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There’s no denying that when I got the opportunity to review Bluey’s Quest for the Gold Pen, my knee-jerk reaction was to feel impostor syndrome. Full disclosure, I’m not a gamer, and I was even encouraged to write about the story aspects of the game as it unfolds versus the gameplay itself, since I was a huge Bluey fan long before I had a spirited child of my own.
When the game was announced, I figured it would be something my daughter could play with her father, who has owned every game system he’s ever wanted upon release since the Nintendo NES. My upbringing was different. My family could never afford video game systems when they came out. For a good part of my childhood, if I got to play on someone’s Nintendo, it would be either on some boy in the neighborhood’s system or on one of my older cousins’ television sets after relatives would be like, “Let her try!” and they’d roll their eyes at having to share turns.
So video games didn’t feel meant for me in the sense that when I would play, I’d get on a platformer like Super Mario Bros. and quickly fall off and lose. Then I’d have to hand over the controller back to the boy who owned the game. This first sort of act of gatekeeping really informed my relationship to games, and because I didn’t have anything to practice on of my own for a really long time, I lost interest. It was theirs. It was their gold pen.
Those experiences came rushing back up while I was playing Bluey’s Quest for the Gold Pen. It starts off with the Heeler family gathered around a table for a day in because it’s raining, and Bluey and Bingo are drawing, creating adventures in the style of the sketched-out world episodes of the show. And to mess with his kids, Bandit, their dad, jokingly takes away their gold pen because it’s his gold pen.
I very quickly realized, “Oh, maybe this game is meant for me.” So I sat, and I watched the scene unfold. Mom Chili steps in and reminds her daughters that she will help them map out this world, where they will be able to retrieve the gold pen because they also deserve to draw with it. And with that, Bluey creator Joe Brumm starts to impart a banger of a story that hits you in the feels. I don’t think I have teared up like that since “Sleepytime” and Bella, Coco’s mom, telling Chili, “You’re doing great.” If I thought I was just going to try it out to describe the game story, I was surprised that mine would be so irrevocably entwined with it. It’s Bluey‘s best episode yet.
Truly, I thought I was going to stop playing the game after exploring some of the areas and screenshotting cool bits and funny references to point out. Ludo and Halfbrick’s teams bring so many Easter egg elements of fantasy and sci-fi into the game world. I laughed when Bingoose (Bingo’s sidekick persona) lays an egg that cracks open to reveal a bug that a frog eats to unlock the next phase of the game. It’s baby Cronenberg energy. There are even some fun ’80s hair metal-inspired baddies, led by Bandit’s antagonistic alter ego, King Goldy Horns. They represent constant obstacles for Bluey and Bingo as you play.
I had extra anxiety once the gameplay actually started because I’m used to being like, “I’m gonna fall off something, and I’m gonna die” (note: Bluey and Bingoose don’t ever actually die), “I’m just gonna be respawning over and over again,” and “What if I don’t even get through a lot of the story?”
So I’m sitting there with my child, who’s watching me play it on my mobile device, and clicking around, making the noises of her favorite characters to see her smile and laugh. Hey, I feel we’ve done well since her third word after “Mama” and “Dada” is “Bwooey.” And with that comfort, I found myself realizing that this game is for us, too. It wasn’t like, “Okay, I didn’t pass this quest; time to hand the control to Dad.” It was like, “I’m going to keep going to show her that if I can, she can”—at her big age of 16 months.
Halfbrick’s setup is super gentle and fun. I understood that it was okay to fall off the platform, that a little bubble would appear and help me float from falling into the sea and back onto the game board. The game is pure Bluey magic, a blend of Brumm’s heartfelt storytelling and Halfbrick’s clever mini-games and encouraging audio. There’s no Mario-style “he’s dead” sound effect.
Halfbrick and Ludo were able to bring this collaboration together in a way that emphasizes that this is a story anyone can take part in. And thematically, it says the quiet part aloud: that those who think they hold the gold pen don’t have to withhold it from others. So as I played, I found myself thinking a lot about the little girl who normalized feeling okay with just my chance at the controller; the boys would give me their game, and then I would sit there watching them play because they were able to go further than I could.
I didn’t understand that they had the resource, so they were able to practice. I could have gotten better at it too had they decided to share rather than just performatively giving me a turn. Those turns were often set up so that I would fall off the platform or would have to race to beat a level they set to “hard” without me knowing—just so they could say they let me have a turn but really could go back to dominating the game.
Instead, Bluey’s Quest for the Gold Pen is a sheer delight. It lets you freely explore the world that Bluey’s mother is mapping out. The best part of it is finding ways to enjoy something that I once felt wasn’t available to me. And sure, it is a fairly easy beginner game, but it’s not without its challenges and creative solutions. You’re armed with a new wand, similar to the feather wand seen in the Bluey show, but instead of everything becoming impossibly heavy, it actually helps you move impossibly heavy things.
The game is also such a love letter to the children who grew up on Bluey, who might be at a point now where they’re starting to play more advanced games, and it points the way toward other classics like The Legend of Zelda. I might have once felt alienated from getting into gaming, but to be able to have this to share with my child as a way to say, “Oh, you like this style of gaming? Let’s check out Zelda together” is something I’m now looking forward to.
Bluey’s Quest for the Gold Pen is such a joy and an inner child healing experience. I’m so excited to continue playing, especially since it gives us a new, immersive Joe Brumm classic that envelops you even more than Bluey‘s short animated episodes do. Halfbrick’s visual and audio design make it super enticing to jump back in, with super accessible methods of play.
I’m not going to lie, I have not played Halfbrick’s hit Fruit Ninja in a really long time, yet I remember that I played it for a while because it was so fun in a way that I didn’t feel like a loser playing it. It was welcoming to feel like I could keep going and see how far I could make it. And similarly here with Bluey’s Quest for the Gold Pen, I was saying to myself, “Oh man, I’m gonna fall off these blinking platforms,” but I didn’t want to let Bluey and Bingo down.
Honestly, I felt like Bluey was my inner child, and I was Chili at the same time, and I didn’t want to disappoint them.
I think if you’re someone who loves playing games and is excited to bring a new generation of gamers into the world and into the fold, this is the game to start off with. It tells such an expansive story but also provides a way to discover that some games will inspire you to keep trying, even if you kind of fail. That seems like such a rarity nowadays; there are a lot of games now that I’ve talked to my nieces and nephews about where they’re playing for a really long time, and they’re just opening up gifts and racking up points that I don’t really understand the point of.
Especially since it features Bandit pretending to be a villain, Bluey’s Quest for the Gold Pen really feels like a lesson to young children about those pesky gatekeepers. It’s a fact of life, they’re just going to keep coming at you in this open world, right? But with family—like Bluey’s family—we’re always going to have a way to keep going, to undo the limitations of entertainment that might’ve affected a little girl back in the day. Someone like me, who always felt like she had to hand over the controller, the gold pen, as it were. Here’s the achievement unlocked: it belongs to us all.
This interactive installment of Bluey’s story really inspired me to realize that this is something in my daughter’s life that I will be able to be a part of. I once thought, “Okay, well, at some point, my husband’s gonna play video games with my daughter, and that’s gonna be their thing” And I’m just astounded and blown away by the genius of Ludo Studio and Halfbrick, and being like, “No, we’re going to do things differently now.”
The Goldy Horns and their stooges can keep their old pens and toys if they don’t grow up and share; the ink is running dry anyway, and we can build new worlds together with the next generation for real life. And I can say that with Bluey’s Quest for the Gold Pen, Bluey fans can get excited for the next level of their making.
Bluey’s Quest for the Gold Pen is available on the Apple App Store with a free version to try and an option for a one-time purchase of all the levels. Its release through the Google Play store is set for January 10, 2026. The game is due to expand to bigger systems, including PC, Nintendo Switch, Nintendo Switch 2, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X|S, later in 2026.
Want more io9 news? Check out when to expect the latest Marvel, Star Wars, and Star Trek releases, what’s next for the DC Universe on film and TV, and everything you need to know about the future of Doctor Who.
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Sabina Graves
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