Something something something China bad. It’s a bit overblown, but there was some drama about the dev earlier in its lifespan. I think something to do with not all of its code being open source? Like the official servers were running a closed version or something. I’m definitely butchering the information. It’s good software and works as intended.

I personally use Sunshine and Moonlight, but not because I have any particular problem with RustDesk, just couldn’t get it working well, and Sunshine also works for in house game streaming if I want.

I tried to get my friend group into this and most of them bounced off. I tried to convince the “hardcore gamers” of the group that by the looks of it things get quite hard in the late game. Bummed I never really got to experience it to that point.

I’ve recently gotten into putting together sort of silly “party” mod packs for my friend group. Things that are meant to be played as a “one shot” with everyone online. Things like full loot randomizers, or shared health and inventory. Just silly and chaotic mods to shift the focus from exploration and sandbox-y things, to “let’s try to beat the ender dragon under very adverse conditions”. So far I’ve only gotten one friend to bite, but we’ve been doing one run a night for the last week or so. Takes between 20 to 60 minutes, maybe more if we really get into it.

Could also look into mods/modpacks that add quest books. That helps take the edge off the “open world, figure it out” paralysis and give some concrete things to work towards.

I’ve posted about this somewhere else too, maybe a different account idk.

But for games to play with people that aren’t really “gamers” I actually prefer single player games with light amounts of fast paced action or none at all. The “coop” comes from taking turns with the controller.

This works well with puzzle or logic games with generous reaction time requirements (again, or none at all), as well as story based games with light action. A lot of these games also come with natural pauses in the story that provide opportunities to either swap who is driving or put the game down for the day.

I’ve had a lot of success playing through many of these titles with partners. I’m sorting these roughly by category and then how strongly I recommend them. Some of these games I haven’t actually played yet, but I know them to fit the overall vibe.

Puzzle/Logic - no reaction time required

• Chants of Sennaar (HIGHLY recommend, requires decent notes and map making, so the person not using the controller still has a job)
• Strange Horticulture (HIGHLY recommend, also requires some light note taking to make life easier)
• Strange Antiquities (sequel to above, have not played yet, high expectations)
• Return of the Obra Din (have not played yet, high expectations)
• The Case of the Golden Idol + DLCs (STRONGLY recommend, got a bit burnt out by the end, but very fun, also light note taking)
• The Rise of the Golden Idol (sequel to above, have not played yet, moderate to high expectations)
• Baba is You (HIGHLY recommend, nice learning curve but becomes brutally difficult towards the end of the game)
• Myst (HUGE game, very good, but daunting and little to no hand holding, detailed notes required)

Kind of a category within a category, haven’t played these, but they’ve been referred to as 1.5 player games.

• Spiritfarer
• Chicory
• Child of Light

Puzzle/Logic - aim and reaction time needed

• Portal 1
• Portal 2 (and its coop if you have 2 devices)
• Portal Reloaded (community mod adding a portal through time with some seriously mind bending puzzles)
• Portal Revolutions (another mod, haven’t played yet but looks fun)
• Viewfinder (HIGHLY recommend, spiritual successor to Portal IMO and a very, very good game)
• Superliminal (HIGHLY recommend, a “Portal-like” that uses perspective as the core mechanic)

Story Based - some action sequences requiring aim and reaction time and some puzzling

• Stray (just a cute good time with some spooky, heart rate spiking moments where you really don’t want your kitty to get hurt)
• Alien Isolation (if you’re horror movie people at all this is like an interactive movie)
• Shadows of a Doubt (might be a miss for a lot of people, immersive detective sim)
• Firewatch (played this a long time ago, might not hold up)
• Dredge (spooky but cute fishing sim with good story)
• Summertime Madness (not much reaction time needed, but still some aim or speed based puzzles)

All of these that I’ve played were on either Arch (custom), Arch (Garuda), or NixOS based systems under Proton. Two of those systems were installed from scratch and they performed flawlessly, so if you’re on a system that handles all the audio and video driver installation for you things should be very smooth. The Garuda machine is a laptop from 2016 that is plugged into my TV and actually saw the most play time for these titles. It held up perfectly. The other two systems were back to back installs on my fairly beefy desktop, but installation and running the games was smooth after the initial effort to get the systems fully functional with drivers and controller support.