games. Game Informer felt like I did, calling it “a pensive, funny, and surprising story set in a charming location with enjoyable characters.”

• Star Fox (Switch 2) — June 25

Description: Step into the cockpit and fly across the stars and skies with Fox McCloud and the Star Fox team! With the Lylat system under attack by evil scientist Andross, it’s up to you and the squad to fend off his forces. Blast your way through enemies in a fast-paced adventure that will have you tearing through space, soaring across planets, and shooting loads of foes out of the sky at every turn.
Rating: E10+
Price: $49.99

Star Fox 64 is an all-time favorite. I am reluctant to revisit it because it’s an ancient, linear game that you can finish in a few hours. What I actually want is a version of Star Fox that’s more expensive, fitted for the year 2026. But I will undoubtably give this a shot because my kids were so tickled by Fox McCloud in the recent Mario movie.

• #Drive Rally (PS5, Xbox Series X/S) — June 28

Description: #DRIVE Rally isn’t just a trip down memory lane; it’s an arcade-inspired rally-driving experience set in the golden racing era of the ‘90s. Experience the thrill of rally racing with passionate co-drivers who react dynamically to your driving, offering both praise and critique while helping you navigate the twists and turns of every stage.
Rating: E
Price: $19.99

You don’t get many rally-focused games, unless you count Forza Horizon? Mostly, this makes me want to listen to the Sega Rally Championship soundtrack. If you need to scratch an itch, this might work, but WayTooManyGames was meh on it: “Again, it’s not that #Drive Rally is a bad game; it’s just yet another arcadey rally game.”

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Currently, my family has over 150 hours playing Stardew Valley together. It is rare that we find an activity that the whole family enjoys this much, but Stardew Valley has become that. My kids will now not ask for just screen time—but instead ask for Stardew Valley family time.

All of this has caused me to think about why this is such a hit for my kids.

Stardew Valley is, at its core, a 2D farming simulator, very similar to the old Harvest Moon games. It also contains elements of a relationship simulator, top down Zelda combat, resource gathering, fishing, and crafting. Each of those gameplay elements has been simplified, but they all work together to create an experience where you can easily shift between different types of gameplay. It is this variety of gameplay and level of polish that I can see why Stardew Valley is still going strong even after 10 years.

The game is really easy to control.

My kids are twin eight-year-olds and although they are beginning to dabble in more complex games, they haven’t quite mastered camera control or complicated button pressing. From the beginning, they understood what every button did. The simple controls allowed them to not focus on the controller and dive into all the other aspects of the game.

It also has the right blend of individual and team objectives.

Right now, we are working to complete a very hard optional task of collecting rare seeds from a man named Mr. Qi. This demands the whole family working together to accomplish the task. Before we started this, my son was working on raising his fishing level, and my daughter was trying to find the resources to craft different outfits for the whole family. Now we are all focusing on this one task. That is what makes Stardew Valley really great for the entire family.

At some points, we are working together as a team on a shared goal, at other times we can each work on our own individual goals.

There is a perfect blend of shared and individual goals, and though we encourage our kids to help with the larger goals, it is never forced upon them. They have the freedom to choose what to do, and it is this blend of goals that seems to keep my kids interested. My wife and I encourage their freedom and are really proud when they agree that they should be helping the family with a large shared goal.

Importantly, the game also gives my kids the ability to express themselves in many different ways.

My son likes to dress like a real farmer, and has a cabin to match this aesthetic, while my daughter likes to do something more stylish and has themes for each room in her house. (She also has tailored outfits for each of us for each season.) This creativity not just in aesthetics, but in game play really means they can play how they want, while also contributing to the overall family farm.

One last thing that I am grateful to Stardew Valley for is that it is teaching my kids responsibilities, chores, and contributing to the family. Each Stardew Valley day my daughter is in charge of the animals, and my son is in charge of harvesting crops, mushrooms and sap. They know this is their morning responsibilities, and that if they want to do anything else with the rest of the day, they can—after they finish their morning chores.

It has gotten to the point where they do these chores each morning, without having to be reminded. This behavior has carried over to doing chores in real life, where they don’t complain about doing them, because they relate that, just like in Stardew Valley, they need to contribute to the family.

My wife and I have seen Stardew Valley teach them not just to do chores but that everyone has their own responsibilities within the family.

I am so glad that Stardew Valley has come into our lives and given us this amazing family game. Each night before bed, we usually do one or two Stardew Valley days. It is family time for us, doing something everyone in the family enjoys.

I don’t know when my kids will want to play or do something else, but for now, my wife and I are loving our time with them on our farm in Stardew Valley.

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A few weeks back, there were some notable headlines about Roblox:

• CNBC: “Roblox shares plummet 18% as child safety measures weigh on bookings”

• Investopedia: “Roblox Slashes Its Outlook as Users Grow Slower Than Expected. The Stock Is Plummeting”

• Bloomberg: “Roblox Shares Fall Most in Four Years on Slowing User Growth”

For Roblox? Ouch. For everyone else? Potentially, some good news.

One of the platforms we regularly interrogate here is Roblox, and one of the questions that regularly comes up about Roblox is whether it’s safe to let your kids play on it.

The answer to that question is, like many gray areas in parenting, “no, but..?

My personal worry is that for whatever meaningful changes have come to Roblox, the changes necessary to push the needle on safety requires sacrificing capitalistic ascent. It requires bleeding money and users alike. It means the number can’t go up, because such changes would, by definition, introduce friction that would stand in the way of it.

Such financial pain was inevitable and necessary.

Some context, per CNBC:

“Roblox shares plummeted 18% on Friday after the company reported first-quarter earnings as its new child safety measures weighed on bookings. […] In a letter to shareholders, the gaming company wrote that its new age-check feature “restricted on-platform communication for non-age checked users, diluted communication for age-checked users, and slowed new user acquisition,” causing greater-than-expected headwinds.”

And what this means relative to what was expected, per Bloomberg:

“The video-game company’s 132 million daily active users fell short of analysts’ estimates of 143.8 million. While that’s a 35% increase year-over-year, it marks the second consecutive decline compared with the previous quarter. Bookings came in at $1.7 billion, compared with Wall Street’s expectations of $1.73 billion.”

Roblox has, also according to Bloomberg, “projected another quarter of user declines.”

It’s worth remembering this is a company that still has 132 million daily active users. It dwarfs the most popular games on any other platform. It is, for some, their world, and while Roblox will not dominate forever, there’s nothing suggesting it’s going away.

I’ve documented the changes Roblox has made over the past few years, including overhauling its parenting controls (good) and introducing age requirements for features like chat (messy but well-meaning). But Roblox has found itself in a tight spot, where it’s on the verge of being regulated while also being sued by several states, because it prioritized growth over everything else. It wanted the most users possible.

Which isn’t to say Roblox didn’t think about safety at all—we’re talking priorities.

Roblox, despite its hundreds of millions of users and vice grip on youth attention, also isn’t profitable. It remains in the red, because revenue is different than profit. There are creators publishing games on Roblox making money, but to date, Roblox continues to invest more in building and scaling its platform than it does making money off of it.

A similar playbook has played out with companies like Facebook and Amazon: burn an extraordinary amount of money, year after year, while capturing a huge amount of attention. Later, you’ll find a way to make a gazillion dollars. Roblox is popular and has attention, but it does not yet have a gazillion dollars. Maybe it eventually will!

The question for me, though, is whether Roblox is willing to keep enduring more tension in growth in service of containing to lock down the platform even more.

One of the best reporters on the Roblox beat is Bloomberg’s Cecilia D’Anastasio. Yes, she’s the one responsible for the “Roblox’s Pedophile Problem” story that arguably helped kick off much of the increased scrutiny Roblox is under. I’d asked D’Anastasio to answer a few questions about this latest news and they were so good I figured I might as well just include everything she said below. You’ll get more out of it that way.

So, is this an existential crisis for Roblox?

Stop listening to me. Onto D’Anastasio:

Do you anticipate Roblox to keep adding, as you phrased it in your piece, additional “friction” to the platform in response to ongoing lawsuits and potential regulation, despite the recent financial news?

Cecilia D’Anastasio: Safety has become central to Roblox’s public messaging. So while I suspect that many of the most high-friction changes have already been implemented—like restrictions on chat and age-verification—I absolutely think the company will continue to roll out new updates and tweaks.

Experts say safety is a moving target. Not only do predators trade tricks on how to evade moderation on darknet fora, but also, kids are always finding new ways to exploit systems and do bad stuff, like harass people or gamble. Roblox’s big challenge is both making sure users don’t find ways to circumvent its current safety measures while also keeping up with unpredictable new threats.

But yes, we saw a trade-off there when Roblox shares took a hit recently. I often hear parents express discomfort over Roblox because of what they read in the news. Roblox is making a long-term bet that enough parents will feel comfortable letting their children play in its online sandbox that it will eventually outweigh any short-term financial hits.

Does Roblox face an existential crisis of sorts? The platform is not yet profitable, but as the result of the path it chose to encourage exponential user growth, it’s being forced to make user growth more difficult.

D’Anastasio: A lot of companies aren’t profitable. I don’t think most people close to Roblox would say it’s facing an existential crisis. Overall, Roblox is growing its revenue, bookings, user base and cultural footprint. It’s certainly done a lot better than other game companies.

Roblox’s CFO warned that last year’s growth—especially with hit games Grow A Garden and Steal A Brainrot—might be hard to replicate this year with safety changes adding friction to sign-ups, etc. But when it comes to finances, Roblox has shown some signs that it’s trying to find more ways to monetize its user base, like by skimming a percentage of revenue off game developers’ ad deals on the platform.

Countless tech companies have grown their user bases for years before figuring out how to sustainably make money. We’ll see how well Roblox balances that against retaining game developers’ trust.

Roblox, like many modern social platforms, chased user growth and decided to enact privacy and safety measures after a growing public backlash. What might Roblox have looked like if it’d built these features in tandem with growth?

D’Anastasio: I wish I could tell you. This is such a common occurrence that pointing it out would feel mundane if not for the countless people who say they’ve been harmed from a failure to implement certain safety protocols. I remember even playing Valorant in beta and realizing that Riot Games didn’t implement some of the anti-harassment features they’d already honed for more than a decade on League of Legends. Safety is so often an afterthought.

Roblox says that it’s always been designed with safety and civility in mind. I think the standards for what that looks like have changed as more and more governments are paying attention. But kids who grew up on the platform have always been calling this out. For years, vigilantes have publicly demanded the removal of Roblox games like Bathroom Simulator or “condos” where avatars simulate sex.

Their idea of a safe Roblox has been clear in their minds for more than a decade. And if you ask them what they envision, it’s pretty simple: no sex games, no racist role-plays, no predators posing as kids. But I’m sure a lot of product designers at Roblox would say it’s not so easy to actually design these features in a way that doesn’t restrict creative expression or user growth.

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Have a story idea? Want to share a tip? Got a funny parenting story? Drop Patrick an email.

Also:

• Roblox use is way, way down in the house. When the kids do have tablet time, they are spending it watching videos. My six-year-old is into Minecraft again.

• Movies based on Roblox properties were inevitable, but it’s hard for me to imagine many of them actually get made. Call me when I can buy a ticket.

• A few weeks ago, I did not know what “condo games” were, and much like bathroom simulators, it’s utterly bizarre they lasted on the platform this long.

There are times where my children want to play a video game on their own, like the way my nine-year-old keeps asking to borrow my Switch 2 to play Tomodachi Life. There are times they want to play games with one another, like role-playing in Roblox.

One of my favorite dynamics is when they want to observe me playing a game and make suggestions on what would happen next, what character’s names should be, etc.

That’s the rhythm we’ve fallen into lately with the surprisingly delightful Yoshi and the Mysterious Book, a new Switch 2 game that’s ultimately far more (in a good way!) puzzler than platformer. Sure, you’re still jumping quite a bit, but this is a game without death. If you fall in a pit, there are no consequences. Which isn’t to suggest Yoshi and the Mysterious Book is without difficulty, challenge, or nuance! It’s quite the opposite. Instead, what the game asks of you is a deep well of curiosity and patience.

Onto my review…

Yoshi and Mysterious Book

• Platform: Switch 2 (No support for Switch 1)

• Rating: E

• Price: $49.99 (Digital) / $59.99 (Physical)

• Players: 1

• GameShare Compatible? Yes

• Good For Kids? Yes

• Difficulty Modifiers: A very good hint system

As the title suggests, Yoshi’s on a new adventure with a “mysterious book” named Mr. E, whose pages contain access to a litany of odd creatures. Yoshi’s asked to play a detective, trying to decipher the patterns, behaviors, and secrets of those within.

The game is divided into chapters, with different “levels,” or areas of exploration, contained within. Each level focuses on a single creature that, at the start, you’ll know nothing about. There are no goombas here! It’s your job to hop in and…mess around.

What happens if you use Yoshi’s tongue to eat them? What happens if you toss them in the water? What happens if you butt stomp them? What happens if you feed them an apple? What happens if…? Each time you discover a new characteristic, it’s literally marked on the level, as a form of visible achievement. And it sticks around forever, too, so if you sweep through an area again, you’re reminded of past achievements.

Some humorous examples from my own time with the game:

• “Easily dazed when bopped.”

• “Tastes a little sweet.”

• “Sings when stepped upon.”

• “Sudsy sleepers nap underground.”

These are not the “traditional” goals of a video game. The levels don’t have end screens! You bump into a part that is no longer drawn and are stopped in place.

The real pleasure in Yoshi and the Mysterious Book comes from stumbling into the unknown, recklessly and mischievously. Like most Nintendo games, it doesn’t have traditional difficulty options, nor extensive accessibility features that, in turn, allow you to tweak the game’s challenge curve. (This is me, once gain, pounding the table for either voice acting or voice over support, because it frustrates my six-year-old that she can’t tell what’s going on while we play. ) Because you are not required to “do” all that much to move from one area to the next, that becomes the game’s “easy” mode.

There is also, thankfully, a very good “hint” system that has two layers. One, a small hint on what to do next. Then, a very specific hint on what to do next. You unlock these using the coins you collect while exploring, but I always had more than enough.

Much of your time are moments below, where you stumble into “oh, you can do this”:

(In case it’s not clear, the little fluffy creatures are “drinking” the water.)

Or you can pursue legitimately stressful sequences combining puzzle and platforming:

(Yoshi’s iconic fluttering makes navigating platforming stressful in its own right!)

Early on, you’re constantly rewarded for discovering things that often feel entirely driven by chaotic accidents and happenstance. You might not have meant to drop a creature into a hole, triggering a random series of events, but it turns out that was something for you to discover. At times, it’s not immediately clear why the game is congratulating you for something, which over time can give a sense of detachment from what’s happening onscreen. There’s a main goal in each area—like getting three big flowers to bloom—that prompts the game to ask if you’d like to leave and move on.

Again, this is where the game is offering an “easy” mode. How deep do you want to dig? When I played with my kids, we would quickly whisk off to the next area to see what weird stuff was on the other side. Later, at night, I’d come back for its secrets.

When you choose to move on, there’s an important task for Yoshi: naming the creature! This, as you might imagine, is where my children came in. Please meet…

Peekoo, as named by my nine-year-old:

Baba, as named by my six-year-old:

And Pokoloko, as named (again) by my nine-year-old:

There’s many more, but you get the idea.

It is, indeed, a strange game. I’ve never really played anything like it from Nintendo.

But in the hours I’ve spent with it, solo and with my kids, I’ve smiled a lot. It’s a joy to hop into a blank page and ask my kids for ideas on what we could try. And because each individual page has dozens of mini goals, just goofing around is going to unearth some reward. But if you want to eventually find all the mysteries, and if you want to track down all the collectible flowers, you will have to put your big adult brain to use.

(Some of them are really tricky…well, for me at least. I am not a puzzle master, and I eventually had to concede defeat on some objectives, knowing I’d require a guide.)

Like Kirby, Nintendo has used Yoshi to experiment, and Yoshi and Mysterious Book falls neatly in the tradition of the character’s spin-off origins with Yoshi’s Island, through Yoshi’s Wooly/Crafted World. Some experiments work better than others.

This, thankfully, is an excellent one.

No reviews from my kids this time around. They were mostly on the sideline here. It’s also not a complete review—I only finished the first few chapters. If I have any longterm concern, it’s that the game’s charm could diminish over many, many hours.

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Have a story idea? Want to share a tip? Got a funny parenting story? Drop Patrick an email.

Also:

• I’m a little surprised this is a Switch 2 exclusive. I can’t speak to what’s running under the hood, but it’s too bad people who only own a Switch 1 will miss out.

• The game grew on me over time. Again, puzzle games are hit or mess with me; I loathe leaving a collectible behind, but there’s a truly great hint system in here.

• Separately, my daughter is now obsessed with an old 3DS of mine. I’ll be writing about this later, but thankfully, she was smart and picked my Majora’s Mask 3DS.

It’s January 3, 2026, a lazy end-of-holiday-break Saturday in the Fanelli household, and one day before the theater group we’ve joined holds auditions for this year’s show, The Little Mermaid. For months, my nine-year-old daughter Olivia has said she wants no part of auditioning for what would be her first lead role.

Then, Liv and I are watching The Game Awards’s 2025 Game of the Year orchestra medley, which ends with Jenny Kidd, the voice of Donkey Kong Bananza‘s Pauline, making a surprise appearance to sing “Breaking Through,” the game’s end credits theme.

“We’re breaking through

Down to the core

No stopping us

Not anymore.”

Olivia, unprompted, says to me, “Dad, I think I changed my mind. I want to audition for Flounder.”

When Bananza first launched, the soundtrack quickly became a Fanelli favorite. Routine repeats of each of the Bananza songs would play on TV and iPhone alike, thanks to a YouTube montage of the Bananza songs. We watched that montage periodically for the rest of the year, while also having the occasional discussion about Olivia potentially auditioning for a lead role in the next show.

Up until January 3, the day before the audition, Olivia was steadfastly against auditioning. Now, she’s decided she wants to go for it. Pauline, and by extension Jenny Kidd, has inspired her.

Alongside the copious destruction of Bananza’s main gameplay lies a story of stage fright, and the struggle to overcome.

When DK first finds Pauline and saves her from her purple rock prison, she’s then asked to sing the Kong Bananza song and transform her simian companion. She immediately freaks out.

“No way! I can’t sing! I’m not ready to. The crowd is so big. I won’t do it, I can’t do it!” DK finally convinces her to try, and with a “here goes nothing,” the Kong Bananza song is unlocked. She succeeds.

With every new song, Zebra, Ostrich, and Elephant, Pauline’s confidence grows a bit more. By the time DK and Pauline reach Snake Bananza, the fifth and final song, Pauline is a completely different person. Instead of hiding from the crowd, she embraces it. She snaps her fingers in rhythm before saying, “DK, give me a beat,” and the snake party begins.

That growth eventually leads (spoilers!) to her rescuing DK from a purple rock prison of his own, just as he had done for her, before the final act of the game begins. She broke through, and in turn, helped her best friend break through, too.

Olivia and I work on a piece of Flounder’s main song, She’s In Love, for a few hours on Saturday and Sunday. We then head to auditions, and when her name is called, she goes up and performs the piece we practiced without a second thought. The nervousness and stage fright that fueled Liv’s hesitation throughout the summer and fall was gone, and a confidence not unlike late-game Pauline formed in its place.

Later that night, the callback list is sent to the group, and Olivia is on it.

Excitement soon turns to that all-too-familiar chagrin, and we continue to work for the next few days. Finally, it’s Wednesday, January 7, callback day. We load into the car and head out.

On the way, I ask her what song she wants to use to warm up. She thinks for a moment, and then says, “Can we use the Pauline song, the one from the awards show you went to?” Thanks to the Nintendo Music app, I can load up “Breaking Through,” and she belts it as loud as she can in the car as we drive.

I instantly think of Snake Bananza Pauline. Same energy. Same confidence. She’s ready.

We arrive at callbacks, she goes in and does her thing (I can’t watch this time, which adds to my anxiety), and we leave. We’re told the cast list will be posted on the group’s website “tonight or tomorrow.” Great.

Liv goes to bed, not a care in the world. I turn my F5 key into dust on the group’s website, waiting for a list of names. Eventually, the list of names arrive…and she did it.

She got it.

She’s Flounder, and she’s splitting performances with one of her best friends in the group, so she’ll have three performances instead of a full load of six shows, which will ease her into her first role. Dream scenario.

My wife and I celebrate like the Phillies just won the World Series. We call and text everyone we know. Many tears of parental pride are shed. She sleeps, unaware of the huge surprise we’re going to drop on her tomorrow.

As the season goes on, I watch that girl shine on stage, her little personality pouring out of every spoken world and sung note. The closer we get to the show weekends, the more excited the family becomes.

When Olivia steps onto that stage as Flounder for her first performance on April 18, she makes it look easy. By the closing show, the transformation is complete. This will be the first of many roles for her, I imagine. She’s breaking through, down to her core.

No stopping her. Not anymore.

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Over the weekend, my nine-year-old participated in her first athletic event with real stakes: a swim meet. Winners and losers. More specifically, she could lose. It’s possible to goof up a routine while cheerleading, but nobody takes a medal away from you!

We don’t have any specific “you need to be playing a bunch of sports until you’re in high school” policy like my dad imposed while I was growing up. We merely ask that our kids are participating in at least two activities per season. Gymnastics and learning how to draw a comic? Sure. I don’t care if you never throw a baseball!

That’s why I was holding my breath. How would she handle this new dynamic?

Naturally, everything started with realizing the organizers of the meet had fucked up.

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I’ve always used the games I’ve played to help me piece together the timeline of my life.

My favorite video game of all time is Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic. Not because seven-year-old me found it to be profound, but because I have the fondest memories of filling a tall glass of apple cider to its volumetric limits and sitting down to watch my grandfather on his paragon playthrough.

The music I remember from my first major breakup isn’t from a “Songs to Cry To” playlist, but from the soundtrack of Madden 15, where I spent endless hours in franchise mode leading Zach Mettenberger and the Tennessee Titans to multiple Super Bowl victories. (Sighs longingly)

When my grandfather died in 2008, my most vivid and emotional memories didn’t come from a wake or a funeral service, but from picking up his save file in Deus Ex and playing through the rest of the game as I thought he might have.

Sometimes, video games provide the comfort or clarity we need to navigate big moments in life. Some offer escape, while others—rarer ones—help us unravel the twine of the complicated world we live in.

My life changed dramatically in the fall of 2023, when my mom opened fire in a police station a few towns over from where I live. Many things changed for me that night, but most importantly, I became the guardian and full-time caregiver of my older brother, Jonnie, who has Down syndrome and Type 1 diabetes.

Like many parents and guardians, I struggled with this new role. I was challenged emotionally, physically, and socially in ways that are difficult to comprehend until you experience them yourself.

Jonnie requires 24/7 medical care. Despite his charm and charisma, he can’t bathe himself, prepare his food, dress himself, brush his teeth, or tell you what time it is. He relies on insulin to survive, and hyper-vigilance became my survival strategy.

My days were fully occupied between 5:45 am - 9:00 pm. Cooking, cleaning, planning, diabetic management, bathing, teeth brushing, a full-time job—amongst many other caregiving tasks. I found great joy as a caregiver, but in this new role, I struggled to justify leisure time.

Although games continued to offer a short-term escape, they failed to provide the clarity I once relied on them for. The lessons in games weren’t commensurate with the realities of my new life. I tried to squeeze meaning out of play sessions but always fell woefully short. After all, how could a game help me understand something as large and complex as becoming a full-time caregiver for a person with disabilities? What in-game experience could possibly help me process the responsibility for another life?

On this search for meaning in games, I found shame. I felt guilty for engaging with them. Nagging thoughts triggered empty productivity spirals and derailed much of the joy I once found in play. I convinced myself I didn’t deserve time to myself—that I should devote every hour to the altar of caregiver-dom.

My brain rebelled whenever I tried to engage with a systems-heavy game (looking at you, Hearts of Iron IV) or a story-heavy one (I’ll get back to Metaphor: ReFantazio someday). There were too many systems to manage in my real life—too many dramatic days to process new stories.

In January 2025, my brother and I were lucky enough for him to be offered a permanent living placement. For the first time, he was carving out his own space independently, making friends, and contributing to a new community.

As he flourished in his new home, I quietly grieved the purpose his caregiving had provided. I struggled to move on to the next phase of our relationship, and struggled to accept that he didn’t need me in the same way he once had.

Selfishly, I clung to the idea that only I could provide the care and experience he needed. It was hard to admit I wasn’t the keeper of the keys—and there were others out there who could meet his needs. I struggled with the transition, but through this difficulty, I finally found a game that would help me earmark and process this watershed moment in my life.

In April 2025, Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 was released. The French turn-based RPG captured me immediately, in a way no game had since I became my brother’s guardian.

The game opens with a tragically compelling premise: a figure known only as the Paintress is systematically turning humanity into dust. In the face of insurmountable (and unknown) odds, a small team journeys to the source of the horror—and through the messages left behind by others who’ve attempted the same, tries to save humanity from its final apocalypse.

As you progress, you build bonds with the characters. Their passion for sustaining life becomes yours. Their will to connect in the face of their impending doom is inspiring. The main cast’s search for purpose amongst an otherwise chaotic and seemingly randomly cruel world connected me to them, as I had felt the same after my brother’s transition.

Warning: There are spoilers ahead. I’ll signal when the spoilers are over.

By the end of the game, you learn that this world and its characters are projected images on a canvas. Their drive, will, and emotional complexity are figments of the imagination of a painter named Verso—who is dead. The world (or canvas) is being kept alive by his grieving mother, who clings to his creation to stay connected to what remains of his creative light.

The player is presented with an impossible final choice: save this beautiful, imaginary world you’ve come to love, or break the cycle of grief and allow the painter’s family to move toward a new, more hopeful future.

Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 is a game about addiction, escapism, and grief—the pain of clinging to the past to avoid the uncertainty of the future. Those themes resonated deeply as I navigated my brother’s transition to his new home. It was the first game that had something to say to me. It encouraged me to start moving forward.

Clair Obscur isn’t concerned with defining the world. Its real focus is you. How you interpret the world, how you feel about it. The game draws you into its story and forces reflection through hard questions, uncovering truths you might not have realized about yourself. That power comes from choice, the language unique to games. No film or song could have taught me what this game did. I had to act, to choose, because our choices are the purest reflections of who we are, and who we want to be.

I’d broken through the cloud of guilt and shame I’d felt when playing games. Through it, and especially through the Paintress’s story, I came to accept that I was in mourning, and that this was okay.

Realizing that I was in mourning had many downstream effects on my guardianship. I’ve started to give my brother more space to explore his independence in his new home. And when he comes over on the weekends, though I’m still his guardian and primary caregiver, we spend more time simply being brothers—something I think he’s missed.

Warning: The spoilers are over.

In my new state of acceptance, I rediscovered why games mattered to me—and, more importantly, embraced them as a necessary part of my life. They weren’t trifles to escape to but pieces of art to grow through.

I find that I’m a more confident and competent guardian these days, due in large part to the lessons games have passed to me. I can spend meaningful time with them, knowing that in most cases, I will likely be a better person and, ultimately, a better guardian for having done so.

Games, for me, began as a way to spend time with my grandfather. In adolescence, they were a shoulder to cry on. Now, in my guardianship era, they serve as a vehicle for self-love—an art form unlike any other that allows me not only to catalog the story of my life, but to understand it, and to embrace the possibility of a better, more self-aware, and hopeful future.

One last thing: Clair Obscur used generative AI in development. Clair Obscur centers itself around an idea: art making is human. Using generative AI in a game about the humans behind works of art is like fighting global warming with coal-powered carbon recapture systems.

How can a game compromised by AI have had such a life-changing impact on me?

Clair Obscur helped me through the most important transitional period of my life. It helped me learn how to be a better guardian, caregiver, and brother. Would its impact on me have been greater if it hadn’t used AI in its production phase? Probably not. Would the production process have caused less environmental, economic, and social harm if it hadn’t used AI? Absolutely yes.

What am I supposed to do with these feelings? I don’t know.

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Is it, uh, really already almost summer? I know, summer doesn’t technically start until pretty late into June, but we’re getting days in the 80s now every once and a while, my kids are asking about when the pool is going up, and they’re in the final month of school. (No, please don’t ask about my youngest leaving kindergarten, because it will cause myself and my wife to spontaneously begin crying. Don’t get us started about my nine-year-old entering her final year of elementary school next year, either. STOP.)

Anyway, weird month for games. There’s a handful, but it’s also pretty light, and I was forced to, at times, expand the definition of what qualifies of this category. (I am obviously biased by having younger kids, but in general, I stop at recommending an “M” game unless it falls into a pretty specific category of theme that might work.)

If you represent these games and have a potentially interesting story to share about how these games consider kids as part of their audience, do get in touch with me!

• Constance (Xbox Series X/S, PlayStation 5, Switch) — May 1

Description: Constance is a 2D hand-drawn action adventure featuring a paintbrush-wielding artist, striving to escape from a colorful but decaying inner-world, created by her declining mental health.
Rating: E
Price: $19.99

The best and worst thing to happen to Constance was being released around the same time as Silksong. But if you finished Silksong and were looking for more, Constance scratched that itch. On the contrary, if you tried Silksong and found it too much, Constance is, by default, an easier and more forgiving game and has options to make it even easier. I think Silksong should’ve had those, too, but an argument for another day.

• Wax Heads (PC, Xbox Series X/S, PlayStation 5, Switch) — May 5

Description: Dive into the vibrant, punk world of Wax Heads in this trailer for the upcoming narrative sim game from developer Patattie Games and publisher Curve Games. Wax Heads is a cozy-punk slice-of-life narrative sim about managing a struggling record store. Chat to quirky customers with unique tastes, explore a handcrafted record collection, fall in love with bands (and their drama!), or just slack off with your colleagues – all to restore the groove!
Rating: T
Price: $14.99

Maybe a cozy game about vinyls is a tough sell to a younger audience who doesn’t know what a vinyl is, but who cares? (Do they sell the Gabby’s Dollhouse bops on vinyl?) Wax Heads looks charming, and Pocket Tactics was taken by a demo, saying “Wax Heads is dripping with style and heart, two things that always sell me on a game.”

• Nick Jr. Replay! (Apple Arcade) — May 7

Description: Step into a world of wonder with Nick Jr. Replay! Let your preschooler’s imagination run wild and revisit tons of beloved retro Nick Jr. games, authentically preserved, in a vibrant, interactive universe where learning and laughter go hand in hand!
Rating: 4+
Price: $6.99 per month

Once again, I am confronted by games that would have been very useful to me a few years ago, but suddenly, my oldest is nine and my youngest is six and we’re in the middle of the final season of Stranger Things and I’m not sure I can sell either of them on “Nick Jr.” It’s encouraging to see Apple continue to invest in experiences like this.

• Good Pizza, Great Pizza+ (Apple Arcade) — May 7

Description: Join over 300 million Ovenists world-wide on Good Pizza, Great Pizzat to fulfill pizza orders from customers, advance the storyline and upgrade your restaurant to keep your doors open! An endless variety of toppings, decor and kitchen equipment help compete against your pizza rivals in each chapter!
Rating: 4+
Price: $6.99 per month

The “+” means it exists elsewhere—in this case, on the App Store and Google Play, in addition to Switch and PC—but now without DLC or ads. Critics were high on the original, with Nintendo Insider saying “it’s an addicting game with a simple premise.”

• Perchang World (Apple Arcade) — May 7

Description: Get ready for Perchang World, a thrilling evolution of the classic hit Perchang. The skill-based ysics puzzler takes you to vibrant, dynamic worlds filled with incredible new challenges.
Rating: 4+
Price: $6.99 per month

Interestingly, this is a sequel. The first game is on platforms like Switch, while this follow-up is exclusively Apple Arcade. (For now. They show up elsewhere a year later.) Nintendo World Report was not glowing about the original, calling it “a mild distraction that does little to be innovative or hold your attention for longer than a few hours at most.” Well, there’s always room for improvement on the sequel, right?

• Ultimate 8 Ball Pool+ (Apple Arcade) — May 7

Description: Looking for an incredible 8 Ball Pool experience? Look no further! Play against live opponents from around the world and become the King of Pool in the best full 3D 8 Ball Pool game! Compete in live multiplayer matches or play solo in hundreds of unique billiards challenges.
Rating: 9+
Price: $6.99 per month

It’s not super shocking to learn that many other pool games have called themselves some version of “Ultimate 8 Ball,” going back to the original PlayStation. It’s also not shocking many of the complaints about the original ad-filled version of this are the ads, which won’t be present in this version. Otherwise, seems like competent pool?

• Everything Is Crab (PC) — May 8

Description: The Animal Evolution Roguelite. Hunt, Flee, Scavenge and Thrive in a living ecosystem. Choose from 125+ Evolutions and Specialisations for unique creature combinations in every run. Adapt to survive the natural curve in order to beat carcinisation... or get Darwin’d trying!
Rating: N/A
Price: N/A

Being able to rapidly upgrade a weird little guy sounds like fun, even though it seems more than likely that “roguelite,” however “lite,” puts it out of the difficulty curve for many kids. Loot Level Chill enjoyed playing an early version, saying “there was the potential for dozens of hours of replayability in this build alone, and that’ll likely only increase massively as development on this compelling Roguelike continues.”

• Outbound (PC, Xbox Series X/S, PlayStation 5, Switch/Switch 2) — May 14

Description: Explore a colorful world and build your own cozy home on wheels. Craft workstations, and source energy from the sun, wind, or water. Upgrade and customize your vehicle, grow crops, and live sustainably off-grid with up to 4 players.
Rating: E
Price: $24.99

My children—specifically, my nine year old—is obsessed with the idea of buying and living in a camper van, either with us or on her own. (I told her no, but okay, it is a cool idea.) In the short term, though, video games are probably our best way to make it happen. Game Grin had a chance to play it early, saying “The chilled-out feel of exploring at my leisure was great, and seeking out the little collectibles was always fun, even though I ended up overencumbering myself more often than I care to admit.”

• Forza Horizon 6 (PC, Xbox Series X/S) — May 19

Description: Discover the breathtaking landscapes of Japan in over 550 real-world cars and become a racing Legend at the Horizon Festival. Start your journey as a tourist and explore a world full of hit music and Japanese culture. Build a Valley Estate, acquire awe-inspiring homes, and display your prized car collection in fully Customizable Garages. Cruise the roads with your friends and join Car Meets around Japan, unleash your imagination with EventLab and build together in Horizon CoLab.*
Rating: E
Price: $69.99

Is the first Forza game that I get seriously into? I was quite taken by the last Horizon, even if my relationship with it predictably ended after a few hours. Simulation racing games have never landed with me. IGN really enjoyed an early version, saying “if the preview didn’t have a cutoff time, I can guarantee you I’d still be playing it now.”

• Yoshi and the Mysterious Book (Switch 2) — May 21

Description: Play as Yoshi and help a mysterious talking book named Mr. E remember the creatures living within his pages. Open him up, explore colorful habitats, and experiment with each creature to learn all kinds of surprising facts across every page.

Rating: E
Price: $59.99

Nintendo is nothing if not calculated. Wow, my children just so happen to be interested in playing a Yoshi-centric games a few months after the new movie, which just so happened to feature a bunch of Yoshi! I wonder if they’ll want this! Nonetheless, I’m curious about this take. Nintendo uses Yoshi as a platform to take swings—some work, some don’t. Did you know this one has basically eliminated combat? It’s more about exploration and curiosity, though GameSpot had a question: “it remains to be seen how Yoshi and the Mysterious Book sustains its entire length.”

• Bubsy 4D (PC, Xbox Series X/S, Xbox One, PlayStation 5, Switch, Switch 2) — May 22

Description: Join Bubsy on a new, intergalactic, platforming adventure! Yeah, we couldn’t believe it either. The world’s most infamous, wise-cracking bobcat has returned to 3D with new challenges, new moves, and even more purrsonality – in space! Run, jump, glide, and roll across alien planets, battle robotic sheep, and collect tons and tons of yarn. What could possibly go wrong?
Rating: E10+
Price: $19.99

Bubsy it a bit of a joke, partially for a disastrous 3D outing and being part of a mascot platformer explosion in the 90s. But grabbing the developers Demon Tide, who are at the forefront of platformer experimentation, is—well, it should be interesting, at least. MonsterVine basically agreed with me after trying a demo, saying “believe it or not, I’ve come away from Bubsy 4D with a rather optimistic feeling about the whole thing.”

• Lego Batman: Legacy of the Dark Knight (PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, PC) — May 22

Description: Embark on a journey that begins with the origins of Batman as a young Bruce Wayne trains with The League of Shadows, becomes the hero of Gotham City, and forge a new family of allies with Jim Gordon, Catwoman, Robin, Nightwing, and Batgirl. Confront an ever-growing threat from across Batman’s Rogue’s Gallery as you face The Joker, The Penguin, Mr. Freeze, Poison Ivy, Bane, and more.
Rating: E10+
Price: $69.99

My kids have been eating up every trailer. But if I’ve learned anything, just because they watch a trailer does not mean they want to play the game. We’ll have to see! Frankly, I’m probably the one who’s most excited here. GamingBible backs me up, saying “I’m not making it subtle that I’m well and truly on the hype train, but I totally believe LEGO Batman: Legacy of the Dark Knight deserves such hopeful anticipation.”

• Yerba Buena (PC, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S) — May 26

Description: Step into a surreal puzzle-platforming adventure as Barb, a young woman living as an NPC in an abandoned gameworld. When a sinister plot threatens your beloved San Francisco, you must step up to save it with the help of a mysterious and powerful device: the Oscillator.
Rating: T
Price: $19.99

Seems like we might be in for an odd one here, where critics have enjoyed the puzzle parts, comparing it to Portal, while not really feeling the story parts. IGN, for example, said “its endearing visual style and relatable main character weren’t quite enough to get me excited to play more Yerba Buena given the confusing plot and dismal quality of the writing. The puzzle possibilities of The Oscillator might, though.”

• My Little Puppy (Switch) — May 29

Description: Sniff sniff… this scent… One day in dog heaven, Bong-gu wakes from his nap to a very familiar scent. Sniff sniff… it’s dad!. Though faint, surely it is dad’s scent he has been waiting for. Jubilant, Bong-gu escapes dog heaven and embarks on a journey to meet his dad - a journey that may hold unexpected dangers. Just as his dad once found him by some miracle, it is now Bong-gu’s turn to find his dad.
Rating: E
Price: $24.99

I know what you’re thinking. Patrick, you’re recommending a game about a dog who dies and tries to find its owner? I think so? It looks cute? I’m not sure how sad it’s going to be? Nobody’s played it yet, though, so we’re left with a melancholy premise.

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Accessibility features can be a wonderful thing for everybody, especially when gamers can get into the nitty-gritty of customizing a game experience. They’re intended for gamers with disabilities, but there’s a beneficial overlap not only for kids, but for those of us who are getting older and need things like subtitles.

I hadn’t paid much attention to accessibility features until I became a Certified Accessible Player Experiences Practitioner through the AbleGamers Charity.

Apart from Sackboy and LittleBigPlanet 2, one of my absolute favorite co-op games is Overcooked! All You Can Eat, in which up to 4 players fend off hoards of zombies (the Unbread) by fulfilling orders in various (and very wacky) kitchens. The only downside is that when you play with children who can’t keep up or refuse to follow instructions, it feels too much like real life with nagging and losing your patience.

But between Overcooked and Overcooked! AYCE, the introduction of the latter version’s Assist Mode could be called the greatest thing since, well, sliced bread. Instead of a barrage of orders piling up relentlessly where everybody ends up failing terribly, rage quitting and/or crying, Assist Mode reduces the number of orders to two, with time customization options, like increasing the round timer and time to fulfill orders.

Ahh. Challenging yet peaceful gameplay.

Knowing all this, when you’re booting up a game with your kids, here are some accessibility potentially useful features to look into, starting with common problems:

“I can’t reach the buttons!”

If kids are having trouble reaching certain buttons because their hands are too small or keep slipping (i.e. tablet problem), for mobile games, try an alternate control setup or attaching a Bluetooth controller. For consoles or PC/Mac, try remapping controls and/or switching to a keyboard/mouse input if the option is available.

“I’m too slow!”

If kids aren’t quick or dextrous enough for quick-time events, try slowing down the action with options like auto-aim, adjustable difficulty, control sensitivity, target lock-on, and optional repeated taps.

“I keep dying!”

Some platformers have invulnerability/invincibility/infinite stamina modes or unlimited lives. This is a game changer for precision platformers that are often punishing. Try also for double jump functions. You may also want to look for games with replayable losses, frequent checkpoints, skippable gameplay, etc.

“I don’t like when the controller shakes!”

Try turning down/off haptic/rumble feedback, as well as the controller speaker.

“This is boring.”

It might be that you bought a game with too many cinematics or heavy emotional content that was fun to play, but the story hits too hard (or light) in the feels for a kid. Some games may offer a skip content function so you can bypass things like death scenes. To be honest, if that’s the case, the game content might be too mature in the first place.

While the writer and narrative designer in me would advise against skipping cinematics, I’m not opposed to skipping them when they don’t offer any special or new information.

“I’m scared of spiders! I’m scared of the big circles!”

Some games like Grounded offer customizable arachnophobia sliders and options that reduce the detail in spiders so that they can become blobs or even cats. Similar features sometimes exist for trypophobia.

“I want to play too!”

While games like Pikmin 4 and Super Mario Odyssey don’t do well in providing an actual second character, playable assistants can be used by grown-ups who can tolerate the boring “unnamed target” and Cappy to play along and make things a little easier. On the flip side, some kids don’t mind being “unnamed target” because it means spending time with you. Cue melting hearts.

“There’s too much happening!”

It should be noted that neurodivergence like autism and ADHD are more commonly recognized as disabilities in game developers themselves, so many studios are aware of gamer needs from a cognitive standpoint. Some gamers find too much information overwhelming and overstimulating, so sometimes it’s good to be able to turn off things like certain sound and visual effects.

While age has made me more prone to motion sickness in games, and not having motion sensitivity controls is often a dealbreaker, I’m otherwise okay with accessibility features as a surprise.

However, if you’re looking for particular accessibility features, try searching databases like AccessibleGames.com, AbleToPlay.com, and FamilyGamingDatabase. On the first two, you can customize and save searches to be used and updated as more games are released and added. Many games now list accessibility features on Steam store pages or offer specifically dedicated store pages.

Happy gaming!

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A little while back, in the midst of playing Pokémon Pokopia and Super Mario Bros. Wonder, I came up with a review template for my kids. My children were tickled and I heard from folks in the Crossplay community that they wanted their kids to try it, too.

I’ve been collecting those reviews over the past few weeks and have enough to share, which includes reviews of Minecraft, Teardown, Pokémon Pokopia, and Grounded 2!

(This would be a million miles long if I included all of them; stay tuned for part two!)

Folks, I am tickled to know there are families doing these together, and it’s also part of a broader mission at Crossplay to incorporate more voices from kids here. I am constantly brainstorming ways to make that happen, and I’m happy to hear your ideas, too. If you happen to record videos or voice notes about your experiences, pass ‘em on!

In case you missed it, the review form is below, and you can email the reviews here.

Crossplay Review

262KB ∙ PDF file

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Kia (9 Years Old) on Grounded

“There are lots of crashes.” No one can blame you for being upset about that, kiddo. I’m still upset at losing a PlayStation 2 memory card in the mail with my FFX-2 saves.

Mia (10 Years Old) on Pokémon Pokopia

“I have no recent dislikes about Pokopia!” is a statement that makes my heart swell, and is the kind of thing one only feels when you’re really swept up in playing a game.

Kyle (7 Years Old) on Minecraft

Kyle, like my own children, does not care for survival mode in Minecraft. My children’s enjoyment of Minecraft comes from unleashing endless creativity without restrictions.

Jonas (10 Years Old) on Teardown

“10 all the way” is one of the best descriptions of a video game I’ve read in a minute. It’s not enough to just give the game a 10/10, it’s 10/10—all the way. Masterful, Jonas.

Also:

• I’d intended to publish all the reviews I’ve received, but this article is already big. Apologies if you submitted one and it’s not here. Feel free to keep sending!

• No Tomodachi Life review from my kids just yet, though my nine-year-old was enthralled with it for the extent of a car drive. It just hasn’t popped up since.

• Personally, my next review is a Saluspa inflatable hot tub. My wife was kind enough to replace the one that broke a year or so back, and I’ve finally set it up.

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“I don’t know where the balance is as a parent,” Chandana Ekanayake, director of the new food-centric RPG Dosa Divas and Outerloop Games co-founder, told me recently.

Chandana could be talking about anything, but in this case, it’s the balance between nurturing a children’s individual interests and including them in your own. How much is too much, too little? How do you avoid trying to raise a tiny version of you?

Notably, Chandana’s son, Aidan, was also on the call with us.

Over the past year and change, Chandana and Aidan went from a father and son with a shared interest in video games to a father and son who became legitimate co-workers, as Aidan grew into a part-time contributor in QA at Outerloop Games.

QA means “quality assurance,” and is the department that finds and catalogs bugs that need to be fixed by the rest of the development team. It’s not uncommon for developer to get their start in a QA departments, before moving into, say, design.

Despite having a father who’s worked in games for decades, aka his entire life, Aidan had never really given the idea of moving into game development any serious thought.

“I don’t think it was something I was really thinking about that much when I was younger,” said the 20-year-old Aidan, who’s also in college studying data visualization.

One of Aidan’s big passions: speedrunning video games. In speedrunning, players do their best to push through a game as fast as possible, competing with other players.

Speedrunning is, on some level, a numbers game. (“I love big numbers,” he said.) It’s why Aidan is obsessed idle games, which are all about watching numbers go up up up.

Ahead of releasing anything to the public, Outerloop does a family and friends playtest to, in Chandana’s words, “get a sanity check.” Is the game any good? What are they missing? What might people complain about when the rest of the world tries it?

“We’ve had Aidan playtest a couple of times,” said Chandana. “When he playtests, he just pushes all the edges and finds all the things. There’s areas you can jump out of the level and he just finds all these places to break, because he likes to run around in the game and explore. The team saw that [and asked] ‘Can we get him to just playtest more?’”

So he did!

And over time, Aidan became more than just “friends and family.” He dropped his part-time job at a local department store (Marshalls) and signed up for between 10 to 20 hours per week of QA work. It was an opportunity for Aidan to apply that personal love for speedrunning. But in this case, Aidan would be breaking the game to help it.

For Chandana, it quickly became clear that “Dad” is different than “co-worker.”

“I wanted him to feel like he has that autonomy,” said Chandana. “We’re all remote, too, so I was like ‘Okay, go talk to Sunny [another developer on the Dosa Divas development team],’ and I was like ‘Tell Aidan what he needs to do. If you need me, fine.’ He and I are similar in personality, too, and sometimes we butt heads, so I wanted make sure he can have a good time at work without dad being involved so much.”

Aidan focused on QA, but experimented with implementing changes to bugs, such as areas where the player could accidentally jump and fall outside the game world.

“It’s definitely a change of pace,” said Aidan, who noted that trying to learn Blender, a popular tool to create and modify 3D models, proved a little overwhelming to grasp.

The whole experienced lasted about 18 months—nearly two years, all told.

Dosa Divas was released last week on six different platforms. The big lift is over. It’s also a moment for Chandana and Aidan to reflect on a decidedly unique experience.

In other words, was it worth it?

“We tried to introduce both boys to different things and I never wanted to push like too hard on [video games],” said Chandana. “With Aidan especially, he [once] wanted to make a game. So I was like, we’ll sit together, build a tower defense game or a clicker game. But don’t want to over steer. I want him to find his own thing. […] One thing I keep telling them is to find something you love doing, because you’re going to spend a lot of time at your job. Most people hate their jobs. If you can find something that you love to do that you’re gonna spend a lot of time doing and it’s some some way of living, then that’s all we can hope for as parents.”

Aidan is, at least, giving it some thought.

“When I was younger, I wanted to be like a teacher or like an accountant or something,” he said. “But now that I’m doing this and also my major in college is data visualization, it can lead into something in video games, as well.”

Aww. 🥰

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Have a story idea? Want to share a tip? Got a funny parenting story? Drop Patrick an email.

Also:

• My daughters, of course, want to be “on YouTube” with me. I have said no, though I’ll admit to considering a stream where they could be v-tubers with me.

• Funny enough, I haven’t pushed video games onto my kids and the result is that while they like video games, do they do not love video games. I wish they did?

• My oldest is nine, aka a really formative age. It’s where I fell in love with video game writing. Only a few years later, I’d take steps into being a professional. It’s still unclear what her own passion is, but my theory is that it’ll be art-related.

Early last year, I could only afford to buy my 12-year-old daughter a $700 Dell laptop that was already obsolete the moment it came out of the box. I had bought it so that she could play a recent PC game, but I foolishly forgot to check the system requirements—which the new laptop couldn’t meet.

It didn’t stop her from trying, though. She still installed it anyway and tried to soldier on, despite choppy cinematics, horrendously bad visuals, and frequent crashes. There were brief moments of enjoyment there, but that only made the baseline poor performance even more frustrating.

When I was a kid, gaming was pretty sweet. We didn’t get a NES until several years after it was launched, despite four out of five of us siblings begging for it, but there was no shortage of console games for me to play. PC gaming was still a cottage industry and didn’t require any demanding hardware. And for the times that it did, my elder brother earned enough to buy the games, PC upgrades, and peripherals that my parents didn’t.

Many of today’s games, though, are much more complex and need powerful rigs to run. While I’d love to give my daughter the PC gaming experience she deserves, practically speaking it just ain’t gonna happen.

A decent gaming rig costs anywhere from $1,500 to $3,000—and that’s without going overboard on graphics cards and processing speed. That’s tough to justify in today’s economy, especially with the prices of RAM being artificially inflated because they keep getting bought up by AI datacenters.

And then I’d have to double that cost, because I have a potato PC, too. We play a lot of co-op. It wouldn’t do for her to have an upgraded PC with my laggy relic being the millstone that dragged down our gaming sessions.

There were other games her laptop couldn’t handle, either. GTA V, It Takes Two, and Where Winds Meet were also on her wishlist. Those were different shades of choppiness. It Takes Two was especially bad because our computers would de-sync at the worst times due to her lag. I wound up refunding the game because neither of us could progress—thank you Steam return policy.

Once again, there was a lot of momentary frustration, but I’d set her expectations by telling her the system requirements were pretty steep. The game probably wouldn’t run well and she might get frustrated. She said she understood, but wanted to give it a try anyway, with the promise not to go nuclear if it couldn’t run.

It couldn’t and she didn’t.

She’s asked me for an upgrade, of course. But I explained to her that it was a big purchase and that there were other important things to spend on first, like the house and the groceries. She was disappointed but ultimately understood. (I suppose it helped her to know that I was stuck with a slow machine just like her).

I also pointed out that the games would always be there to come back to once she eventually got a better computer. Just to prove my point, I found several older AAA games for her to play, like Portal 2 and Assassins Creed 2, and supplemented them with newer and less-demanding indie games like Roboquest, Monaco, and Operation Tango.

Her mother also volunteered to lend our daughter her iPad every once in a while. This was great, because as it turned out one of the games on her wishlist (Where Winds Meet) ran just fine on the iPad.

I count myself extremely lucky that I have a gamer daughter that shares my interests, and that she’s mature enough now to both control her temper and understand financial priorities. While I’d love for us to play the latest and greatest games together, it would be irresponsible to buy two new gaming rigs at the same time.

I’m not sure when we’d be able to splurge on new computers again, but at least we have a decade’s worth of old AAA titles and potato-friendly indie games to fill in the gaps.

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Another set of changes are coming for parents with children who are on Roblox, with the platform now following existing trends at places like Instagram, Uber, and others who have youth-targeted accounts. Starting in “early June,” Roblox will now have “Roblox Kids” and “Roblox Select” accounts meant for its most vulnerable audience.

The news was announced via press release earlier today.

“This update will bring age-checks, account-level defaults, content ratings, ongoing moderation, and expanded parental controls together into a unified framework for younger users,” said Roblox founder and CEO David Baszucki in the press release.

“Roblox Kids” is for children between 5 and 8, limits access to games with “minimal” or “mild” maturity labels, and has “all communication” disabled. (Parents can change this.) “Roblox Select” is for children between 9 and 15, uses different communication defaults based on age group (9-12, 13-15), and allows games with “moderate” labels.

Player ages are determined either by Roblox’s relatively new AI-assisted (and unsurprisingly controversial) age check system, or manually set by a verified parent.

(It also remains curiously and frustratingly easy for kids to bypass parental controls.)

An important change: Roblox is now curating the games for “Kids” and “Select” accounts. Though the company says it will still include “thousands” of games that are “dynamically updated,” there is reason to believe games that your children have access to now, even under an account with parental controls, will disappear in the future.

Roblox has not said what games might vanish, but the company said it believes players “will have access to the vast majority of their favorite games at launch.”

“We can't share specific games at this time given the games have not gone through the three-step review process,” said a Roblox spokesperson to Crossplay. “The games available in Roblox Kids and Roblox Select will be a subset of those available on the broader platform, including many of our most popular.”

In other words: we’ll have to wait and see.

Importantly, parents can selectively approve individual games. If Roblox removes a game from the lineup for “Kids” and “Select” accounts, you could re-authorize it.

Here’s a chart from Roblox explaining how the accounts break down:

As a Roblox user gets older, they will shuffle between these different restrictions.

Like many parts of the internet, Roblox also includes games that leverage new AI technologies. So far, the company has not given parents tools to block children from engaging with Roblox games that use AI. Nothing about this update changes that.

Roblox’s explanation for how it’s picking the games for “Kids” and “Select” accounts is a little fuzzy. For example, one pillar is what Roblox calls “real-time evaluation,” where the company watches “how users age 16 and older interact with new games and monitor user reports to assess suitability for younger users.” It’s also going to exclude “games that feature sensitive issues, social hangouts, or free-form drawing games.”

OK, but what’s a “sensitive issue”? Politics? Queerness? Violence? To my surprise, the company did provide a more specific list of topics it considers a “sensitive issue”:

• Immigration

• Capital punishment

• Pay equity in sports

• Prayer in schools

• Racial profiling

• Affirmative action

• Vaccination policies

• Reproductive rights

“This is not a comprehensive or finite list,” said a company spokesperson. “Any issue that meets the above criteria qualifies as a ‘sensitive issue.’ These issues are topics that are frequently in the news and inspire strong opinions and emotional debate. We also understand that what is sensitive varies in different regions.”

However, a parent can turn on individual access to almost anything on the platform. The only hardwired rule is “restricted” content that requires you to be 18 or older.

Is Brookhaven, one of the most popular role-playing games, a “social hangout,” or are we talking about games where players are in a bathroom? Brookhaven is probably safe, based on what the company told me about how it’s approaching a “social hangout.”

“Roblox games are considered social hangouts where the primary theme or activity is to chat or interact with other players with voice or text,” said a spokesperson. “Note that if the title or description includes content referencing social hangouts, the game will be classified as a social hangout. Social hangouts that include private spaces (e.g. bedrooms or bathrooms) are Restricted and can only be played by users over 18 years old.”

Roblox remains under enormous pressure, in light of ongoing lawsuits and regulatory threats. One reason much of the internet in the United States and elsewhere is now requiring users to scan IDs is because social platforms like Roblox, Instagram, and others have spent far too long emphasizing profits over safety. The consequences of their inactions is having tangible and negative consequences on everyone, as a result.

Nonetheless, many of the changes Roblox is making here, combined with other changes, are a meaningful step forward. It’s unlikely to change the public sentiment towards them, nor slow the lawsuits, but Roblox remains a massive platform that’s used by tens of millions of children. Every feature that makes it safer is a good thing.

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Have a story idea? Want to share a tip? Got a funny parenting story? Drop Patrick an email.

Also:

• In general, Roblox use is down in the house among my kids. But that’s also becuse device use is down, because we’re just spending way more time outside.

• I do not think the ID’ification of the internet is a good thing, but I also don’t have faith many parents are using parental controls on Roblox. A tough problem.

• Of course, if Roblox was a platform where you simply felt safe with your kid surfing through it without worry, all of this would be less of a big deal, too.

Over spring break, my family spent a few days at a decidedly Midwestern staple: the Wisconsin Dells. It’s many things, but chiefly, the Wisconsin Dells is a series of massive hotels with waterparks that go on forever. And they’re also stuffed to the gills with other amusement options, including go karts, mini golf, and, of course, arcades.

Calling it Midwestern Disneyland would not be all that far off the mark.

On vacation, my financial impulses go out the window. The reason I avoid spending money every other day of my life is to say “yes” as often as possible while on vacation.

But as we walked through the “arcade” in our hotel, I despaired. They were all games of chance, the closest young children can engage in our society’s ever-expanding gambling complex. Games your children are certain to lose. All they do is eat dollars.

They are, plain and simple, scams. Which is what I taught my kids to call them, too.

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I stay very quiet when I’m standing in a parenting circle and the phrase, “oh, we’re really strict about limiting screen time with our kids” comes up. Ah, how much energy you must have, and how much time you have to shuttle your kids to a plethora of extracurricular activities, I think to myself.

Being in game development ourselves, my husband and I are in the actual business of needing to know what’s new and how to play as many of the 18,000+ games released every year that we can. It only makes sense to reap the rewards of having birthed my own playtesting focus group and Sackboy team of four.

“I need my children to play boss fights for me,” I sheepishly replied when it was just a mom friend and me in the car.

“What’s a boss fight?” she asked. I adore this friend and trust me, this is much better than the mom who asked if I work at GameStop when I told her, “I work in video games.”

“When you have an enemy that’s really hard to defeat,” I explained. Don’t we all wish our children could fight real life evil bosses for us?

“Child labor” is the only way I could get through the boss fights of Astro Bot (so full of delightful surprises), Split Fiction (flimsy story but fantastic variety of mechanics), and HOA (precise platformers are a killer for me but OMG what a brilliant soundtrack).

I’m there for joyful experience, not frustration. My youngest son, currently eight, likes to gloat a little—nay a lot—about how his video game prowess works in my favor. In the spirit of validation, I say as enthusiastically as possible: “Yes, honey, thank you so much. It wouldn’t have been a lot of fun to be stuck and never progress.”

Husband and I know that “screen time” is sacred to our kids, pertaining more specifically to video games but it includes YouTube. I once fined the littlest for acting up during a piano lesson, but taking away video game time is for when you did something really offensive—usually something I nagged about and they neglected to do.

We’re pretty lax about the time available on weekends and holidays if we’re just home and enjoying our mortgage, but I changed up the rules after finding the kids playing at an ungodly hour.

And if I’m really being honest, we recently had a discussion about how playing Wobby Life with your brother does count as screen time, and that does not entitle us to extra hours. However, helping Mommy and Daddy with boss fights and punishing platforming is not included in daily screen time allowance.

Now, don’t go thinking I’m some gamer weakling. I can Megastar in Just Dance, outbeat the rest of my household in Beat Saber, produce the expensive stuff in Coral Island, and finish all my own point-and-click indie games barring game-breaking bugs.

When spinning the copywriting wheel, I wax poetically that video games teach us things like perseverance, dexterity, hand-eye coordination, cooperation, problem solving, and time budgeting, that last one because on weekdays, my kids are only supposed to play for two hours.

I have no idea if we’re actually learning these things. Notice I didn’t include quicker reflexes. But skill-building time allocation means both children can be very sweet and responsible and that’s more important to me than catching a ball.

“Ugh, I’m gonna rage quit!” screams my frustrated 11-year-old.

“No!” I protest. “You’ve been training your whole life to get me through this level!”

And it’s true. He’s been playing video games since he was in diapers and we should have really used increments of screen time to bribe him to potty train.

“Okay,” he grumbles. And then runs away as soon as he and the little one have done stuff like the hard boss fight in Split Fiction where round chainsaws attack you relentlessly.

We’ve had similar conversations before.

“I don’t really want to play with you, Mommy.”

“Hey, I made you pancakes!”

“Oh, yeah!

“So…you’re gonna shoot the monsters for me.”

“Okay, fine.”

The adventures continue.

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There is a famous post on Tumblr about modern Star Wars that goes like this:

“every time a new Star War movie or show is announced all the fans are like ‘OMG Glup Shitto is back’ 😭😭😭”

That’s what I felt like every time I would turn over to my nine-year-old during The Super Mario Galaxy Movie, in which I would proudly—perhaps too proudly—inform here “that’s R.O.B.” Or “that’s a Super Scope, which your dad used to have at your age.”

She would look at me, squint, and go back to the movie.

Did you know that one’s named Birdo…? OK, back to your popcorn and sour gummies.

There’s been an understandable conversation around whether The Super Mario Galaxy Movie is “good” and whether it matters if it’s a “good,” because it’s targeted at kids.

Kpop Demon Hunters is a movie meant for children and it’s a great movie. Hoppers is a movie meant for children and it’s a great movie. These are films that can be enjoyed without an ounce of irony or distance if you’re an adult. Hell, Minions does it better!

The Super Mario Galaxy Movie is a fun way to spend 90 minuets. I had fun and my kids had fun. But it’s reasonable to have expectations that are more than a roller coaster, especially when we’re talking about one of the most popular characters ever created.

Yet it’s also a reasonable expectation from a movie adapting a character who has historically found this balance in his original medium, video games. Mario games are explicitly designed to be appreciated by a child who is learning how to jump in a game for the first time and the seasoned adult who’s excited to sweat through a series of increasingly hard jumps. It doesn’t have an “easy” mode. It doesn’t have a “hard” mode. The Mario games remain one the best examples of player-agnostic dynamic difficulty. It’s a company that’s grown up with its earliest fans and drawn in new ones.

Why wouldn’t you expect the movie to the same? Isn’t that what plenty of others do?

But I don’t think it comes from a place of cynicism or hostility from the house of Mario. I think it’s a sincere expression of Nintendo’s approach to designing Mario games over the years and specifically Mario’s creator, Shigeru Miyamoto, who has a well-documented history of chaffing at the notion of over emphasizing story in games.

It’s an emphasis on “fun” over everything. The problem is the mediums are different!

The Super Mario Galaxy Movie is a never-ending series of elaborate set pieces. It feels as though Nintendo and Illumination (but mostly Nintendo?) came up with an idea of something that would look cool, then worked backwards. “Wouldn’t it be fun if…?”

Which, naturally, makes all the sense in the world when you’re making a video game, and makes a ton of sense for Nintendo’s games, which often do not emphasize stories. (This point is especially true of the Mario platforming games, though ironic that this movie, in particular, is influenced by Mario’s biggest flirting with adding a real story!)

It’s also, much like the original, gorgeous—a true wonder to look at. And it’s this level of craft, care, and commitment that makes the lack of effort with the story stand out.

There are loads of awful kids movies on the various streaming services. But the “bad” part extends to every single part of the film—the art, the music, the story, the everything. What makes The Super Mario Galaxy Movie so strange is that you’re watching a truly incredible-looking movie that feels like a premise and nothing else.

(The movie gestures at an alternate path with Bowser’s parenting regrets and Peach’s deep isolation from her family, but no time is spent with either of these ideas. And what happened to Mario’s family? That was one of the better parts of the original!)

Of course, none of these reasonable dings against the movie can negate my six-year-old crying as [REDACTED] fell into the lava, or when [REDACTED] showed up during the second post-credits scene—at which point she nearly exploded in her theater seat. Six is probably the exact right age to be swayed by the bright colors and shallow emotions that make up the (tiny) journey you go on in The Super Mario Galaxy Movie.

But it was barely enough for my nine-year-old. And it’s a movie my wife and I won’t think about in a week. Holding a Mario movie to higher bar is not unreasonable, but I also think Nintendo made the movie it wanted to make. It was not tricked by Illumination. It feels like the Minions people were dragged in Nintendo’s direction.

Sure, roller coasters are fun. But your first ride is the best, and the reason you go on another one is to chase that feeling again. Maybe that’ll be the inevitable third movie in a few years, maybe it’ll be whatever Nintendo’s trying to do with their live action Zelda movie, or maybe, like most kids, they’ll simply grow up and find it elsewhere.

It is, however, a missed opportunity. (But it’s also not anti-art. C’mon.)

I did not have time to to ask my children to write movie reviews, but on the ride home from the theater last night, before my six-year-old passed out, I asked some questions.

• Favorite character: Rosalina (and the “Lumas”)

• Favorite part: When everyone stopped fighting (they liked Bowser being nice)

• Worst part: When Rosalina was kidnapped

• Favorite other part: When [REDACTED] shows up in the post-credits scene

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Have a story idea? Want to share a tip? Got a funny parenting story? Drop Patrick an email.

Also:

• The music is so dang good in this one; there are no needle drops and tons of wonderful interpretations and references to the great music in the Mario series.

• I wonder what these movies would be like without Nintendo’s deep involvement; I swear Illumination is trying to give these movies more depth.

• When I went home, I fell asleep on the couch re-downloading the Super Mario Galaxy games. I’m really excited to share those games with my kids this week.