Recommending good games is one of the easiest pleasures that comes from having a little expertise as a game player. When G. Christopher Williams’s daughter asked for a game to play, he chose Prince of Persia. 

I felt pretty sure that she would enjoy the premise of two fantastical characters, like the Prince and Elika of the newer version of the game, in order to save a corner of their world, but even more than that, I though that being able to perform some exciting and complicated looking acrobatic moves through what are really very simple controls (I find that the rebootedPrince of Persia resembles something like a rhythm game, in which simple visual cues guide in determining a few simple button presses) might be better than a potentially more frustrating control scheme. 

At that point, I largely left her to her own devices.  She didn’t ask for my help.  She simply played the game for about a week and would talk to me a bit about it.  She liked the art, she liked the Prince and Elika, thinking both were pretty cool, and she liked what they (and by extenstion what she) could do.

Williams continues his daughter’s videogame education by teaching her to kill in Assassin’s Creed II. Ah, the bonding moments.