Tablet/Mobile games for the elderly

I received a frantic call from my 76 year old mother a few evening's ago. We purchased a tablet for her for Christmas and installed several games she picked out on the tablet before she went home. Now, all the games she chose were free games...and there was the problem.

Each game allowed her to play a certain number of minutes before it froze the game for 30 minutes, 60 minutes or 90 minutes.

Eventually, every game she had was frozen and she could play no more. She called me and, okay, yeah, to be honest, she yelled at me! It was this scary moment of an elderly grandmother having withdrawals from mobile gaming! Frightening, to say the least. I was rather bemused and befuddled....as well as a little worried about her sanity.

Anyway....with promises that my husband would come to the house the next day and get her set up for her Wifi and help her download a few more games, she calmed down and apologized. I said goodbye and told the kids that Grandma had become addicted to video games! They were confused. lol

Unfortunately, it seems many games are like this. You play for a bit and then have to pay to continue or do something. I admit, I rarely play anything other than solitaire on my tablet.

So..I need some advice.

One of the games she picked out was Candy Crush, another was a CSI one (she lives for that show).

I want suggestions for games that are similar, and ones that we can pay for rather than have her spend $1 here and there. She lives on a limited income, has a very sick dog, another dog, and two cats. We do help her when we can but she is stubborn. So I am thinking of just buying her a bunch of games so no worry about her spending all her money on a mobile game.

Your games are very welcome, as long as they are the sort she might like and you have a paid version without tons of intrusive ads.

Links to Google Play or wherever they are would be great!

Thanks so much.

 

An awesome story and I hope you find many great "for sale" games for your mom. I cannot understand why (Not)F2P games are so popular. I can see for devs but not the gamers. It makes no sense to me unless someone just wants to waste their money!

 

Thanks, GarBenjamin. Did you know that studies show that elderly people can actually rebuild brain cells by playing video games? Even those little silly ones like Candycrush require reflexes and puzzle solving...not sure to what degree, but enough to make a difference.

If advertised correctly, an entire new market of elderly people wanting to improve their minds could open up, especially as all those baby boomers are out there just getting older!

I hope I get some suggestions!

 

Yes, I have read the same and it makes great sense. Also when I read your post my entrepreneurial mind (well at one time back when I had ambitions and created businesses) immediately thought of marketing campaigns and a few different businesses to build around simply helping these older gamers.

I hope you get a lot of responses too and I will stay away so it can get back on track. lol

 

At least your mother can play multiple games. We got my mother-in-law a Samsung Galaxy tablet 2 Christmases ago, and ever since then, she's only played solitaire on the thing. That's it. No offense to solitaire, but she plays no other games, uses no other apps. We feel like it was a waste of $300+ because she used to read the Internet on her smartphone, gave up the smartphone, and the tablet was supposed to be the substitute for that. We simply don't get it.

 

We recently got the AARP pad for my dad (91). http://www.aarprealpad.org/
It has a bunch of pre-bundled games.

It does seem like a good market, games without the extra complications that we are used to. I know that some of the studies about brain activity and growth are controversial (many are done under the guise of marketing), but regardless, keeping the mind engaged (at any age) is good thing.

One possibility may also be Amazon Underground : www.amazon.com/b?node=11350978011
Where they have a lot of popular games for a fixed price and (all in app purchases are included). We have a bunch of games on there, but I have never actually tried the service, so not sure how it actually functions from a UX standpoint, but may be worth looking into.

 

We ported a couple of games for you guys to Underground.

Since its a subscription service, without any IAP's, the general consensus was to increase the amount of virtual currency and gems given in general, so the player never hit a 'paywall' where they felt they needed to pay to get to where they wanted to be.

And since Amazon pays you as a developer per minute (12c per minute per player), increasing the grind/level difficulty was another strategy we adopted to increase playing time.

But yes its certainly much safer for kids and the elderly than letting them have access to IAP's.
I'm sure there are a few stories of elderly people having spent their life's pensions on in app purchases by mistake!

 

Amazon sounds good! I wonder if I can set that up at my house and send games to her tablet? I like that idea a lot.

 

Did you ever consider making a game just for your mom? Completely free without any kind of IAP. No one knows her better than you, so you just could create a game that contains all the aspects she most like, I think that would be a great gift.

 

I am not a coder and cannot make mobile games. Plus, I am in the middle of a project.

And seriously, she plays very different games than I do. lol I have never played anything remotely like Candy Crush and cannot even figure out why anyone would want to play it.

I doubt very much she would like the games I play.

But thanks for the suggestion anyway.

 

Does she have access to Internet games? My wife is addicted to wordament which is basically online boggle every 3 minutes. Some people are really really fast but even y 10yr old plays it just so he can say he beat 30% of the players.

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.microsoft.wordament&hl=en

Hexiled is another we like

http://hexiledgame.com/

 

Yes, and the recommended game to play is original starcraft.

I can't suggest anything, though. Most of the games on tablet will be f2p, meaning they'll lock out people. And I don't exactly play stuff on my tablet.

 

Neat!! She has access to wifi on her tablet but her computer died. We considered a new one for her but she never really figured out how to use it except for games and the games on the tablet are more her style.

 

There's also Bonza. You can earn the coins to buy the previous months packs & get free a hints by watching ads. They also do a National Geographic one as well. Sorry, apart from word games I only have twitch games that the kids play.

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=air.au.com.minimega.bonza&hl=en

Unless she likes match 3 games. The marvel gem matching game has time limits but over time you earn gold to buy more slots for more characters so you can last a fair while before having to stop for a while.


I forgot The Room series, they are good hidden puzzle games

 

I think I will avoid any with time limits. But I will look at the others. The Room Series sounds good. I might even like that! lol

Thank you!

 

I like Looney Tunes Dash and it lets you play about 15 - 30 minutes a day before freezing you out for a day. You can buy more minutes but I never have. Honestly, I didn't like being froze out at first but now agree with it as it keeps one from wasting too much time on games be day. I think though 1 hour would be a more reasonable limit. Given the state of television though I can see her attraction to playing puzzle games.

 

I agree with you totally...but...she is 76, suffers from COPD (smoked for too many years) and non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, which probably won't cause her death but certainly makes her uncomfortable...plus type 2 diabetes. She was widowed 6 years ago when my step-father died.

So....if she wants to play too many games, I don't mind. I won't stop her. I just don't want her spending all her money on games. I don't mind buying them, but I don't want to find out she spent a hundred bucks on a game in one month because she couldn't wait to play.

I get why developers do this...but it just isn't a good thing for an elderly person on a limited income. She, along with my father, helped me get through college and were there for me while I was in graduate school. I want her to enjoy herself now.

 

I've know people that have had similar diseases and Farmville was fun but ultimately they ruined it by begging for money too often.

Looney Tunes Dash though is not that interesting as a puzzle game. I play because I enjoy the Looney Tunes graphics.

I think you instead of looking for traditional games you should look for educational titles. A lot of them are done in gaming style to get the interest of children. Such games on touch screens are how the school that educated my autistic nephew first got his attention for more than a few seconds.

 

She is not senile..lol. I think adult games, maybe card games, hidden pictures, etc. might work. I am going to try downloading the Amazon Underground on my android tablet. I understand it might not be compatible with anything other than Kindle Fire, so we will see.

Thanks for the suggestions. I appreciate it more than you know. I had hoped to get more suggestions but I guess all the developers here have monetized their game rather than sell it for a price. lol

No problem! That is one reason I rarely play games. I would rather pay $5 or even more for a game and not have to deal with the rest.

 

This may interest you: Best android games without IAP. There are lots to choose from .

 

Autism isn't senility and my nephew regularly finds bugs in games and uses those bugs to beat the games. Bugs others can't find. And an educational game for children isn't exactly implying a child, even an autistic child, is in any way senile. Know this though, the senile aren't stupid either for that matter and should be helped to live secure safe lives and still may engage in mentally and physically stimulating, but limited for safety reasons, activities. However, shouldn't we all take the lessons of senility to heart in creating our living environment? Some people do that and they call it planning, scheduling, and budgeting.

 

Does she like reading? You could get the kindle app for her tablet. We got my mum (70 this year) a kindle & linked it to our Amazon account. If we buy books we think she might like we send them to her kindle & if she sees something she wants she gets it & we get charged for it (we can also read it if we want). I get 1 or 2 emails a day from Amazon saying I've just bought another book. I also put an app on her tablet that shows her books that are free or big discounts & rated 4+ from >5 reviews so she checks that & then finds them on Amazon & buys them. If your mum ad on her tablet those apps have links straight to Amazon & she could click to buy.

 

80% of my game design class are in the autism spectrum. I agree that they are really focused on games & often find things testers miss. I've been suggesting for ages that the school should provide a space & set up a games testing hub & hire autistic kids at normal rates of pay to test the games being made. It gives those kids a job, helps the devs, & is probably able to get some government grants to help cover costs.

 

This is also good. You can buy hints but if you keep trying eventually you could work them all out without clues

Wordbrain
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=se.maginteractive.wordbrain&hl=en

 

I will look at that. Again, hoping to find something she doesn't have to "buy" other than paying for the game. They don't exist now, do they? LOL

My mom has a kindle that we bought for her a while ago, but she has moved on to games and kept her old paperback books.

I had one of the first kindles so a big fan even though I read more on my tablet these days.

You are right, Goat. I apologize. However...I don't think she would want educational games. I think she just wants something fun to keep her busy.

 

I read about a company in Texas that hires autistic kids. We have several in our homeschooling group and most are very high functioning, very good with computers, and very logical. It seems only the social skills are a problem with these kids and even then, you can't help but like them. My daughter has a very good friend, 15 year old, whom is autistic. We watched this kid grow and blossom with the right structure.

My son may be on the spectrum, or he is just very shy. Not sure, but it is difficult for him at times to meet people and communicate well. However, he loves programming so I am not to worried about him. He will meet more people like him as he goes out in the world.

I would hire a dozen of people like him if I could.

 

Well being very shy is normal and healthy but that isn't necessarily autism. When I first heard of autism's symptoms I thought I might of been autistic as a small child based on my remembered behavior but I realized in my case I was simply a child than needed strict discipline which I thankfully got.

The swimming pool my nephew learned to swim at hired him as a greeter at the pool for a while but although he is unusually friendly his attention wanders too much for employment. People see the need to make him normal but given all the fighting normal people do to make everybody else 'their kind of normal' well he's not hurting or even verbally offending anyone.

As far as senility goes well I've forgotten 2 or 3 times over the past 5 years that I have something on the stove cooking so I decided to replace my range with a range where both the oven and the stove are on timers for safety reasons. So now, less chance of burning down the house. I also plan to start wearing a GPS watch with a 911 Emergency only cell phone built-in, except one doesn't exist yet that is quite as non-descript, inexpensive and spartanly functional as needed. I'll probably buy the smallest Android GPS Cell Phone watch on Alibaba that works and wear it as they've been out for years now. I don't get lost and am healthy but maybe I go to the track and faint one day? Who knows? I don't want to lay on a track in agony until someone wanders by. Those are the type of safety planning and technology that is cheap, simple, and effective that are needed not just for a babysat child or the senile elderly that can be adapted.

 

Absolutely, but it isn't just shyness in my son's situation. Specialists told us they would treat the symptoms and not the diagnoses. So he has never been formally diagnosed...but they suspected. At this point, it doesn't matter, just something for him to be aware of just in case.

I guess I am not going to get anymore game ideas so will see what I can do with what I have. Thanks everyone!

 

Look for games from zeptolab. They have free versions that are full-featured. All you have to do really is watch an ad after each level. And their games are pretty fun too.

 

Afaik the whole boardgame market has started to see the elderly as a new target audience. Maybe you'll find some fun boardgames with AI that can be played on tablets? I'd imagine most of those will have reasonable monetization schemes too. Maybe check out Carcassonne. I haven't played it myself, but I think it's pretty popular.

 

I will do that. We happen to have that board game. I think she wants simpler stuff though but I will suggest it to her.

Thanks!

 

Carcassonne is great. We have the board game & the xbox360 version.

 

We have piles of Eurogames, more than we can play. lol The kids are really into them.

 

we are starting to make a 2 player abstract game (pass & play initially) while we try to get a publisher for a tabletop version.
Unfortunately the market is really niche

 

Very cool. The kids and I belong to a club where people play board games and rpg tabletop games. We have quite a crowd there and I live in the US Bible belt. So there is a market, just have to find it. If you need play testers, let me know.

 

Thanks

 

I just made a butt ugly test version on tabletop simulator. No coding needed since it is all just drag & drop with no rules enforcement

 

Yeah, those are fun!