Naturally, People Are Speedrunning the Bluey Video Game
And naturally, I had to chat with one of the fastest Bluey: The Videogame speedrunners.
Much like death and taxes, a speedrun of a video game, no matter how seemingly goofy, is inevitable. It doesn’t matter if the game is utterly obscure or objectively bad. People like breaking games apart, and yes, that even applies to Bluey: The Videogame.
The absurdity of speedrunning Bluey: The Videogame came to my attention because of the most recent Awesome Games Done Quick (AGDQ) event that wrapped up over the weekend, raising more than $2.5 million dollars for the Prevent Cancer Foundation.
Brandon Baumeister, who goes by Phillie online and mostly streams 3D Mario games, handled the Bluey: The Videogame speedrun, and whipped through the game in only 36 minutes and 11 seconds. That’s roughly 90 minutes faster than it took me and my daughter to play the same (sadly mediocre) game when it came out last year.
“Every now and then I like to run a game ‘for the meme’ and see how it goes,” said Baumeister in a recent conversation with Crossplay. “My whole family and I watch Bluey, as it is genuinely an amazing show with themes for all ages. Once I did one speedrun of the game, I knew I wanted to try and get this game into GDQ as I thought some friends and I could put on a good show.”
(For clarification, Baumeister does not have children. Instead, he’s watched the popular TV show with his parents, three, sisters and “one super energetic doggo.”)
Bluey: The Videogame is straightforward, with players picking a member of the Bluey family—Bandit (Dad), Chilli (Mum), Bluey (Kid #1), Bingo (Kid #2)—and playing “episodes.” This involves a bunch of fetch quests in familiar locations from the show.
You don’t do much in Bluey: The Videogame. Bluey deserves a better game, but judged on the ambitions presented by the game, Bluey: The Videogame accomplishes its task.
One thing you do a lot, though, is watch cutscenes. It’s based on a TV show, after all.
“While the game is very charming,” said Baumeister, “repeatedly running a game with majority cutscenes makes it relatively hard, and tedious, to keep finding consistent improvements after a certain point.”
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Speedruns evolve over time, as players uncover ways of pushing through the game. With Bluey: The Videogame, an early discovering was playing as Bluey’s Dad, Bandit, because he’s taller than everyone else and can, thus, skip sections of the game.
“Dad and Mum (Chilli), both have the ability to push/pull larger objects by themselves,” said Baumeister. “If you were to try as Bluey, or Bingo, you need to wait for the other sister to come over and help, which is unfortunately slow in a speedrun setting.”
Baumeister noted that jumping is faster than running, which means you basically have to jump the entire speedrun. At least, until you run into (yet another) cutscene. But what if you could skip them? Baumeister actually discovered a cutscene skip just prior to his AGDQ speedrun, which you can see in action by clicking on the video below:
Baumeister does not, in fact, hold the record for the fastest speedrun of Bluey: The Videogame. But this is true of most speedruns that happen at Awesome Games Done Quick events, which is more about showcasing interesting and entertaining speedruns to raise money for charity, rather than explicitly breaking records.
The fastest time is currently held by juh0 at 35 minutes and 12 seconds, which is roughly a minute faster than Baumeister pace while playing the game this weekend.
“I am mostly running Bluey as a bit,” he said. “While the game is very charming, repeatedly running a game with majority cutscenes makes it relatively hard, and tedious, to keep finding consistent improvements after a certain point. This is a run I will always keep up with, though, as I believe it is amazing for events like GDQ. Having this be my first run at a GamesDoneQuick event was not on my Bingo Card, but I wouldn’t want it any other way.”
Bingo Card.
You might not be a parent, Mr. Baumeister, but you already have strong Dad energy.
Have a story idea? Want to share a tip? Got a funny parenting story? Drop Patrick an email.
Also:
My daughter recently answered a “What’s your life dream?” question for school, and answered by saying she needs to work really hard to become a “gamer.” Man.
There are new episodes of Bluey out! We’re still working through them…slowly.
If you’re a fan of any other kid game speedruns, please let me know. I might sit down and watch this speedrun with my kid today, and see how they react to it.
Despite intentions, your daughter is now a "gamer".
My kids are currently obsessed with the Bluey AGDQ speed run. They ask to watch it when they get Big YouTube time instead of YouTube Kids and watch it at least 2 times in a row. My husband and I like to watch speedruns/races and the nice thing about the GDQ runs is we don't have to worry too much about what is happening or being said.
Other favorite runs for them are anything Kirby, anything Zelda, and some of the randomizer races like FF4 Free Enterprise or Link to the Past