Bluey – The Video Game reviewed: the show is better

Easily one of the country’s best cultural exports for TV, can the Bluey game rekindle the love of the Aussie show in an interactive way? For real life?

It’s been over a year since the last episode of Season 3 went to air in the world of Bluey, and I’m clearly having withdrawals.

Oh sure, there are always the morsels of Minisodes and plenty of opportunities to rewatch all 154 episodes released on the ABC (or Disney in the US), but I’m hankering for something new. I’m sure we all are.

Time to try a medium Bluey expanded to back in 2023: video games.

It starts the same way, the titular character dancing to musical statues with her family in the same animation style, before diving into a menu and a game broken up into short episodes.

Almost like a page the arcade classics of The Simpsons and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, you can pick your member of The Heeler clan to play this video game season out.

As the dad of a Bluey family — mum, dad, and two girls — I chose Bandit. It seemed fitting.

This episode of Pickr is called “Bluey The Video Game Review”.

How does Bluey play?

Yes, the cultural phenomenon and incredible export that is Bluey has its own video game. It even comes with an apt name — Bluey: The Video Game. Voiced by the cast and arriving with music by its composer Joff Bush, the Bluey game definitely has the ingredients of the show. It even comes with the animation style.

It looks like a Bluey title. It smells like a Bluey title. Oos! It is a Bluey title. And it’s an arcade-style adventure made for the littleys, as Bluey comes to a different type of screen.

You can get stuck into Bluey the way you would expect with any game, picking a character — Mum! Dad! Bingo! Bluey! — and being shuffled around the adventure, which is your house and various sets from the show.

The park is there, the backyard, but no Hammerbarn for to wander down the aisle of. Just the basics, though I did silently think “not today Bridge Troll” as I crossed the bridge in the park a few times. Maybe it’s just me.

You’re on a treasure hunt of sorts, and will be making your way around all sorts of places with the familiar cast and crew, pulling boxes, jumping around play equipment, and generally feeling like you’re doing loose chores connected with the show’s idea of fun and games.

It definitely looks like the show and sounds like one, but the Bluey game lacks the soul of the show we’ve all grown to love. Which is strange, because games like Keepy Uppy are there, as are the pillows waiting for Sticky Gecko, all a bit of fan service, but mostly arriving in the form of nods.

The game isn’t quite like the show.

For starters, it’s technically 3D, using a three dimensional world in the 2D style that Bluey comes in. That’s not bad, but it can get a little confusing. The idea is likely to let you explore the entirety of the house, from room to room. However, it just makes the levels seem larger.

Is it fun?

A bigger problem surrounds whether the game is fun. We’re not sure it is. It’s definitely not long at all.

You’ll probably find at most a couple of hours of gameplay, and most of that has you mindlessly jumping around levels, meeting family members, and playing digital equivalents of Bluey classics that only kind of work, almost as if the developers did some of the work, but couldn’t be bothered finishing them off.

At times, we were convinced we were keeping a balloon in the air for Keepy Uppy, but it popped every time. Which is probably a good reminder that playing real-life Keepy Uppy is so much better.

Real-life being better than a digital recreation is a good lesson for this game, because the show is infinitely better. Even one small episode is a reminder that there’s more heart in a seven minute show than the time the developers poured into this.

In fact, while Bluey the TV show is one of those titles that works as well for kids as it does for adults, the video game doesn’t follow quite the same approach. Rather, your kids will want to play it with you, and yet you will want to do anything else.

The Bluey game is about as fun as moving boxes, which is ironic because parts of the game will have you actually move boxes.

Is it for fans or for everyone?

Made in Spain (as opposed to Australia where Bluey hails from), the Bluey video game feels like a bit of a miss from where this parent, Bluey fan, and gamer would have liked to see things.

On the one hand, it’s a total missed opportunity to not employ Australian game developers. Bluey is Australian, so having this developed outside the country is a bit of a surprise. Not a major issue, just something to be mentioned.

What is a major issue is that it’s not only not that fun, it doesn’t really add anything to the franchise.

Each episode of the show has something going for it. A moral, a lesson… common ground that kids can find with parents. The game has none of that. It’s just a set of tasks with the actors doing their part, the music from the show, and an occasional Easter egg to let you know you’re playing the game of something you probably love.

Final thoughts (TLDR)

The biggest problem with the Bluey game is that it feels like a merchandising attempt, rather than a proper extension of the show.

Bluey is about kids and parents, which is why watching it is enjoyable for both. Playing Bluey is not the same: it’s not really enjoyable for parents, and your kids will probably get bored of it quickly, too.

I told Ms 8 what I was doing and her first response was “can we play Portal 2 instead?” That’s fair.

Frankly, it’s a good thing Bluey is included on Xbox Game Pass, because it’s not really worth buying as it is. Whereas I’ll happily give Ludo Studio my money for many of the efforts (including the garden gnomes from real-life Hammerbarn), this is not one worth spending time with or on.

If you have kids hankering for a fun game, play Untitled Goose Game instead. That’s a family friendly title everyone can enjoy, and feels more like what the Bluey game should have been more closely aligned with (and unlike Bluey The Video Game, was also made in Australia, too).

But seriously, consider playing the Bluey version of Fruit Ninja, or catch up on some reruns instead. The show is better, that much is clear. We’ll go do that instead until new episodes land, or that fabled movie its creator is working on.