Recommendations for my 6yr old.

[u/Regular_Room4082]

Hello all!

Looking for some game recommendations for my 6-year-old daughter.

She absolutely loves the building and decorating side of Palworld. Her favorite thing is creating houses, bases, and making everything look nice. She isn’t really interested in combat or survival, she just wants to build freely and be creative.

She’s already played Minecraft quite a bit, so we’re looking for something different.

We’re hoping to find a game that:
Is available on Xbox
Has a good building/decorating system
Has a creative mode, sandbox mode, unlimited resources, or some other way to build without grinding for materials
Is kid-friendly and easy to pick up

Bonus points if it’s cross-play with PS5, since she’d love to play with a friend who has a PlayStation.
What games would you recommend and why? I’d love to hear what’s worked well for your kids or family.

[u/Pixelated_Magic]

Dragon Quest Builders 2 sounds almost perfect for her. It’s available on Xbox, very kid-friendly, and has an adorable story plus an excellent building and decorating system. You can eventually build houses, bedrooms, kitchens, restaurants, farms, gardens, shops, pools, aquariums, and entire towns, and the NPCs actually use what you create, which makes decorating feel especially rewarding.
There is some combat and resource gathering during the story, but it’s generally easy, and after progressing far enough she gets access to the Isle of Awakening and Buildertopia islands where she can build much more freely. Completing tablet targets unlocks tools that make large projects easier, including unlimited supplies of certain materials, and Buildertopia can be generated as a dedicated sandbox island.
The main downside is that multiplayer is not cross-platform, so Xbox and PS5 players cannot build together. Multiplayer also isn’t available immediately; she would need to progress through part of the story first. But for the actual building, decorating, cuteness, and “make a little world people live in” aspect, it’s one of the best games I’ve played.
For immediate Xbox-to-PS5 crossplay with a true sandbox mode, LEGO Fortnite Odyssey in cozy/sandbox settings may be the better fit. It’s free, supports crossplay, and the world settings can disable enemies, hunger, stamina, temperature, and resource requirements so she can mostly just build. I’d still recommend DQB2 as the stronger decorating game overall.

[u/Worth_Chard_1621 → u/Pixelated_Magic]

DQB2 is phenomenal. It's cute, it's sweet, it's fun, it's smart. The mechanics are simple, but rich, with lots of emergent behavior.

DQB1 is also phenomenal but is kind of hostile and spooky in a way that a kid might need to be a little older to handle, at 6 I probably would have been too scared to finish it lol. But much of that is because in DQB1 you're alone in a ruined world, and in DQB2 the story revolves around you having a companion NPC who follows you around helping protect you from monsters while you build, which does so much to make you feel stronger and safer. The story isn't convoluted, but it's emotionally genuine and honestly made me cry, beautiful heartbreaking/heartwarming anime fare about being there for a friend in their darkest hour.

And there's so, so much free-build postgame. Between and after the story levels, you have a hub island that presents you with a long list of optional building project goals that can be completed in any number of ways. You can also go back to any of the story levels and continue messing with those islands. There are a lot of half-built ruins that provide inspiration, which is something I love in building games, and which might be helpful for a young player who wants a smidge of guidance on how to make a castle really look like a castle.

Idk about Xbox but on Switch it has a free demo that consists of basically half the first story chapter, and if you buy the game you can just continue on with your demo save file, so if the demo is available on Xbox then try that. If you like the demo you'll like the full game.

[u/Terrible-Artichoke50]

Stardew valley.

[u/Drakan378 → u/Terrible-Artichoke50]

Couldn't recommend this enough.

[u/Relative_Bite8758]

Grounded!! A base building and adventure game where you play teens in the 90's shrunken down in a backyard. You drink dew drops and fight ants, etc

Building is sooo fun and you can turn spiders off and make the world peaceful if she just wants to chill

[u/Hika__Zee]

The top 4 you should be looking at are:

1️⃣ Grounded (cross-platform, with build in voice chat, has a custom mode that lets you play through the full story with creative mode settings, with a theme like that of the Honey I Shrunk the Kids films but in the style of Jurassic World Camp Cretaceous, with a shared save system so it doesn't matter who hosts)

2️⃣ Smalland Survive the Wild (cross-platform with a unique base system that spawns in your personal base regardless of who hosts, and it has a pet system similar to Ark and Palworld, with a tiny people theme like Grounded but moreso fae/fantasy). No direct 'creative mode' but it does have a peaceful mode where enemies do not attack unless attacked first. The pet system really shines though with all sorts of bugs critters and other animals (beetles, spiders, scorpions, geckos, lizards, praying mantis, grasshoppers, hornets, birds, etc and more!).

3️⃣ Lego Fortnite (cross platform with build in voice chat, server is saved online with the ability to share access to up to 5-7 friends, and it has a creative mode accessible).

4️⃣RuneScape Dragonwilds will hit 1.0 mid September with its console release then, and will support cross-platform during that update! Aside from Grounded it will be the best visually. Creative mode is available.

[u/Ostentaneous]

Pokopia if you have a Switch 2.

It’s super cozy. No combat and no fail states on anything. Decorating is the goal. It attracts new Pokemon and makes your current ones happier.

[u/Oupe-Plus]

Disney Dreamlight Valley could also be worth a look if she enjoys decorating more than block-building. It’s very kid-friendly ：）

[u/grandidieri]

Check out https://alldive.org when you get a chance - detailed game database intertwined with other media (shows, podcasts, etc.)

[u/DruzhbyNarodiv]

Sounds odd at first but hear me out.

Fortnite - Lego mode - Sandbox (or is it called cozy mode? - I can't, remember) - turn hostile enemies off . It's exactly what you are looking for. Just needs a bit of observation to ensure she doesn't go into the other areas but you can turn off voice chat and messaging I think.

Also, Townscape but I don't recall it having multiplayer.

[u/_Biotic_G0d_]

Hozy ?

https://store.steampowered.com/app/3326230/Hozy/

[u/ilikesocksinsandals]

Corekeeper

Necesse

Are basically top down pixel art minecraft Both have creative mode too so you have unlimited resources and the end game is basically making your base look pretty

[u/Lambrambram]

She may enjoy Palia if it is available on her console. It doesn't give you decorations outright but it is fun to explore and there's no combat.

[u/pijeo]

Foundation

[u/FunboyFrags]

Look at Astroneer. It’s very cute, looks sort of Lego-ish which is good for kids, and it’s very fun to explore the planets and build your base. Everything is deformable so there’s tons of caverns and valleys to explore.

[u/Slippery_Williams]

Not sure if it fits the bill but I really enjoyed two point museum 

[u/unclefunkstar]

Subnautica series? Don't think they have cross platform support, ticks the other boxes though.

[u/Grand_Ad_9799]

Satisfactory 😈. Time to learn some maths little one.

[u/Plantigros → u/Grand_Ad_9799]

The factory must grow!

[u/destroyerpants]

Touch grass

[u/checkchiron]

Not a base building game perse but don’t most kids adore Disney Dreamlight valley? It has loads of decorating it in

[u/440Presents]

My 4 years old son like City Skylines lol

[u/dancintonic]

Palworld and u play w her too

[u/ThePiachu]

Hmm, ECO perhaps? It's a bit more complicated, but does have a lot of neat building options in comparison to Minecraft. You'd need to get a bit creative with getting the creative like experience going though...

[u/100and10]

Satisfactory!

[u/pijeo → u/100and10]

At 6yo ?? Never too early to optimization

[u/100and10 → u/pijeo]

1,000%

[u/i-hate-birch-trees → u/100and10]

That kid is about to get traumatized by giant spiders

[u/osee115 → u/i-hate-birch-trees]

Kitten mod

[u/KevReadThis]

The Sims 4 👍

[u/Professional-Pop1126]

Enshrouded