I am going to be honest. I was looking for a game to keep my Mom busy. She is worried sick about the current situation. I came across Creatures mentions, I started reading and here I am.
I love them so much! They are so cute! But guys: how do I start? I adopted an egg but is there a game I can download? I want in!
And for those of you who want to know I bought Mom Stardew Valley and we are set
Even though it is intended as a demo, there is so much user-created content for it that you can use it very well as it's own independent game. In that sense it is somewhat reminiscent of the sims. You can play it as is, you can slightly tweak it or you can make it pretty much a completely different experience.
You should download it and give it a shot. If you like it, the full version as well as the earlier games are still available online for purchase.
Lets play plants! Photosynthesis... Photosynthesis... Photosynthesis...
When you start playing DS (or maybe even buy Creatures Exodus which is C3+DS on GOG), you might wanna take a look at C3&DS Community Recommended Fixes & Addons. If you're only using DS you won't need/be able to use all of those, but they give a good start in what Agents could be useful before jumping into the jungle of ALL of the agents
If your mom just wants a simple game, I would suggest Creatures 1 instead. If she's more used to technology, yeah Docking Station is more versatile though you do need a patch to play offline (included in the site that Malkin linked)
GOG.com has the games on the cheap if you'd like any besides Docking Station. Creatures Exodus at the very least doesn't work right out the box though, if you pick that up you'll need to patiently play with configurations and patches until it works.
darken your room, shut the door, empty your mind. you are still in great company.
creatures caves is your #1 resource for the creatures artificial life game series: creatures, creatures 2, creatures 3, docking station, and the upcoming creatures family.