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15 Games to Gift Someone Who Doesn’t Usually Play Games

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The perfect gaming gateway.

Nazarii Verbitskiy

Gaming - November 4th 2026, 12:45 GMT+1

Untitled Goose Game — 15. Untitled Goose Game (2019)
A goose with no dialogue and no stated motive ruins an entire English village in Untitled Goose Game. House House, the two-person Australian studio behind it, released the game in 2019 through Panic. Your only tools are honking, flapping, and grabbing things in your bill. There is no tutorial because none of the tasks need one. | © Panic

Journey — 14. Journey (2012)
Thatgamecompany built Journey around a rule that sounds impossible on paper: strangers can meet mid-game but can never speak or type to each other. The 2012 release for PlayStation 3 lets you cross a desert alongside a random player identified only by a glowing symbol. Composer Austin Wintory wrote a score that got nominated for a Grammy, the first for a video game soundtrack. You never learn the other player's name, and that turns out to be the point. | © Sony Interactive Entertainment

Disney Dreamlight Valley — 13. Disney Dreamlight Valley (2023)
Someone who has never touched a controller can still figure out Disney Dreamlight Valley within minutes. Gameloft released it in 2023 with Mickey Mouse as the first face you see and dozens of Disney and Pixar characters to unlock after. The valley starts covered in a literal fog called the Forgetting, which clears as you restore each character's area. Cooking, fishing, and decorating fill most of the hours, and nobody ever really loses. | © Gameloft

Lego Star Wars The Skywalker Saga 2022 — 12. LEGO Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga (2022)
Ten playable eras from the Star Wars saga get squeezed into one game in LEGO Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga. Traveller's Tales built it with over 300 playable characters, released through Warner Bros. Games in 2022. Every lightsaber duel and droid explosion is played for a joke rather than a dramatic beat. Nobody needs to have seen a single one of the nine films to follow what's happening. | © Warner Bros. Games

Stray — 11. Stray (2022)
A cat with no owner, no name given by the game, and no human language wanders a crumbling city in Stray. BlueTwelve Studio made it, Annapurna Interactive published it in 2022, and the whole thing runs on a robot companion named B-12 doing the talking for you. The cat can scratch furniture, knock objects off ledges, and nap on command, none of which affects the plot. It is one of the only games where the main verb is simply being a cat. | © Annapurna Interactive

Overcooked 2 — 10. Overcooked! 2 (2018)
Team17 published Overcooked! 2 in 2018, and the premise is simple. Two to four people run a kitchen that is actively trying to kill them, conveyor belts, moving boats, the works. Orders pile up, pans catch fire, and somebody always ends up yelling about onions. Nobody leaves this game on speaking terms, but they come back the next week anyway. | © Team17

Hogwarts Legacy — 9. Hogwarts Legacy (2023)
Hogwarts in 1890 is the setting, decades before Harry Potter was ever born. Warner Bros. Games released Hogwarts Legacy in 2023 and sold over 22 million copies within its first year. There's no prior knowledge required, no books to have read, no films to have watched. Someone who has never cared about wands or Quidditch can still spend forty hours just wandering the castle. | © Warner Bros. Games

Mario Kart 8 Deluxe — 8. Mario Kart 8 Deluxe (2023)
Fifty tracks ship with Mario Kart 8 Deluxe once all the paid DLC courses are counted in. Nintendo first put the base game out in 2017, then kept adding to it for years instead of moving on. A red shell has ruined more friendships than any other object in video game history, probably. Nobody needs to be good at games to throw a banana peel at their brother. | © Nintendo

Unpacking — 7. Unpacking (2021)
You never see a face in Unpacking. The entire game is just boxes, rooms, and the slow accumulation of someone's life through their belongings, from a childhood bedroom to eventually a home of their own. Witch Beam, a tiny Australian studio, released it in 2021 to almost no marketing budget. There's no way to fail a level, only shelves that feel wrong until you move things around. | © Team17

Minecraft — 6. Minecraft (2011)
Markus Persson wrote the first version of Minecraft alone in 2009, and Mojang released it properly in 2011. It has since sold over 300 million copies, making it the best-selling video game ever made. There are no points, no clock, no instructions telling you what to do with the blocks. Someone who insists they aren't a gamer will still end up building a house by accident. | © Mojang / Xbox Game Studios

It Takes Two — 5. It Takes Two (2021)

Josef Fares walked off a stage in 2017 and said "f the Oscars" before making It Takes Two, and the game became one of the loudest answers to that moment. Two players control a couple shrunk down to doll size, forced to fix their marriage by surviving a garden shed turned warzone. Hazelight Studios built every level around a different mechanic, so the game never repeats a trick twice. Nobody needs prior experience, since one controller teaches the other as you go. | © Electronic Arts

Animal Crossing New Horizons — 4. Animal Crossing: New Horizons (2020)
A deserted island in 2020 turned out to be exactly what millions of people needed that March. Animal Crossing: New Horizons sold over 3 million digital copies in its first few days in Japan alone, according to Nintendo's own figures. Tom Nook hands you a tent and a debt, then gets out of the way entirely. There are no enemies, no fail states, just bugs to catch and a museum to fill. | © Nintendo

The Sims 4 — 3. The Sims 4 (2014)
Dollhouses got a serious upgrade when Maxis released The Sims 4 in 2014, letting players build a life without ever touching a plot. Build mode alone has absorbed people who've never finished a single in-game day. Characters can be shoved into pools with the ladder removed, or set up with a dream kitchen and a stable marriage, depending on the mood. The life simulator asks nothing of the player except a willingness to meddle. | © Electronic Arts

Stardew Valley — 2. Stardew Valley (2016)
Eric Barone spent four years alone building Stardew Valley before ConcernedApe ever became a studio name worth knowing. The result is a farm left behind by a grandfather, a town full of neighbors, and seasons that actually change what grows. There's no combat requirement, no deadline, no one judging how messy the fields look. Fishing, mining, and chatting with villagers fill the hours just as easily as farming does. | © ConcernedApe / Chucklefish

Grand Theft Auto VI — 1. Grand Theft Auto VI (2026)
Vice City gets rebuilt one more time, except this time Rockstar Games is putting a playable woman at the center of the story for the first time in the series. Grand Theft Auto VI was first revealed in December 2023, and the trailer alone passed 100 million views within 24 hours. Lucia shares protagonist duties with Jason, a first for the franchise since its 1997 debut. Someone who's never touched a controller still recognizes Miami when they see it. | © Rockstar Games

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Finding the right game for a non-gamer is an art, and these picks are approachable, charming, and hard to put down even for total beginners. Here are 15 games to gift someone who doesn’t usually play.

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Finding the right game for a non-gamer is an art, and these picks are approachable, charming, and hard to put down even for total beginners. Here are 15 games to gift someone who doesn’t usually play.