Video Game Recommendations

Many times, I have been asked what games I would recommend are fun to play but also safe to play as a family, for children, or for a Christ-follower who doesn’t want to be exposed to certain content.

Video games are fun, and entertaining, and can teach us many lessons. Just like reading a book, or watching a movie or TV show, where you can walk away thinking about a certain scene or line of dialogue and applying it to your life.

So many times, even unconsciously, we are influenced by what we watch, listen and play yet we don’t realize it. As a follower of Christ, God is first in my life and I want to please Him by obeying His will. To do so as a gamer can be a little complicated, but over the years I’ve been able to navigate this world and want to help others do the same. Hopefully, this list will show you some games that you can check out without being uneasy about the content.

I used to have a list of games on this page but realizing there’s no way I can keep up with the enormous amount released every year and nowhere near the time to play them and recommend them, I would rather lead with the list of sites below.

Each one of these specializes in reviews and keeping up to date with most new games and give their point of view in a positive or faithful way. Check each one out and see which resonates with you. For example, Wholesome Games isn’t a Christian group but they showcase new titles that are as their title suggests, “wholesome” and not full of vulgarity or violent content.

Share what games you would recommend for others to check out in the comments!

🔍 Where to Research Games

🎮 Game Review & Discovery Platforms

Family Gaming Database
A UK-based site with a massive catalog of video and board games for families. They cover both new and retro titles. (Check out my interview with the owner!)

Plugged In – Games
Run by Focus on the Family, Plugged In offers reviews on games, movies, books, and more. Their game reviews are often cautious or critical, but useful for understanding content and themes.

Geeks Under Grace
A go-to source for Christian perspectives on games, movies, and pop culture. Their review archive is extensive—search for nearly any game and you’re likely to find coverage.

The Gamer Dad’s Guide to Healthy Screen Time

🌱 Wholesome Game Curation

Wholesome Games
A community focused on uplifting, peaceful, and story-rich games. From their site:
“For many years, the most critically acclaimed titles have been the ones with the darkest themes… We want to showcase the breadth of hopeful games that exist.”

*I curated the list below from Wholesome Games, Family Gaming Database, and Plugged In, as well as other sources. I have NOT played every single game below. I recommend watching the trailer, screenshots, and reading the bio before buying any game even from the list below.

If a link does not work, I recommend doing a search for the game title. Sometimes links stop working or if the site changes the URL.

Some of these games may have content you’re not comfortable with, so look them over first. If a demo is available, play it to see if you’re okay with the game before buying it.*

🛒 Prefer a physical copy? Most of the console games below have a boxed release, which is often cheaper than digital and easier to hand to a kid. Quick links: Stardew Valley · Animal Crossing: New Horizons · Celeste · Super Mario Bros. Wonder · Mario Kart 8 Deluxe · Luigi’s Mansion 3 · Ni no Kuni · Dragon Quest XI S · Tales of Vesperia · Rune Factory 4 Special · Kena: Bridge of Spirits · Spiritfarer
These are affiliate links. If you buy through one, Gaming & God earns a small commission at no extra cost to you, and it goes toward keeping the site online.

🏆 Core Wholesome Classics

  • A Short Hike — A tiny, gentle climb to a mountain summit, full of friendly characters and zero pressure.
  • Stardew Valley — Run a family farm, befriend a small town and grow at your own pace.
  • Spiritfarer — Ferry spirits to the afterlife in a warm, tender game about grief and letting go.
  • Animal Crossing: New Horizons — Build a relaxed island life with friendly neighbours and no way to fail.
  • Unpacking — A quiet puzzle game that tells a life story through the boxes you unpack in each new home.
  • Untitled Goose Game — Play a mischievous goose causing harmless chaos in a sleepy English village.
  • Chicory: A Colorful Tale — Paint a black-and-white world back to colour in a kind story about self-doubt.
  • TOEM: A Photo Adventure — Explore with a camera and help quirky locals through small photo requests.
  • PowerWash Simulator — Blast grime off everything in a strangely calming cleaning game.
  • Kind Words — Write anonymous, encouraging letters to real strangers who need them.
  • Lil Gator Game — A playful adventure about a little gator and a sibling who has grown too busy to play.
  • Celeste — A tough but kind platformer about climbing a mountain and facing anxiety.

🌸 Cozy & Narrative Favorites

  • Lake — Deliver mail around a peaceful 1980s lakeside town in this slow, gentle story.
  • Stray — Explore a neon city as a stray cat; a few tense chase scenes for younger players.
  • Mythwrecked: Ambrosia Island — Help forgetful Greek gods recover their memories on a sunny island.
  • Kena: Bridge of Spirits — A beautiful adventure guiding lost spirits home, with real combat.
  • Tchia — Sail and explore a tropical archipelago, taking the form of animals and objects as you go.
  • Planet of Lana — A wordless puzzle adventure about a girl and her small companion on an alien world.
  • The Garden Path — Tend a slow, real-time garden that grows alongside you.
  • Lost in Play — Hand-drawn point-and-click puzzles following two siblings through their imagination.
  • Flock — Fly with a friend and gather gentle creatures in a relaxed co-op game.
  • Naiad — Swim a river as a water spirit in a short, calming exploration game.
  • Venba — Cook family recipes in a short, heartfelt story about an immigrant family.
  • Storyteller — Build stories panel by panel from characters and scenes in a clever puzzle game.
  • Season: A Letter to the Future — Ride through a quiet world recording memories before a mysterious season ends.
  • The Touryst — Holiday across colourful islands solving puzzles as a lone tourist.
  • Dordogne — Revisit childhood summers in France through watercolour scenes and memories.
  • Terra Nil — Restore wasteland back to thriving nature, then leave without a trace.

🎮 Cozy Sims & Builders

  • Tiny Glade — Doodle castles and villages with no goals, costs or wrong answers.
  • Dorfromantik — Place tiles to grow a peaceful landscape in a relaxing strategy puzzle.
  • Townscaper — Click to build colourful island towns — pure creative play with no objectives.
  • Mini Motorways — Draw roads for a growing city and keep the traffic flowing.
  • Mini Metro — Design a subway map for a growing city in a clean, simple strategy game.
  • Rainbow Billy: The Curse of the Leviathan — Befriend monsters instead of fighting them in a colourful, kindness-driven adventure.
  • Ooblets — Farm, befriend and dance-battle adorable creatures in a colourful town.
  • Garden Story — Protect a village of fruit and vegetables as a heroic grape named Concord.

👨‍👩‍👧‍👦 Family-Friendly Adventures & Platformers

  • Super Mario Bros. Wonder — Mario’s wildest 2D platformer, full of surprises and great for playing together.
  • Super Mario Odyssey — Globe-trot with Mario and capture enemies to borrow their powers.
  • Mario Kart 8 Deluxe — The go-to racing game for couch play with the whole family.
  • New Super Lucky’s Tale — A cheerful platformer following a brave little fox on a colourful adventure.
  • Astro’s Playroom — A joyful PS5 platformer celebrating PlayStation history, free with the console.
  • Luigi’s Mansion 3 — Clear out a haunted hotel in a playful, not-actually-scary ghost adventure.
  • Bugsnax — Catch half-bug, half-snack creatures in a quirky island mystery.
  • Sneaky Sasquatch — Sneak around a campground as a mischievous Sasquatch on Apple Arcade.
  • Webbed — A cheerful platformer as a little spider swinging on webs to save a friend.

🌊 Exploration & Relaxation

  • Journey — Cross a vast desert toward a distant mountain, sometimes with a silent stranger beside you.
  • Abzû — Dive through a stunning ocean world full of marine life.
  • Alba: A Wildlife Adventure — Photograph wildlife and protect a Mediterranean island’s nature.
  • The Alto Collection — Endless, meditative snowboarding through serene landscapes.
  • Lonely Mountains: Downhill — Ride mountain bikes down beautiful trails at your own pace.
  • Wavetale — Surf across a flooded sea world in a bright, family-friendly adventure.

🧩 Puzzles & Unique Experiences

  • Proteus — Wander a dreamlike island where the music changes with everything you see.
  • Before Your Eyes — A short, moving story you control by blinking — about life and memory.
  • Threes — A simple, addictive number-sliding puzzle game.
  • Hue — Change the colour of the world to reveal hidden paths in this puzzle adventure.
  • The Gardens Between — Two friends bend time to solve puzzles through their shared memories.
  • Thomas Was Alone — Guide simple shapes with surprisingly warm personalities through clever puzzles.
  • Ghost Trick: Phantom Detective — A witty mystery where you possess objects to save lives.

🌱 Family-Friendly RPGs

🎌 Family-Friendly JRPGs

⭐ Bonus Cozy Hybrids

🕹️ Retro Classics Worth Revisiting

The games that made a lot of us gamers in the first place. These hold up, and most are cleaner than what is on the shelf today — the hardware simply could not render anything graphic.

🎌 SNES JRPGs — the golden age

If you only play one, make it the first.

  • Chrono Trigger — still the best-paced RPG ever made. Time travel, multiple endings, no filler.
  • Final Fantasy VI — the one with the opera scene and the villain who actually wins.
  • Secret of Mana — real-time combat and three-player co-op on a 1993 cartridge.
  • Super Mario RPG — Square and Nintendo together, and it is as charming as that sounds.
  • EarthBound — a JRPG set in suburban America. Funnier and stranger than anything since.
  • Illusion of Gaia — action RPG with a genuinely melancholy story.
  • Terranigma — resurrection and rebirth as a game mechanic. Never released in the US.
  • Lufia II: Rise of the Sinistrals — puzzle dungeons that still get copied today.
  • Breath of Fire II — rough translation, but the story goes places you would not expect.
  • Trials of Mana — six playable heroes, branching classes, gorgeous sprite work.

🍄 NES & SNES family classics

  • Super Mario World — arguably the best platformer ever built.
  • Super Mario Bros. 3 — the one everyone remembers.
  • Yoshi’s Island — hand-drawn, gentle, and quietly one of the hardest to fully complete.
  • Donkey Kong Country 1–3 — the soundtracks alone are worth it.
  • Kirby Super Star — eight games in one, co-op throughout. Great for young kids.
  • Kirby’s Adventure — NES, and still shockingly smooth.
  • The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past — the blueprint every Zelda since has followed.
  • Mega Man X — see my write-up on what it taught me about the fight.
  • DuckTales — the pogo stick, and that Moon theme.

🦔 Genesis & Mega Drive

  • Sonic the Hedgehog 2 — the one to start with.
  • Sonic 3 & Knuckles — lock-on cartridge magic, and the best level design in the series.
  • Ristar — overlooked gem from the Sonic team.
  • Castle of Illusion Starring Mickey Mouse — genuinely great, genuinely family-friendly.
  • Rocket Knight Adventures — a jetpack possum. Trust me.
  • ToeJam & Earl — co-op, funky, completely its own thing.
  • Gunstar Heroes — Treasure at their peak. Loud, but not gory.

📦 Where to actually find these games

You do not need a dusty cartridge and a working CRT. Most of these are available legally right now:

  • Nintendo Switch Online — the NES and SNES libraries come with the base subscription. The Expansion Pack adds N64 and Genesis. Cheapest way into most of this list.
  • Steam — Chrono Trigger, the Final Fantasy Pixel Remasters, the Sega Genesis Classics collection and most Capcom and Konami anthologies live here.
  • Nintendo eShop — modern remakes like Super Mario RPG and Trials of Mana, plus a lot of the classic collections.
  • Antstream Arcade — a subscription service with a large, fully licensed retro library. Worth a look if you want breadth over ownership.
  • The second-hand market — original carts still turn up. Check the seller and the condition; retro prices swing wildly.

And if you are wondering about emulation and ROMs — that is a fair question with a genuinely complicated answer. I worked through it here: Should A Christian Play ROMs or Hacked Games?

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