my nephews have stayed with me at home yesterday 'cos their parents went for a dinner together with friends and we've been playing some games. Shifty recommended me this game, and they had fun playing it.
Race through pyramids and uncover the secrets of their long-dead inhabitants in Run From Mummies! Play solo or with friends, explore mysterious ruins, and fend off mummies with your camera's blinding flash. Unravel the memories of a vengeful pharaoh to survive in this hilarious 2D action-adventure!
store.steampowered.com
Run From Mummies is a great example of a very good co-op game. My nephews got to the Gallery mission 3 in the demo -for now-, not bad for a 7 y.o. and a 5 y.o.
They were saying "I like this game". They were taking photos to get items and it is a gameplay aspect they enjoyed very much, and they were smart enough to use the camera on the baddies holding a sword so one of them could get past them, or throwing them jars to defeat them. They worked together pretty well. They completed the tutorial twice and then started to beat the levels completing them averaging 97% to 100% of completion. When finishing a level with a 97% or less of completion percentage, whey were wondering what they left behind and wanted to come back or replay the level.
They also liked the sticking plasters gameplay mechanic. The 5 y.o. struggled a bit with traps, although they managed to beat the levels almost unharmed. He is relatively precise with the left stick when moving around but he can struggle at times.
My 5 y.o. nephew also struggled with taking photos, or any control where holding a button is involved. With the face buttons -A, B, Y, X- he doesn't have much of a problem, but still....
However, having to hold the right trigger can be a bit of a chore for my 5 y.o. nephew, given the fact that he has small fingers. It took him a while to get the photo's mechanic because of that.
In that sense, the controls' settings of Moving Out -another superb co op videogame- that allow just tapping a button instead of holding it to carry any furniture item is ideal for them.
Even the 7 y.o. was struggling a bit with carrying items because he had to hold the LB or RB button and doing that while moving with the left stick was tough for him. However Moving Out has a very useful setting to just tap LB or RB instead of holding it to grab any item. That made an already incredibly FUN game more fun for them.
Another detail that could be improved is the camera in big levels, the zoom out might not be enough in certain stages and in one of the levels my nephews got split, one of them was at the top of the level, the other at the bottom, and my 5 y.o. nephew on the bottom part of the level couldn't see where he was relative to the screen because the zooming out effect wasn't enough.
Additionally, the mechanic to leave the level presenting you with a glowing door is fine, but my 5 y.o. entered the glowed door twice by mistake and couldn't get out, leaving his brother alone, until I found out that pressing B -unless there is any other way to do that- allowed him to get out of the door and return to the level.
I mean, the idea of the glowing door is good but it could tell the player when he is near that entering the door won't permit you move. Or, if they press the button to enter the door, a message could be shown to tell them how to leave the glowing area and return to the level.
The 7 y.o. perfectly understands his 5 y.o. sibling and viceversa -we sometimes ask him what the 5 y.o. tried to say when he says something odd, and he knows
-, and they communicate quite well in their own jargon. So if my 5 y.o. nephew gets stuck in the door to leave the level, the 7 y.o. who knows to read already, can tell him: "Press this to return to the level" and that would work like a charm.
Finally, I only have like 4 games installed 'cos my 1TB SSD died and I decided to convert and format my 2TB NVMe into a global purpose partition instead of a gaming partition and I formatted everything.
But they also played
Moving Out, which they love and of course the omnipresent
Rocket League.
They spent like 5 hours playing overall and they remained awake 'til their parents returned. Kinda surprising 'cos their mother told me that the 5 y.o. usually falls asleep all of a sudden past a certain time in his everyday life.
Since he was always playing co-op and talking to his brother, both communicating and collaborating all the time, they stayed awake until relatively late when their parents returned to pick them up. So yeah, typical things of playing together.