Help me pick a game for my wife!

[Cirrus]

Okay, here's the scoop.

Recently, I got my wife a game for Windows called "Mystery Case Files: Ravenhearst." The old "MCF" games were entirely "find the hidden objects in a scene" games, but this one included locked doors which had elaborate puzzles in order to open them up, very similar to Myst/7th Guest, etc...

She just loved them. I'm looking for something similar. Myst might work, but might be a little bit too scattered for her tastes. 7th Guest would be great, but it runs very poorly on newer machines. It crashes despite my best efforts and tons of patches/alternative .exe files.

Of course, I'd like her to try out Secret of Monkey Island, etc.. but it's that "ONE SCREEN" puzzle, where you toy with stuff, maybe do some lateral thinking, possibly look for patterns and drop some math in, that she seems to like.

Any suggestions? Windows XP compatible would be best, but I can work around that if possible. :)

Thanks, guys.

[Tommy]

If You Had A Ps1 Try Abe's Oddysee Or Exodus

[roushimsx]

Not a puzzle adventure, but Pandora's Box (http://www.mobygames.com/game/windows/pandoras-box) would most likely appeal to her. Very fun little title with a silly little storyline to string the puzzles together. Lots of logic stuff going on.

Syberia might be a good springboard into more diverse adventure games. The graphics are pretty nice, the storyline isn't too bad, the puzzles aren't too difficult, and you generally stay pretty satisfied throughout it. Items for puzzles are always within that area (like a screen or two away), so you never get caught having to backtrack throughout the entire land or get stuck because you didn't do something very specific 4 hours ago (Hi, Conquest of Camelot!). My wife (normally a non-gamer) really dug both Syberia titles, at least *shrug*

edit - oh hey, Akron Ohio! Sup, Akron buddy?

[Cirrus]

Not a puzzle adventure, but Pandora's Box (http://www.mobygames.com/game/windows/pandoras-box) would most likely appeal to her. Very fun little title with a silly little storyline to string the puzzles together. Lots of logic stuff going on.

Syberia might be a good springboard into more diverse adventure games. The graphics are pretty nice, the storyline isn't too bad, the puzzles aren't too difficult, and you generally stay pretty satisfied throughout it. Items for puzzles are always within that area (like a screen or two away), so you never get caught having to backtrack throughout the entire land or get stuck because you didn't do something very specific 4 hours ago (Hi, Conquest of Camelot!). My wife (normally a non-gamer) really dug both Syberia titles, at least *shrug*

edit - oh hey, Akron Ohio! Sup, Akron buddy?

Good suggestions! I'll give Syberia a play (I've been meaning to), and maybe give it over to her. And yeah, Pandora's Box is something I'm definitely going to check out.

Also, a few others I thought of:

Fool's Errand (oooold PC game, perfect example, however)
Gobliiins (Maybe)


Akron, yep! Cuyahoga Falls, really. Says you're from Oklahoma, though :)

[insinion]

I second Pandora's Box, my mom never was into gaming but she is hooked on that one haha.

[Schenley]

This might be a little out of the realm of what you're looking for, but I really enjoyed "Grim Fandango" back in the day of Win95 gaming.

It did have puzzles in it, but mostly it had a very strong plot and atmosphere.

It can be a pain to get working on anything newer than Win98 though.

[Schenley]

Oh, and get her a DS. I gave my wife my old one when I got the Lite, and she loves it.

I got her Cooking Mama for Christmas and she's been playing the hell out of it. Before that, it was Brain Age and Animal Crossing.

[Daria]

AMBER: Journey's Beyond might be right for her. It's a MYST clone, only linear and about Ghost stories.

[Cirrus]

Thanks again for all of the suggestions. I have a few good leads now. :)

[roushimsx]

Oh, and get her a DS. I gave my wife my old one when I got the Lite, and she loves it.

I got her Cooking Mama for Christmas and she's been playing the hell out of it. Before that, it was Brain Age and Animal Crossing.

Seconded! I bought it and Nintendogs for my wife and she's gone on to also love Brain Age, Big Brain Academy, Cooking Mama and especially Phoenix Wright.

[Alucard79]

Some good budget PC titles I would recommend if she likes one screen puzzles would be, Safecracker, Riddle Of The Sphinx, and The Crystal Key. I bought each of those for less than 10 dollars each and really enjoyed them. My wife also got into playing them too. Another game series to try would be some of the CSI (crime scene investigation) games. If you mean to get games for her for other systems, I know my wife loves the dating sims and other quirky games on DS. She also like Paper Mario:TTYD. Any type of games that can be played without controlling both sticks on the controller generally is good enough. For some reason, women can't function using both hands... their brain actually can explode... (Sorry to the ladies here, my wife was standing behind me, so I thought it would be funny to harass her, and now I'm grounded...)

[JJNova]

I hate to bring Modern gaming into this section of the site, but I also have a wife that enjoys similar games, and the DS has proven to be our main source of gaming for her. There are some good games mentioned above, but the one that wasn't mentioned and I think most fits your criteria, is Trace Memory. My wife also tends to like Action/Puzzlers, like Magnetica (Zuma, and a number of other names it goes by), Meteos, and recently Cooking Mama.



I think I like that last one more than she does though.

[pookninja]

crime stories for pc.

[jpark203]

Although the series is kind of old I really recommend Seirra's Quest for Glory games for PC (out of 5). They're great point and click adventure games with well done stories. The 4th one, in my opinion, is the best one to start with and has some excellent voice acting. You would need to use a dos emulator like dosbox for the first 4 games and download fan made patches for the 4th one.

Anyway, I think they're great games for the casual gamer. My sister never really cared for video games but seemed to really like the Quest for Glory games.

A group of fans are working on a VGA remake of Quest for Glory II, and it will be free for download when it comes out. When it's available, it'd be a good introduction to the series and at no cost, you can't really lose. :)

[Arqueologia_Digital]

Deja Vu/Shadowgate for NES ;)

[Kitsune Sniper]

This might be a little out of the realm of what you're looking for, but I really enjoyed "Grim Fandango" back in the day of Win95 gaming.

It did have puzzles in it, but mostly it had a very strong plot and atmosphere.

It can be a pain to get working on anything newer than Win98 though.

Uh, what? I've played the game without problems on my Windows XP Pro SP2 rig. :)

[Tron 2.0]

Bust a Move any of them.