Best Kids Games on PS5

Great topic and list!

My son loves Astro’s Playroom. He’s gotten over 40 hours of it this year and it’s the first game he’d ever beaten on his own. He was five years old at the time of completion. He still plays it all the time. He plays Sackboy a lot too.

I do think Minecraft should be on this list. If Crash is on here, Psychonauts 2 definitely should be. Wattam and Katamari are good for the kids too. And Dreams has some wonderful stuff for kids, as long as you can find the right stuff. Stray isn’t a bad one either for kids.

It’s really interesting watching kids play. They play to experience worlds so genuinely. There’s no thought about beating things or getting decent scores, but just getting immersed and story sensing. I sometimes wish I was better at that, myself.

Sack Boy is an absolute blast. Its such a fun couch co op, and three player games of it are some of the best times I've had in the last few years.
Initial levels are pretty cookie cutter, but later levels introduce some great mechanics and really good level design. A great family game - or even a fun time for a group of 50yo+ adults like you'll find in my front room!

@Dr-zoidburg You’re talking about Crash 4 being too hard, but saying Sonic Superstars should be on here? Crash 4’s levels are harder, but those bosses in Sonic Superstars ruin the game with their seemingly random difficulty spike. Sonic Mania, on the other hand, I’d say is great fun for kids. Sonic Frontiers too. With regards to this list, my son is 6 and has tried all of these games without much difficulty, outside Among Us and Fortnite. He didn’t like them all, but could play them all to the extent where he either liked them or didn’t, based on preference. Kids can learn games pretty quickly, I’d say.

@Afroducc Tren is absolutely a gem for kids (and adults too). Totally agree. I’d have bought this one as a standalone, even after playing in Dreams. It’s definitely making it to my year-end list and my son loves it. We actually ended up playing it collaboratively where he’d play easier levels while I was at work and then show me what he did and then I’d play the hard ones. Really fun! If it was stand alone, I’d argue it being my favorite Media Molecule game of all time perhaps.

These games are all regular video games that have a whimsical art design that makes them look unoffensive and suitable for many ages. Some of the games deal with themes that are more for grown-ups and some have very advanced gameplay techniques. I think we need to decide who "children" are when it comes to lists like this.

Granted you can let a young child loose in most of these games without needing to worry about much blood, sex, violence, or scary stuff, but I would hardly call any of them "children's" games

Bluey: The Video Game, Paw Patrol World, Bratz, Inspector Gadget. These are children's games.

Now if we are talking pre-teens and teens up to 15 these games on the list a fantastic if you don't want your kids engaging in video game violence.

@Dr-zoidburg Yeah, Sonic Superstars might be my personal biggest disappointment of 2023. It’s weird though because I love the level design. The co-op is truly awful though and the bosses are bizarrely difficult in comparison to the breezy difficulty of the stages. It’s like whiplash, even in the early levels. I’ve been playing Sonic games for ages and it’s another example of a confused Sonic game. It was so close to great, but so far away. Crash 4 is a bit easier than Sonic Superstars, but only because of the bosses! Lol

@Afroducc 100% agree with everything you said. I feel like the game is so under the radar because it’s in Dreams. If it would’ve gotten a bit more proper press and a standalone, I think it could have been a bonafide hit. Revealing it was made in Dreams rather than saying it’s the final salvo for the app could’ve honestly gotten more people excited about Dreams as a whole too. Honestly feels like Media Molecule didn’t quite know what to do with Dreams to make it hit right. It deserved better.

@Dr-zoidburg Totally agree. Sonic Team tends to make bizarre choices that make you wonder if they even tried the game before they launched it. And, if they did try it, did they really like that!? Lol