It appears that a video game adaptation of Bluey, the beloved Australian animated series revolving around a young blue heeler cattle dog and her family in suburban Queensland, Australia, is on the way.
As first picked up by the AusVGClassifications bot on Twitter and spotted by Vooks, the game will be coming to Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 5 (PS5), PlayStation 4 (PS4), Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S, and PC. No release date has been outlined in the classification.
The listing for Bluey: The Videogame on the Australian Classification website features an official description for the game. It reads:
‘Follow the Heeler family on a holiday adventure to find a treasure hidden by Bandit and his brothers many years ago. The game takes place in 5 iconic show locations, and its story mode tells a family-friendly adventure about creating your own cherished memories with your family.’
Given the show’s heavy emphasis on imaginative play – each episode revolves around a different kind of game – Bluey feels ripe for a game adaptation filled with mini-games or toybox spaces.
It’s being published by Outright Games, a UK publisher that specialises in family-friendly and youth-focussed properties, like My Friend Peppa Pig, and Bratz: Flaunt Your Fashion. The developer of the title is Artax Games, a Spanish studio that appears to largely specialise in children’s games, with some previous experience in licensed properties.
Read: My Friend Peppa Pig deserves your respect
Given these details, it’s a bit of a missed opportunity that one of Australia’s strongest creative works and exports (it continues to be one of the most-streamed shows globally) isn’t being paired with a developer from Australia’s flourishing game development industry.
But while Bluey is produced by Queensland creative house Ludo Studio and was commissioned by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC), it is also jointly owned by the UK’S BBC, which holds the rights to all global distribution and merchandising deals. It is likely that the production of Bluey: The Videogame was arranged out of the UK.
Nevertheless, expectations for the Bluey game will be high, given the show’s universal critical acclaim and worldwide popularity.
Let’s just hope that the budget allows for the use of the excellent core voice cast – My Friend Peppa Pig opted to use several substitute actors.
This article has been updated since its original publication on 20 July 2023.
