A Bluey's Quest for the Gold Pen Review For Adults, Five-Year-Olds, And Nine-Year-Olds

Bluey finally has a good video game, but how good is it? It depends how old you are—and if you can read.

Dec 19, 2025

Bluey is one of the greatest pieces of children’s entertainment ever made. It’s been long deserving of a game that treats that world with reverence and respect. The Bluey game released back in 2023, called Bluey: The Videogame, did not hit the mark. In my review, I said “the game doesn’t trust the player, which feels antithetical to the show.”

I stand by that! Of course, that came with an asterisk: my children had a great time.

To this day, it remains one of the few games they have beaten. I wrote at the time:

“Fundamentally, the game doesn’t trust the player, which feels antithetical to the show. Every task is highlighted with a glowing icon, and there’s never any mystery about what to do next. As a parent with a profound respect for Bluey, it felt a little insulting. But…my kids had a fantastic time. They laughed, screamed, and giggled for nearly two hours.”

Which is part of the rub, right?

Children having low expectations is to be expected. They’re kids. They don’t know better. While it’s fine for children to have a good time with movies, games, and TV that are empty calories, that doesn’t mean all entertainment directed at them should aim for that very low bar. It ends up walking a fine line between laziness and exploitation.

When I was a kid, I liked the licensed slop I’d rent from the local video store. It was cool to fight as Batman. It didn’t matter if the game was, you know, “good.” I liked Batman. My kids like Bluey. They don’t care/know if it’s “good.” But I care! I’m not expecting game of the year, but I am expecting a game that respects their time.

Bluey is a smart show, so why isn’t it deserving of a smart video game, too?

Bluey’s Quest for the Gold Pen is a new Bluey game. It hits that bar and more.

It’s only on Apple devices right now, but it’s coming to Google Play on January 10 and everything else (PC, Switch, Switch 2, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S) “later in 2026.”

When I interviewed one of the developers on the game earlier this week, they said this:

“My philosophy was always, ‘We’re going to make the best game we can with the time and resources that we have available,’” said Halfbrick CEO Shainiel Deo. “Back then, the timeframes [were] quite tight. The budgets [weren’t] usually the best. But we always gave it our best. Our games would review eight out of 10 or something like that, which is good for kids.”

That’s someone who gets it!

Granted, my own expectations for children’s entertainment depends on the context. Are we just trying to pass time? Do I want them to learn something? There is nothing wrong with an adult engaging with shallow content, and that’s fine for children, too!

But for Bluey, I expect…well, more? Quest of the Gold Pen delivers on that front.

It is, on its face, a collectible video game with light puzzle elements. It does not reinvent the video game wheel. But the art is fantastic, the writing is sharp, and the puzzles are fun. Exploring the world is not mindless. It does a good job of giving the player goals (collect “X” to keep going) without feeling exhaustive and frustrating.

I’ve wanted to do more “reviews” at Crossplay, but it’s weird. Who cares what I think about a video game for children? After doing this newsletter for two years, I have a good sense of what makes a good video game for kids, but it’s also true that I, so far as I can tell, am not a kid. I also can’t force my children to sit and grind through a game.

But in recent weeks, we have, as a family, put several hours into this game, and I figured the best way to “review” Quest for the Gold Pen was to split up those experiences into three buckets: what it was like playing the game myself, what it was like playing with my five-year-old, and what it was like playing with my nine-year-old.

Playing Solo

Pleasant. I wasn’t spending much time thinking about how to get from one level to the next, but clearing out the map does require the kind of meticulous “I wonder if something could be hidden over here?” that sometimes scratches an itch. (I do with the game had some kind of hint system when you’re trying to find the very last item.)

The biggest reward for playing this game is getting to watch snippets of a new episode, which is a blessing in an era where it does not appear we’re going to be getting very much in the way of new Bluey stories until the movie drops in 2027.

Do I recommend playing Quest for the Gold Pen as an adult?

Eh, probably not. But you can do much worse!

Playing With My Five-Year-Old

Quest for the Gold Pen does commit a cardinal sin of many kid games: it requires reading. You do not need to know how to read to enjoy watching Bluey, but you do need to know how to read in order to understand what’s fully going on in Quest for the Gold Pen. I mean, sure, you can figure out the basic logic of every level by looking at the interface, but I mean, who doesn’t want to know what Bluey and Bingo are saying? The characters are voiced in the cutscenes, but the moment you’re in the game itself, it’s all text and my five-year-old was…well, frustrated isn’t the right word.

The phrase I would use, though, is left out. She couldn’t play it on her own.

What it ended up establishing was our operating dynamic for playing the game. The game itself is also a little beyond her. She enjoys walking over flowers and collecting items, but the moment the game asks her to navigate a platforming sequence or, god forbid, complete a task before a timer runs out, she’s handing the iPad over to me. But often, it was less about feeling left out as much as it was the two of us playing together.

Do I recommend playing Quest for the Gold Ben with a five-year-old?

Yes, but with caveats.

Playing With My Nine-Year-Old

Well, “playing” would not be the way to describe it. She played by herself.

Unlike her younger sister, my oldest child is a very confident reader. By now, she’s poured hundreds of hours into Roblox and understands basic game design. She pushed through levels of Quest for the Gold Pen without breaking a sweat and had a good time. The one thing she has not asked to do, though, is play again. It’s hard to say whether that’s a problem specific to Quest for the Gold Pen, though, because while my nine-year-old enjoys playing non-Roblox video games, it is exceedingly rare when one connects with her long enough to hold her attention a second time.

Do I recommend playing Quest for the Gold Pen with a nine-year-old, or, more likely, letting a nine-year-old play Quest for the Gold Pen by themselves?

I do. It’s perfect for that age.

So, It’s a Good Video Game?

It is! It does not insult your intelligence. It does not insult your children’s. It took a minute, but it’s nice that Bluey has a game that does not embarrass the excellent show.

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