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DS 9 just started playing space engineers and really loves it. It's kinda like minecraft, but for space and with better graphics. I have also heard great things about kerbal space program.

Another game he likes is FTL (faster than light). It's in the space genre too, but is a strategy game.

Panzer, thanks for the list. That gives me more to look at. He also went through a Roller Coaster Tycoon phase.

I'm going to look at this Kerbal Space thing and space engineers once DS exhausts the other two games I just bought. I loaded Age of Empires for him today. Age of Empires I looks like some old Atari game but he is strangely fascinated by it. Age of Empires II looks more along the lines of Settlers with better graphics than Age of Empires I, and it makes more sense.

blackcat, if he likes designing roller coasters, has he tried making actual coasters (someone might have to help a bit with the cutting and taping):

http://paperrollercoasters.com/

The engineering program in our high school does projects with this every year, to fantastic effect.

That looks very neat, aeh. DS tends to balk at anything requiring motor skills but I bet DD would love that.

Civilization.

I had one of the Age of Empires titles (II, I think). It's not terribly complicated. It's basically the original Warcraft game (not the MMORPG) in different packaging/context: gather resources -> build buildings -> generate fighters -> fight, all on a restricted-size game map that plunges you into conflict quickly. The only issue it would have for a younger kid is that you have to have a plan for getting your resources and basic defenses up and running quickly, as the AI likes to try an early swarm attack that's very successful against novice players.

In a similar vein, if he likes Age of Empires, I'd give the Command and Conquer titles a shot. Same sort of game in a modern warfare context, but it stands apart because of some pretty good story-telling, and a wide variety of challenging battle scenarios wrapped around those.

He's currently playing Age of Empires I after choosing it over Age of Empires II (this left me scratching my head--he did the tutorial on the second version and it was going well, but the first had no tutorial and neither one of us could figure out what he needed to do). From the little I saw, he was indeed being swarmed, by people "walking" with their clubs and beating him over the head (luckily this is not gory--the graphics are so bad you can barely tell they are people). We got a good laugh about how the people walk no matter what situation they are in. If they are attacked they still casually stroll around. Anyway, he said that he finally figured out how to build a farm, which was the goal of that level. I like how these games make him persist and figure this out, whereas for most things that are difficult or confusing, he gives up easily.

"Ow! Quit it. Ow! Quit it."

If I recall correctly (it's been years since I played it), in AoE2, an alarm rings out when you're under attack, and most of your workers head for shelter in a building.

On a completely different note... parents have some good reasons to NOT let their children play Grand Theft Auto, but there's an old Simpsons-themed equivalent that I've shown to a lot of kids, and they've all LOVED it: The Simpsons Hit and Run.

It's an older game and I've found it performs badly on multi-core machines unless you set processor affinity for it to a single processor, which can be a pain, but otherwise it works great. It's infused with Simpsons-style humor, so if that fits your family values, it's a lot of fun.

Civilization V is a favorite around here and you can buy all sorts of extra downloads to improve the experience.