Bluey The Videogame doesn’t live up to the high standards of the show.
My kids love watching Bluey, even my ten-year-old. Hell, I love watching Bluey. It’s sweet, funny, and handles life lessons in a way that a kid’s show really shouldn’t be able to. I’ve read comments that Bluey is a parenting show that kids enjoy too, and I can’t disagree with that. Even more impressive is how gorgeous the show’s look and animation are in comparison to so many other children’s TV shows, and whilst Bluey The Videogame matches some of those visual aspects fairly well, there’s little else to recommend.
To be fair, there’s a nice story running through the game that wouldn’t be too far removed from the show. It centres around the kids being off school and trying to find a treasure their dad and his brothers buried when they were kids. This means you bump into a few series favourites like Muffin and Rad over the course of four short episodes. It’s a good setup that fits Bluey well and even has one of those lovely heartfelt moments at the end.
The art style of the game is solid too. The characters look absolutely spot on, and it’s nice to be able to explore places like the Heeler’s house. Being in 3D does mean some things look a little odd at times, as can be the issue with 2D characters existing in a three-dimensional world. This is pretty noticeable when you equip one of the unlockable 3D hats to a 2D character, which feels a little off. Still, though, the presentation is very nice on the whole. I especially liked the characters dancing for idle animations.
Most of your time in the game is spent walking around an environment to find a character or object so the story progresses, playing the occasional mini-game as you go. It’s nice enough, and means it’s very accessible to younger kids who want to play. The thing is, it won’t take long for them to have done absolutely everything. My kids finished the game in under an hour, and had found all the hidden collectibles in another hour after that, leaving little reason for them to want to play again. Considering this costs £35, that feels a little insulting.
It isn’t just the time it takes to finish though. It’s the lack of actual content. I’m not asking for a fully explorable open world here, but there are only four fairly small places to explore. The Heeler’s house, both inside and out, is the largest space, but there’s also a beach, the creek, and a playground to go to during the story and in a free exploration mode. If you’ve seen the show, you might be aware of the swathe of places the family visit, and only having four places to go feels quite mean.
To try and add some padding, there are four mini-games too. Keepy-uppy has you bouncing a balloon in the air for as long as possible, the ground is lava is a platforming challenge, magic xylophone is a cute call back to the show that operates as a freeze tag game, and Chattermax chase has you trying to grab the irritating Furby monstrosity. They’re fun enough a couple of times, but my kids became tired of them quickly.
All this, of course, would be more fun in multiplayer, and it’s fair to say that some of it is. The mini games are much more entertaining when played as a family, but the rest of the game is not. There are a few bugs in the main game, but when you introduce more players then it descends into madness. The camera follows player 1, with the others needing to keep up with them or find themselves teleporting around environments to keep up. Sometimes you’ll teleport to where you need to be, other times you’ll teleport out of bounds meaning that you can’t interact with anything. The lack of split screen is baffling to me, and would free up people to enjoy exploring and finding things for themselves. Puzzles involving moving objects to reach somewhere higher become more difficult as a result when the camera won’t stay still, and platforming tasks in some of the chapters become maddening. When you consider one of the major themes in Bluey is family togetherness, the videogame certainly hates you playing this together.
With all this said, if you have a kid who is happy to play this on their own, perhaps with you watching and helping out where necessary, then they might enjoy Bluey the Videogame, albeit for a short time. Even then, it’s hard to recommend considering the absurd price point. If discounted deeply enough, it might be worth a look for superfans of the show though.
Bluey the Videogame is available now on PC, Xbox, Playstation, and Nintendo Switch.
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