How to Pick Games for Someone New to Gaming (2026)

To pick games for someone new to gaming, choose something with simple controls, forgiving checkpoints, short sessions and a clear goal in the first ten minutes — a puzzle game like Portal, a cozy sandbox like Animal Crossing: New Horizons, or a gentle platformer like Super Mario Odyssey. Ask what they enjoy, what hardware they have, and how much free time they actually have before you pick anything.

The hard part is not finding games. It is that there are thousands, and almost nobody wants the one you would choose for yourself. A new gamer needs a first hour that makes sense, not a first hour that impresses you.

That first hour matters more than most people expect. Reddit threads about this question keep circling the same regret: a well-meaning friend recommends a notoriously punishing game, the new gamer bounces off it, and the whole idea of gaming gets written off. In one r/Steam thread, a user called recommending a Souls-style game to someone brand new “crazy” — and plenty of others agreed.

So the goal here is simple: build a decision process, run the person through it, and end up with one title you can defend. Most of it takes about fifteen minutes.

What You Need to Know Before You Buy

Every mistake in this guide traces back to choosing before asking. These seven facts take one short conversation, and they narrow thousands of titles down to a handful you can reason about.

Their existing interests, outside gaming

Ask what they do for fun and what they already watch or read. Cooking shows, football, horror films, gardening, space history, detective novels. A game is just an interactive version of a subject they already care about, and that bridge is the single most useful filter you have.

The device they will play on

Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series, PC, phone, or a handheld like a Steam Deck or a small laptop. Ask directly and do not assume. Plenty of first-gaming moments happen on a TV console sitting in a living room that already belongs to someone else, which changes everything.

Their input setup

Some genres are playable with a mouse and nothing else. Point-and-click adventures, city builders, management sims and many puzzle games never ask you to walk around a character. If the person has never held a controller, that alone narrows your list considerably, and it is worth confirming they have a controller that is already paired and working.

Their internet situation

Any game that needs a constant connection will not work on a weak line or a rural connection. Single-player games that let you play offline are far kinder for a first purchase, and they also avoid the queue, the login and the update download that eats a first evening.

How long a sitting they actually have

Ask for a real number. A new gamer with twenty minutes a night needs a game that pauses anywhere, saves constantly and gives progress in small pieces. Someone with free weekends can handle a campaign with a long story. Match the game to the calendar, not to the marketing.

How they feel about losing and being bad

Plenty of people find repeated failure genuinely stressful, and some do not care at all. Cozy and puzzle games rarely punish you. Shooters, fighting games and survival games usually do. Asking “do you lose your temper when you lose?” is a reasonable, non-awkward way to get a straight answer.

Accessibility or content needs

Ask about motion sensitivity, flashing effects, colour-only cues, reading load and subtitles. More titles than ever now ship adjustable difficulty, remappable controls, text scaling and colour filters, and those settings are often found in a menu buried three levels deep. If you know before buying which options a game has, you can flag them on the first night instead of watching someone struggle.

Step-by-Step: How to Pick Games for Someone New to Gaming

Work through these six steps in order. The order matters, because each step removes options before the next one adds complexity.

1. Start With Their Interests, Not the Hype

Build your shortlist from what they already enjoy, not from what is popular this week. Popularity tells you what other people like; interest tells you what this person will still care about on hour forty.

Turn each interest into a genre:

• Logic, crosswords, detective fiction → puzzle, escape-room, point-and-click
• Football, basketball, motorsport → arcade racer, sports game, kart racer
• Gardening, cooking, animals, decorating → life sim, farming sim, sandbox
• Horror films, thrillers, true crime → story-driven adventure, but check the content rating first
• Science fiction, space, history → exploration and open-world games with a light challenge
• Comedy, party games, nothing in particular → co-op games and local multiplayer

Aim for five or six candidates, not twenty. A short list you can actually test beats a big list you hand over and let someone drown in.

2. Match the Game to Their Setup

Every candidate now has to clear three practical checks before it stays on the list.

Platform. Confirm the game runs on the exact device they own, in the right region. A game they cannot launch is a wasted gift, and digital gifts are tied to an account and a region, so check the recipient’s account settings before you buy anything.

Performance demands. If it is a PC game, look at the minimum requirements and compare them to the machine that actually exists in their house. If they are playing on a TV from the last decade, cross-platform games built after the current console generation may struggle.

Input. Check whether the game needs a controller, a mouse and keyboard, or either. A tactical strategy game is a poor first pick for someone who has only ever used a TV remote.

Most storefronts show storage requirements, controller support and online requirements on the product page. Two minutes reading that page prevents the most common gifting failure.

3. Choose the Right Difficulty and Pace

The most useful question here is whether the game punishes mistakes while the player is still learning the controls. Games that do that force a beginner to multitask — figure out the buttons, remember the objective and recover from an error, all at once. Those are the games that make people quit in the first hour.

Look for these instead:

• Tutorials or a slow opening that teaches one idea at a time
• Checkpoints or saves that happen often, so a failure costs minutes and not an evening
• Pause-anywhere design and no requirement to finish a level in one sitting
• Adjustable difficulty, assist modes or a normal mode that is genuinely normal
• Failure that costs you a life rather than an hour of progress

Some games fail the other way, where there is no real challenge at all and nothing to come back to. That is rarely a problem for a first game, but keep it in mind for the second one.

4. Check Whether They Want Solo or Social Play

Ask whether they want to play alone, next to someone, or online with friends, because this decides the genre more than almost anything else.

Solo. Story, puzzle and exploration games work well here. There is no waiting for a lobby, no stranger deciding their evening, and the pace stays entirely in their hands.

Side by side on one couch. Local co-op and competitive games are the easiest way to turn a new console into a shared activity. Some of the friendliest first-time gaming moments happen with two people on a sofa, one of them explaining the controls.

Online. It opens up co-op adventures, survival crafting, MMO-likes and competitive shooters, along with voice chat, moderation, account requirements and a possible subscription. If the game is always online, the connection has to be good. If they are younger or the audience is unpredictable, pick a game with real moderation rather than an open one.

If you are the person teaching them, co-op is doing double duty: it teaches while it entertains, and it gives you something to talk about.

5. Test the Shortlist Before Buying

You do not need a demo to check most of this. Several quick moves work well.

Watch five minutes of real gameplay, not a trailer. The trailer is edited; the gameplay is not. Pay attention to how fast the on-screen text moves and how much the player is doing at once.

Look for the phrase “beginner friendly” or “good first game” in reviews, but read the one-star and two-star comments too. If several of them say the same thing about confusing controls or a punishing opening, that is the pattern worth believing.

Check whether a free trial or a demo exists, and whether progress carries over. Many games on Steam, the Nintendo eShop and the PlayStation and Xbox stores offer a trial, and some refund windows let you try a full game and return it if the fit is wrong, so check the store’s policy before you commit.

If you are still torn, play fifteen minutes yourself. Your own reaction to the controls is a better guide than any review score.

6. Pick One and Explain the Choice

Give them one game, and one backup. A page of options reads as a problem you could not solve; two options read as a considered suggestion.

Say the reason in one sentence: this one teaches you the controls slowly, it saves often, and you can stop after twenty minutes and pick it up tomorrow. Concrete reasons are what people remember, and they make it easy to swap if it genuinely does not work.

Before they start, take five minutes to set things up with them: pair the controller, check that subtitles are on, open the accessibility menu and raise the text size, and show them where the game saves. A first session derailed by a control problem is often mistaken for a bad game.

Eight signals a game is beginner-friendly

Run any candidate through this checklist before you buy:

1. Adjustable difficulty or an assist mode
2. Frequent checkpoints or saves
3. A short, forgiving tutorial or an opening that introduces one idea at a time
4. No fail state that wipes out more than a minute or two
5. Pause-anytime play with no timed pressure
6. Short missions, so progress shows up in the first session
7. Subtitles, text scaling and remappable controls
8. A single-player or couch co-op mode that works without an online account

Common Mistakes When Picking Games for a New Gamer

Recommending a punishing game to prove you are generous. Souls-like games, brutal platformers and hardcore survival games assume you already know how games work. The repeated community consensus is blunt: these are close to the worst possible first picks. If they enjoy challenge, save it for month three, and start with something with assist modes.

Picking the game you like instead of the one they will like. A recurring pattern in r/gamingsuggestions is that people recommend their own taste and call it a gift. Ask yourself whether the person you are advising has ever shown interest in this genre. If not, you are picking for yourself.

Giving ten options. More than four is a decision deferred. Pick one, name a backup, and explain both. That removes the whole reason they asked you.

Ignoring the age rating and content warnings. The ESRB rating is a starting point, not a summary. Check the content descriptors too, especially when gifting to a child or to an older relative, and read what the store page flags before you buy rather than after.

Buying before confirming the platform. Asking “do you have a console, a PC, or just a phone?” takes five seconds and prevents the single most common wasted purchase in this whole topic. Check that the digital version matches their region and account too.

Choosing a huge, long, unreadable game as the warm-up. Long games assume you will play for months, and heavy text plus quick-time events can put off older relatives and younger children in the first ten minutes. Short, clear, low-text first games set up a much better second week.

Skipping the setup. Pair the controller, confirm the save works, turn on subtitles, and set text size before they play. Twenty minutes here prevents a whole evening wasted on friction that is not about the game.

Frequently Asked Questions

Conclusion

Start by asking three things: what they enjoy, what device they have, and how long a sitting they can manage. Turn those answers into a shortlist of beginner-friendly games, cut anything punishing, always-online or unreadable, then narrow to one title and one backup. Set the controller, subtitles and text size up with them before the first session, and pick games for someone new to gaming the same way you would pick a recipe for a friend: based on what they like, not what you like.