So, an odd thing has happened since the end of last year when I lost my urge to shoot things (in the game), I have once again found my love of puzzle based games. It started with me playing more games on my phone and on my 3DS because they offered me more non-violent, puzzle based games and lately it has progressed to my looking for more indie games on my consoles which I had previously used primarily for AAA titles.
My iPhone has an almost embarrassing number of puzzle games on it. Match 3, hidden objects, bubble pop, Escher puzzle, and collection games, but that was kind of where it ended. And with my hiatus on violent games it meant that my XBox and Playstation had become primarily boxes for watching television and listening to music over the course of the last month. And, unfortunately, it also meant that there hadn’t been a lot of gaming with my kiddo going on. Not that I was running around in Fallout 4 or Destiny shooting things with her before (we have strict restrictions on game genres in my house), but I really couldn’t even get into killing all of the things in the Lego universes. So most of our gaming was limited to Minecraft and Super Mario Maker when we gamed together. And then I decided to browse the indie games in the XBox and discovered that there is a pretty good selection of puzzle based games and that many of them came with free trials so that we could see if they were really up to snuff.
After much deliberation (and several rounds of Rock, Paper, Scissors) we finally decided on Clockwork 
Tales: Of Glass and Ink (Artifex Mundi), primarily because it was steampunk themed (robots!) and had a female protagonist, Evangeline Glass. If you haven’t played a hidden object game in a while Clockwork Tales will definitely be a big surprise. Gone are the days of just finding objects from a list hidden in a static photo. Pea and I had a blast looking for a series of images (listed with pictures rather than a alphanumeric list) and it made it easier to find things that have a variety of physical manifestations and then assembling the found items into some new puzzle pieces either revealed more puzzle pieces or activated animatronics (which cause much excitement in my house). What was even more of a pleasant surprise for me in this game was the fact that there were animated cut scenes where we got to talk to people in the town, soldiers (who looked like a cross between soldiers from the Third Reich and the pig soldiers of Hamelin in Ni No Kuni).
I was concerned that this might be boring for Pea because there was limited animation and there weren’t any baddies to fight or things to build, she loved it. She likened it to playing an I, Spy book, but “way more fun!” It has been a blast playing with my kiddo. we run back and forth to the tv pointing things out to one another and talking about what items were and how they operated. It also gave us the opportunity to talk about antiques and how and why they were used in the past, war history, and gender politics because we were playing a female secret agent who is trying to save her uncle who has been kidnapped by the game’s Hitler-esque bad guy.
Overall, this game is a great play with your kid title that doesn’t involve killing things and has the potential for lots of fruitful discussion. So go ahead, play with your kid!
