My Little Pony : A Maretime Bay Adventure – Horsing around

Does My Little Pony: A Maretime Bay Adventure get a yay or a neigh?

My Little Pony seems to have had a bit of a resurgence in recent years. New cartoon series, a recent movie, and a Netflix film featuring brand new characters have kept the franchise fresh in the memories of youngsters — and parents too I expect. My kids are no exception, and were utterly enamoured with the recent Netflix film, featuring new ponies Sunny, Sprout, Izzy, and others. My daughter in particular was quite keen to try out the game based on these new characters when she found out about it, so she and I have been playing My Little Pony: A Maretime Bay Adventure on Xbox.

Right from the off, this game feels very similar to Paw Patrol: Mighty Pups Save Adventure Bay, with a 3D field to explore, and stars to collect. My Little Pony does things a little differently though. Rather than individual levels to complete, playable character Sunny can explore Maretime Bay and its surrounding areas fully, completing tasks for the various residents, as well as taking part in mini games to progress the story. It’s nice to have a world to wander around in, and my kids liked just seeing the sights and the different environments around the game world. It’s not huge, but there’s enough variety, with fields, beaches, and towns to gallop through.

The story is about as simple as you might expect, following the plot of the recent movie to an extent. One pony wants to run the town by setting up events that make other ponies look bad before he “solves” the crimes. It’s up to you as Sunny to stop him, mostly by completing collection tasks and finishing mini games. The story itself will only take a couple of hours to play through at a reasonable rate, but youngsters will likely have a good time playing through it regardless of the length.

Once the story is completed, all the minigames will be available to replay. My oldest child was quite happy to repeatedly play the dancing and flying games over and over, making use of the ability to play as different ponies to add variety. There’s no difference between the characters, but it’s a nice feature to have. Beyond that, there are nearly 2000 stars to collect by finding them around the game world or performing well in mini games. Acquiring these unlocks cosmetics for Sunny in the main game, and once again my daughter had a nice time doing this. She particularly enjoyed having another cosmetic item to work towards, and this encouraged her to go out of her way to find more collectibles. 

There’s even a multiplayer mode to have a go with too, with players either teaming up to complete an animal herding task, or competing to score points in flying, dancing, or roller skating. It’s all very simple but fun enough. Just make sure you take it easy if you’re playing against your kids! 

It being simple to control helped with the game too, with only the stick for movement, and A to jump, with the occasional use of B for context prompts. All this simplicity allowed even my youngest to have a little bit of fun playing, although the minigames were quite beyond him. When I took a turn, I found the movement a little odd, as the characters have something of a turning circle in the main game which took a touch of getting used to. It doesn’t do any hard to the game, as there’s no real way to fail in My Little Pony, but it wasn’t as snappy as I was expecting. It didn’t seem to bother the kids though, so no real harm done.

The visuals are really quite good, mirroring the style of the movie quite well. Lots of bright colours in the world keep things interesting, and the character models look about as good as you could expect. The animation is mostly nice and smooth, but the lip-syncing with the voice work was quite untidy, to the point that my daughter even commented on how odd it looked. Unlike the recent Paw Patrol game, My Little Pony is fully voice acted, although not by the cast of the movie from what I can tell, and this certainly added to the engagement for my kids. The music and sound effects are all that you would expect, being solid enough without really standing out.

My Little Pony: A Maretime Bay Adventure is a solid little game for kids to play with, and is certainly more polished than the sort of tie-in games you’d have expected in years gone by. It looks nice and plays well enough for children to have a good time with it. The length of the game compared to the price tag may well be a bit off-putting for some, but the extra entertainment may be just enough to keep the youngsters happy. 

My Little Pony: A Maretime Bay Adventure is available now on Xbox, Playstation, Nintendo Switch, and PC.