Rugrats: Adventures in Gameland feels like a retro classic

I am not sure why I didn’t expect Rugrats: Adventures in Gameland to not feel like a challenging, retro platform and instead to be some sort of newer age game featuring the loveable babies from my childhood, but here we are! This game feels like Megaman, full of challenges, timing puzzles, slightly clunky platforming jumps and a lot of death (for me anyway).

Rugrats: Adventures in Gameland has a bit of a cutscene type story beyond the tutorial level, showing that these babies are looking to collect Raptar coins, to get to some secret door they saw in a video game. Then, you’ve got six different levels that you can switch between, each with their own boss.

Before you start the game, there are a few different difficulties that you can choose from; for my initial save I chose the middle one, Baby, but it became very clear that this was a mistake. I am actually no good at timing, throwing or just understanding where to go in some of these levels, as I didn’t play super-tough, unforgiving platformers when I was younger. The characters themselves don’t quite feel like they are a part of the world or where their space is within the level either, feeling like they’re floating in the foreground. You can play two player, giving you someone else to play with, but this almost harms you more than anything as you both are sharing the number of babies you can use each time you play.

You see, when you run out of life (shown by milk and replenished by cookies) you end up switching to a different character. So if you play as Tommy, run out of lives, then you turn into Chucky, then Lil, then Phil. Once all of the babies have been used and their lives have been depleted, the game ends. Each of these characters have different jumping and lifting stats, which can make it so that they more easily lift blocks or butt bounce onto objects.

The various levels all feel different in their theme and the end bosses have different attacks that you need to learn and work your way through, bringing a lot of variety. I just found myself always dying. And each full death results in the entire game reloading, showing you the developer’s intro animation and everything. It does feel like a game for those nostalgic for games of the time, but personally I am just nostalgic for Tommy and Chucky and their adventures. 

I found myself needing to trial and error different ways to interact with enemies or to actually figure out how to do something within the game. Blocks were particularly challenging as nothing told me how to grab them or that I needed to use them to get up to heights, and when playing with my daughter, she acted as the “blocks” by picking up  my character and throwing me. The fact that you need to complete the entire level and boss to bank the Reptar coins that you find is tough and doesn’t so much as replayability, but more of a blocker on progress 

Overall, it feels quite frustrating to play, but I am sure those who are fans of games like Megaman and early platformers that are up for the challenge will have more fun with Rugrats: Adventures in Gameland than I had!

You can find Rugrats: Adventures in Gameland on Xbox, PC, and Nintendo Switch.

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