Bluey’s Quest For The Gold Pen Review

At this point Bluey is an institution – and rightly so. That little blue dog has brought joy, sadness and everything in between to families worldwide, so it seems only right that puzzlement and adventure join the fray by way of interactive media. Sure we have already had a Bluey game, but its slapdash nature and rush to market meant that the 2023 title Bluey: The Videogame was a quickie rather than a goodie. The very real heart of the show was not captured in that effort, so players rightly looked forward to whoever took a crack next.

From Jetpack Joyride (and distinctly Aussie) developer Halfbrick Studios, Bluey’s Quest for the Gold Pen seemingly has all the pieces necessary to deliver a satisfying romp for all. Toting a more defined aesthetic inspired by one of the show’s best episodes and packing the weighty inclusion of series creator Joe Brumm behind it, the opportunity to tell a uniquely Bluey’esue tale seems ripe for the picking.

Be wary of strange folk in the forest kids, regardless what video games tell you

On a rainy afternoon, the Heeler family find themselves at the dining table enjoying some group drawing. Bluey tells a tale of being a poor little girl who lives in a broken-down cottage, with the biggest issue being that the roof is totally stuffed. But lo, Bingoose (A Bingo and Golden Goose hybrid) is here to save the day by laying a golden egg and making all money troubles disappear. There is just one issue: Dad (Bandit) is hogging the gold pen, and as such, the poor girls are unable to apply the requisite colouring to solve their issues. In fact, the gold (and likely, the fumes of the pen) have gone to his head and as such Bandit has crowned himself King GoldyHorns and made it clear that he lays claim to all gold in the land.  As the perennial mediator of the Heeler family’s chaos, Mum (Chilli) suggests that perhaps the kids will need to embark on a quest to retrieve the pen and leverages her artistic skills to draw up some ‘strange and distant’ lands for them to explore.

Exploring these lands will see the kids’ charming child hero drawings traipse around Chilli’s beautiful landscapes, eventually encountering Bandit’s gaudy drawn-on-a-year-eight-pencil-case aesthetic minions who bar your way to the next land. Visually, it’s all very accurate to the Bluey episode Dragons, where the mix of art styles provides a great distinction between each character’s contribution – and it works marvellously here.

The stare of a child that is clearly tired of Dad’s antics

It’s a ripper set up, told by way of animated cutscenes that seem indistinguishable from your average Bluey TV effort with the family all set around the dining table and remarking as you would expect them to do. With the story having been penned by series creator Joe Brumm, it should come as no surprise that every inch of your narrative experience is deeply authentic to the world and its characters. The unmitigated patriarchal chaos of Bandit shines through in every way he can, as his King Midas analogue dictates how much of a challenge should await both Bluey and Bingoose – captured marvellously as both he and Chilli bicker about how hard their next location can be. An exclamation from Bandit to “No, make the cliffs HIGHER!” will quickly see a retort as a panicked Bluey will plead with Mum to reconsider. It’s a fantastic bit of meta-narrative that I almost wish was more present in the game itself.

Not that there is anything offensively wrong with the game as a whole – these lands are expansive and bursting at the seams with collectibles and puzzles aplenty. Each world has a pre-requisite number of macguffins to find before you can continue to the next, with a brain needling opportunity for completionists to wring every little bit out of each world by way of big honking YOU HAVE X OUT OF Y interface elements reminding you that there is always more to uncover. Really the only shame was that Bandit and his golden pen didn’t take it upon himself to really impose his reign upon the world, but that can be explained by Chilli perhaps reminding him that this is a game for the littlies.

And thus, the quest of the great bin chicken was completed – by bringing him a bin

To its credit, the game is a very safe implementation of a gaming adventure for kids. Chasing down Goose Food (your primary doodad for progression) will ask you to rescue bugs, collect beads and solve a myriad of puzzle types scattered throughout the world. These puzzles are masterfully designed to offer a challenge, but never to frustrate – ranging from navigating a short movement puzzle, to collecting vanishing stars; all the way through to simplistic riddles and hide-and-seek games. Bluey’s magic wand can be used to break blocks marked with a star, or grab and pull blocks to form platforms for jumping. The variety on offer was even enough to keep my cynical adult self engaged throughout, yet hungry to eventually watch my eight-year-old daughter give these same challenges a crack.

The extensive worlds penned by Chilli are fun enough to tootle around in, though you will be quick to appreciate that the fast travel points unlocked by your brilliant Bingoose are a necessity – not because the worlds are too big, more so that the drawn stick-legs of your protagonists are curiously slow. I instinctively looked for some form of run button (hell even a brisk jog would do) but realised quickly that no such thing occurred. The inclusion of railways, vehicles and quite a generous smattering of fast travel points (thankfully with instantaneous travel) was enough to stop this irksome feeling from hitting a fever pitch.

More villains should try “NO HEROES ALLOWED” signs

The game is also happy to shuffle things from a mechanical standpoint as a way to keep you on your toes. Many levels will throw a unique tool at you to shake things up, such as a glider to boost horizontal movement options or a jetpack to force you to think more vertically. While these were fun in a vacuum, the retrospective that I find myself dwelling on is that I definitely would have preferred a more traditional implementation of new mechanical toys. The idea of revisiting a past level with a jetpack or a rock-smashing charge would have appealed to me personally, but I understand that a game targeting a younger audience would be careful with causing too many operative choices in the long term.

The strength of siloing these unique mechanics does have the added benefit of allowing level design to go deep on using them throughout. The aforementioned PERILOUS CLIFFS become a whole other thing when you are equipped with a jetpack – similarly, having the ability to glide means that a level can start to throw all manner of water-borne or cosmic chasms at you to keep you entertained. Even the simple act of soaring in a direction on a hunch becomes a thrill when you aren’t entirely sure there is something to land on awaiting you, but you can rest easy knowing the game will pluck you out of danger, Lakitu style, and plop down somewhere safely with a satisfying bubble *pop*.

Just enjoying the moment, not a life jacket in sight

Really the main gripes I took away from my five-and-a-bit hours with the game was the very little effort that seemed to have been put in to make the console release feel meaningful compared to the game’s origins as a mobile-first title. Everything about it still screams mobile-first, from the title screen to the enormous buttons on the menu. Genuinely the first thing I did upon entering gameplay was DESPERATELY seek for a UI option to shrink down the colossal ability buttons that sit on the screen, each gobbling up a ridiculous amount of real estate. When no such options presented themselves, I did at least take the time to undock my Switch 2 and see if the enormous buttons still worked in their intended touch-screen way, if for some reason I wanted to banish my joycons to a drawer somewhere. And while they did just that, I am still mystified why there wasn’t a consideration for this generation of release. There was also an amount of screen tearing that was hard to ignore, particularly with the game running on a much bigger screen.

My quest for the gold pen also had more than a few collision bugs, particularly when I had the thrill of leaping onto a vehicle. Riding your bike into a cactus isn’t a good idea, sure, but I hardly think I need to get trapped there for more than a few seconds. I also witnessed the oddity of having speech bubbles appear behind terrain, turning my outback adventure into a mystery-chasing marvel, where I thought the game was trying to tell me some secret coded message. Be sure to drink your Ovaltine? Nah, it was just a little busted.

“This guy sure has a lot of tyre swans…”

Final Thoughts

While Bluey’s Quest for the Gold Pen is hardly going to ignite the thirst of adventure within an adult, its slavishly perfect presentation and gentle experience will undoubtedly be a massive hit where it matters. It’s this kid-centric notion that continuously has me striking out my negative impressions. Is the movement a bit slow? Sure, but it’s likely going to sit perfectly for a little set of hands. Are the objectives a little repetitive? Yeah, but that’s going to be just fine as an onboarding for the next great adventure game player. Could the game have been a genre-spanning epic, with Bandit’s gold-lust tearing a gilded chasm across Chilli’s many magnificent works? Sure, but it would have ended up being a game my kids would have preferred to watch, rather than play. Bluey’s Quest for the Gold Pen represents something meaningful as a sum of its many parts, elevated above minor gripes and trivialities. It is not perfect by any means, but it has a quantifiable charm and intent that is hard to ignore. I love it for what it offers its target audience, even if I do not love it myself. But do I like it? For real life? Absolutely.

Reviewed on Switch 2 // Review code supplied by publisher

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