Bluey: The Videogame is coming to Steam this November
For real life
Bluey is one of the best shows on television. If you're a parent, you're probably nodding in agreement right now. If you're not, I need to stress that this is not a bit and I am not being ironic. The kids' cartoon that Rolling Stone named the 96th best sitcom of all time really is that good.
Now it's getting a video game.
The game seems to hew pretty closely to the show in terms of art style, despite a clear switch to 3D. There are locations I recognise from the show, and at least some of the voice cast from the show are present in Dave McCormack as Bandit, and Melanie Zanetti as Chilli.
Bluey is about the Heelers, a family of anthropomorphic dogs, which includes Dad, Bandit and Mum, Chilli, and their two daughters Bluey and Bingo. The hook, if you were to pitch it to television network executives, is that the parents have a ridiculous commitment to the bit when it comes to playing with their kids. The first episode is prototypal: the kids have a xylophone that freezes Dad when they play it, and he stays frozen, no matter what.
If you've watched other kids' cartoons, you'll have seen a lot of shows with similar family setups. This isn't Peppa Pig, though. Bandit isn't clueless and stubborn and Chilli isn't a supermum with a bottomless handbag. Both are, despite being dogs, totally human. Here's one example: there's an episode about Bandit and Chilli trying to parent while horrendously hungover after a New Year's Eve party.
It does the show a disservice to pitch it as a corrective to more conservative cartoons, though, or as some subversive, adult invasion of childrens' programmes. Bluey is as good-natured, daft and, well, as childish as any other kids' TV. It's simply better written. Funnier, smarter, more inventive. Over the course of 151 episodes (so far), it contains what I consider to be several perfect episodes of television, which are each crafted so neatly that they will make you laugh and potentially even cry, all in just seven minutes.
Do I have a reasonable expectation that any of this will make for a good video game when it releases on November 17th? No, not really, but thank goodness I finally have an excuse to write about Bluey.