Portal is an interesting case study in psychological torture. The cake (is a lie). The weighted companion cube(that you kill faster than any other test subject). The test result saying you are a horrible person and we weren't even testing for that.

It goes on and on. It wouldn't give it to kids that aren't old enough to handle complex and subtle emotional situations.

Not to say it isn't a great game, but the subtle violent atmosphere building up is a very core part of it.

I'm not sure I understand this comment. For the record I downvoted it because I don't think it makes any sense.

OK retry:

Portal is a great game, with a good story.

But part of this greatness is the psychological games it plays with you.

Hence people need to have enough maturity to deal with this.

Hence this is not a good game for playing with younger kids, even if there is almost no graphical violence in it.

I was trying to make recommendations that I'd be comfortable playing while a young child was in the room. I wouldn't recommend giving them to a small child to play.

That's much clearer, thanks.

When I was young but not too young I watched Monty Pythons Meaning Of Life movie. There's an extremely violent scene in that movie that I find very funny, now, but which disturbed the hell out of me as a kid.

That's what he's saying, some kids might not get the humor aspect of Portal and just perceive the paranoia and violence.

Which scene was it? The dinner scene? (Out of curiosity)

I would guess the organ donation scene.

That's the one. My little friend was laughing his ass off right next to me, I was just horrified.

Life is Strange was fantastic, but I wouldn't recommend it to OP. While it's not a game that revels in violence, the violence in it feels especially heavy.

Agreed. This game starts off great, but it features terrible acts of violence and gets incredibly dark towards the second half. Very much not kid friendly.

I enjoyed the game, mostly, but I found myself wishing it skewed more towards "slice of life" and less towards sci-fi crime thriller.

Does Portal really count as “non-violent”? You commit murder at least once.

Portal 1/2 has a lot of non-violent levels, but a demented AI is passive-aggressively trying to murder you throughout the game. You may also end up under a laser, a press machine, an oven, at the bottom of an abyss, melt in acid or get riddled with bullets. What really is violence anyway?

A good legal question to ponder for when the first time an AI murders a human. Who's to blame, and what is the crime?

Well you never kill biological things, just an artificially intelligent machine at the end.

But also one thing you can do is play the two player co-op mode on Portal 2, which as far as I know is pure puzzle solving.

The stories in Portal are great though, especially Portal 2 which is rich and funny. You could just skip the end of the game and I think that would be pretty non violent? I don’t know if destroying a machine counts as violent.

I mean, I’m trying to avoid spoilers, but even counting machines in the main story, evidence would seem to indicate the body count was zero.

(I originally thought GP was making a Companion Cube joke, but now I’m not sure.)

I'm pretty sure she's still alive at the end.

I can second Life is Strange, though it gets a bit dark towards the end (though you as the player never engage in violence directly)