My wife, who rarely plays video games, and I played Inside together. Well, she played and I watched and helped solve some of the puzzles along the way. When we finished that one she said to me "wow, I totally get why you love games now."
Also, sometimes I get her to play the Hearthstone tavern brawls with me when they are particularly silly and don't require deck building. :)
There is only one programmer on this game (me). I can't make an engine and tool set as good as one made by hundreds of developers over a decade of refinement (Unity). Also, I wanted to start making the game asap.
Further some of the best games in the world are built in Unity. See <em>Inside</em> by Playdead for example. So, we don't see Unity as a handicap.
As you like thatgamecompany, keep an eye out as they are likely going to release a new game in 2017. Source.
If you have not already played Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons, I can heartily recommend it.
A game that I have yet to play myself Inside, seems to be right up your alley.
> My question is, what are some great examples of side scrolling games which focus on non-combative gameplay?
Here's one: http://store.steampowered.com/app/363670/Seeders/ ;)
Well, my self-promotion aside, there's a whole genre called Puzzle Platformers, so you might want to look at that. The most recent awesome game I played is INSIDE by Playdead: http://www.playdead.com/games/inside/ Puzzles are very easy, but the game ending is hilarious.
Inside (same people who made Limbo) came out today for XboxOne (July 7th on Steam, no PS version think). Very visually story driven without much dialogue. I heard a lot of good things about it. http://www.playdead.com/games/inside/