Every day, someone is playing video games for the first time. For those brand new to video games, it’s easy to feel overwhelmed by choice, and with the cost of games today, the wrong pick can leave you feeling burned out of $70 — even more if you’ve gone ahead and bought a new console. This list has been built for exactly that person. A collection of the 10 best games to try first for someone on the edge of beginning their gaming journey.

Each selected for its best-in-genre pedigree and easy-to-pick-up designs, these games will not only help you understand what games you like, but they’ll each teach you something about the language of video games and give you skills to navigate the choppy waters that everyone faces when they’re getting into something new.

10 Stardew Valley

The quiet life for me (and maybe you!)

Stardew Valley is a lot of things. It’s a farming sim, a management sim, and a dungeon crawler with a bit of a dating sim spread throughout. It’s also a very cozy, get into your fuzzy socks and wrap a blanket around yourself type of game, which is a key part of why it is on this list. Stardew lets you take your time. You’re not rushed along in any way. You’re running a farm in a small town and taking a break from the hustle and bustle of your past life.

Anyone can pick up Stardew and begin to play it, take their time learning the controls, and have a blast exploring the town and managing their crops. It’s what makes Stardew such excellent ground soil for a budding new gamer. Stardew Valley can teach you so much about game mechanics and provide a taste of multiple genres in one beautifully designed, animated, pixelated package. It’s also one of the best video games of all time, period, and a perfect co-op game, so you can bring your veteran gamer friend along to help show you the ropes. It’s available on almost every platform under the sun, playable on PS5, PS4, Nintendo Switch, Xbox Series X/S, Xbox One, PC, mobile — even PS Vita if you have one kicking around.

9 Portal

Do you like cake?

Portal is a first-person, narrative-focused shooter with simple and easy-to-learn controls that is, above all else, a puzzle game. Now, if you’re not exactly a puzzle person, you should know that outside multiplayer games (and even inside some of those), puzzles are everywhere in games. They just are. If someone recommends you play The Last Of Us because you just watched the TV show and want to experience the original game, you’ll have to solve a puzzle. If someone tells you to play any recent Super Mario games, you’ll have to solve a puzzle.

There are puzzle elements to everything, to varying degrees, but what makes Portal the best one to start with is two-fold. It’s pacing and the quality of puzzles. And while you’re solving some of the best-designed puzzles in games, you’ll be learning about first-person gameplay. You’ll get a taste of what it’s like to play a shooter and be taken through a wonderful linear narrative with some of the best writing in video games. Then Portal 2 is even better at all of this, but Portal is on the list because this list is about beginnings. You can find Portal on PC on Steam, Nintendo Switch, Xbox Series X/S, and Xbox One.

8 Super Mario Odyssey

Jump, man, jump!

“It’s time to jump up in the air, jump up, don't be scared, jump and your cares will soar away!” This is a line from the chorus of Jump Up Super Star, a song that plays in one of the most joyous concluding levels in platforming game history and one that perfectly encapsulates how it feels to play Super Mario Odyssey. The latest mainline 3D platformer in the Mario franchise, the only real draw here is that it’s a console exclusive for the Nintendo Switch. A consideration for this list is providing 10 games you could play no matter where you want to start playing games, on consoles or PC.

But an exception has to be made here because there really is no better 3D platformer to play to introduce you to the joy, fun, and mechanics of platforming in a 3D space. Odyssey is another game with easy-to-pick-up controls and a smooth ramp-up in how it challenges the player from level to level. The spatial awareness you’ll learn from playing Odyssey and how to move in a 3D space is invaluable for whatever games you might want to play. If you do start your journey with a Nintendo Switch, then Super Mario Odyssey is a wonderful place to begin learning.

It’s also worth mentioning that if you did buy a Switch, then practically any Nintendo-made game will be a good place to start. A special shout-out to Super Mario Wonder, Super Mario Maker 2, The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, and Luigi’s Mansion for some stellar first-time options.

7 DOOM (2016)

Rip and tear

Okay, we’re taking a different turn here. Remember how Portal was an introduction to first-person games and a bit of a first-person shooter? Well, DOOM is all first-person shooting, distilled into a near perfectly pure package with id Software’s 2016 reboot of the franchise. The gameplay is smooth as butter, as you’ll go from room to room filled with enemies that’ll push you to use each weapon in your arsenal as you learn how to handle enemies with different takedown requirements.

It’s also not a multiplayer shooter, and it’s very moldable, with multiple difficulty settings and accessibility adjustments to gameplay, like a toggle for switching weapons when your current one is out of ammo and visual alerts indicating when you can perform special attacks. Most of these are set by default for new players. DOOM will definitely challenge you more than some of the other games on this list as it ramps things up toward the back half, but it’s a much better place to learn the ropes for shooters than trying to put yourself through the fire and flames of learning in Call of Duty lobbies. You can find DOOM (2016) on PC on Steam, Nintendo Switch, PS5, PS4, Xbox Series X/S, and Xbox One.

6 Shovel Knight: Treasure Trove

For Shovelry!

This is the second platformer on the list, but it’s quite different from Super Mario Odyssey because it is a 2D platformer. 2D, side-scrolling games are another huge sector of gaming, and Shovel Knight: Treasure Trove is like playing a masterclass 2D game, the likes of which rarely exist outside of Nintendo franchises.

Developer Yacht Club Games created a masterpiece with each of the four campaigns available in Treasure Trove, particularly because of how different each knight feels to control. That adds a layer of difficulty, but the generous checkpointing makes figuring out each Knight’s quirks smooth. Shovel Knight is the most standard of them all, while Plague Knight, Specter Knight, and King Knight move in weird-yet-fluid ways that’ll baseline make you a more skilled gamer once you get the hang of them.

5 Tetris Effect: Connected

The perfect game

What makes a game challenging is how it applies pressure to the player, and your ability to be reactive or, eventually, proactive to the pressures applied is what determines your success, or failure. There is no better teacher for how to go from being reactive to proactive than Tetris. Its design and controls are simple, with a reactivity skill ceiling that knows no limits other than the time you want to spend with it.

Tetris Effect: Connected is the brightest, most beautiful packaging Tetris has ever had, also allowing you to pace out when the game will speed up and become more difficult. You can find Tetris Effect: Connected on PC, Nintendo Switch, PS5, PS4, Xbox Series X/S, and Xbox One.

4 Grand Theft Auto V

Jump in the sandbox

Between a list of things you can do in Grand Theft Auto V and a list of things you can’t do, the latter is much, much shorter. There’s no other beautifully realized sandbox that lets you run around and quite literally do whatever you want on this scale. It’s also an excellent soft introduction to role-playing games, open-world games, and branching narratives. There’s also a bustling online community with GTA Online, where you can learn a lot about what it means to play games online with people around the world.

GTA V is a massive toy box, where you can take your time and mess around in whatever way you see fit, and it’s also a more mature story that’ll show you even more about the storytelling potential games have. The controls are fairly simple, and you’re never rushed along to continue the story, so you can always stop and ‘play’ in the sandbox that is its setting, Los Santos. You can also skip a mission if it's causing you too much frustration, which means there’s nothing stopping you from experiencing the story from beginning to end. Playing GTA V as a brand-new gamer is a little bit like jumping into the deep end, but the water is perfectly temperate, and you feel like you could just float there for hours. You can find Grand Theft Auto V on PC, PS5, PS4, Xbox Series X/S, and Xbox One.

3 Street Fighter 6

K-O!

Fighting games have been core to gaming since the very beginning, with franchises like Street Fighter and Mortal Kombat originating in arcades, forging rivalries and destroying friendships while creating moments you might never forget for the rest of your life. Winning a close fight is always an immeasurable rush, and you should absolutely try a fighting game as a brand-new gamer. Street Fighter 6 makes the cut here because of its genre-leading accessibility and tutorialization features that do an excellent job of teaching you how to play the game and how to think when playing.

The emphasis on combos and quick button presses will also further your gaming skills at an alarming rate, so much that you’d probably be ready for any melee-focused action game after diving into Street Fighter. You can find Street Fighter 6 on PS5, PS4, Xbox Series X/S, Xbox One and PC.

2 Rocket League

What's not to like?

Rocket League not only provides an outlet to live out a scenario we’ve all thought about (playing soccer but in a car with a really big ball), but it’s an excellent introduction to multiple avenues of games. You could take skills learned in Rocket League and apply them to racing games, for example, or sports games.

It can also condition you towards what it’s like playing competitive online multiplayer games, where you have to cooperate with teammates you perhaps can’t or don’t want to speak to, and teach you what free-to-play monetization looks like in the modern industry, since this is the sole free-to-play entry on this list. You can find Rocket League on PC on EGS, Nintendo Switch, PS5, PS4, Xbox Series X/S and Xbox One.

1 Forza Horizon 5

Nothing but you, and the open road

For an introduction to open-world games, Forza Horizon 5 stands out as an excellent choice for beginners. It’s a racing game, yes, but at its heart it’s a driving game. That means it’s more about taking in the sights, exploring the path less-trodded and just enjoying the beauty of what’s around you, all in the confines of a driving game.

On top of all that, you’ll get a feel for racing games, and the rush (pun intended) that comes with a split-second victory at the finish line. It’s also not a very sim-heavy racing game if you don’t want it to be. You can tune the game so that the driving feels fun, while enjoying the realistic stylings of everything around you. You can find Forza Horizon 5 on PC on Steam, Xbox Series X/S and Xbox One.

It's a big world of games out there

Every game on this list will not only teach you skills that you can build on with other games, they'll teach you how to speak video games, and learn the muscle-memory language that every gamer eventually learns through practice. They are each excellent starting points for anyone picking up a controller for the first time.