Bluey's Quest for the Gold Pen
Developed by Artax Games · Outright Games
Family / Adventure / Co-op · PC, PS5, Xbox Series X|S, Switch 2 · 2026-05-28
“A licensed kids game that does the unthinkable and actually respects the show it is based on, which is such a low bar that clearing it counts as an achievement worth a polite golf clap.”
Licensed kids games are a genre with a worse hit rate than most gambling addictions, and yet here we are looking at Bluey's Quest for the Gold Pen, the kind of family co-op adventure that historically arrives as a sad cardboard skeleton wearing a beloved character's skin. Bluey the show is a generational television masterpiece, the rare kids program that has made grown adults cry about a balloon, a magic xylophone, and a granny rolling down a hill, and that legacy is exactly why every parent reaching for this disc deserves a small warning label. Most Bluey games before this have been the digital equivalent of fruit snacks pretending to be fruit. This one, miraculously, seems to actually contain trace amounts of fruit.
The good news for the parents who are currently being emotionally hostage-negotiated by a four-year-old in a Bingo t-shirt is that Artax Games appears to have done something unusual, which is play the show before making the game. The Heeler house is recognisable, the voices sound like the voices, the music has the same gentle ukulele energy that has soundtracked countless bedtime meltdowns, and the co-op loop is built for an adult and a kid on the same couch rather than for one frustrated child trying to operate a controller designed for a teenager with thumbs the size of cucumbers. That alone puts it in the top quarter of its genre, which is admittedly a genre with a basement made of asbestos.
The less good news is that this is still, fundamentally, a licensed family game from Outright Games with a release schedule built around school holidays and birthday wishlists, which means the ambition ceiling is somewhere around the height of a kitchen counter. Puzzles are simple, combat is gentle waggling, the open areas are barely open, and an adult playing alone would finish this on a slow Sunday between two coffees and wonder where their afternoon went. That is not a flaw, that is the brief. Sally is not going to pretend a co-op puzzle adventure aimed at five year olds is meant to compete with God of War. It is meant to compete with the iPad, and on that battlefield, it might actually win, which is a bigger compliment than it sounds.
The honest verdict is the rarest one in the licensed games drawer. This is a six out of ten by adult standards and an easy nine out of ten by the only standards that matter for this product, which are the standards of a small person in pyjamas at half seven on a Saturday morning. If your child loves Bluey, this will not betray them. If you are buying this because you saw the box at the supermarket and assumed all kids games are interchangeable shovel, you will be quietly stunned that the credits actually feel earned. That is a low bar cleared with surprising grace, and in this genre, grace is basically a unicorn.
- 01
Voice cast, music, and visual style match the show with a fidelity that suggests someone on the team actually watched Bluey instead of just reading a brand bible PDF on a Thursday afternoon.
- 02
Couch co-op is built around the realistic scenario of one tired adult and one over-caffeinated child sharing a screen, with asymmetric difficulty options that let the grown-up carry without making the kid feel like luggage.
- 03
Levels are short, restartable, failure-light, and structured so a small person can stop mid-mission to go look at a bug outside without losing thirty minutes of progress and starting World War Three.
- 04
The writing has flashes of the show's actual humour, occasionally landing jokes aimed at the parent in the room, which is the secret sauce Bluey itself runs on and almost no licensed game ever bothers to copy.
- 01
An adult playing solo will hit credits in roughly an afternoon and find very little reason to return, because the systems are deliberately shallow and there is no real progression hook past the main story.
- 02
Combat, if you can call gentle bonking combat, is the weakest pillar of the game and feels like it was included because the genre requires it rather than because anyone had a real idea for it.
- 03
The open hub areas tease exploration they cannot actually deliver, with invisible walls and locked doors hinting at a bigger world that turns out to be a corridor wearing a backyard costume.
- 04
Inevitable preorder DLC and cosmetic packs aimed squarely at the bank cards of exhausted parents, because Outright Games is incapable of releasing a family product without at least three small daggers tucked into the bundle page.
Parents of Bluey-obsessed three to eight year olds who want a co-op activity that does not require them to fake enthusiasm for the seventh viewing of the Sleepytime episode this week.
Solo adults without small children in the house, completionists looking for depth, and anyone who thinks licensed family games are all the same kind of sugary nonsense, because this one is actually trying and you will resent the disappointment of a refund.
Your website, CV, or whatever you made. I'll roast that too.
A full teardown from €2,99. No mercy.