Is the world’s favourite cartoon dog about to get her own video game?
Online sleuths have discovered a Bluey game may be in the works, after a Twitter bot devoted to Australian video game classification decisions tweeted a new rating: Bluey: the Videogame received a G for General.
According to a full listing on the Australian government’s classification board website, the game – which has not been announced – originates in the UK, where all commercial rights to Bluey are held by the BBC. And while receiving a classification does not mean the title will be made, or has even been officially licensed, this particular game seems to have heft behind it: it lists Outright Games as its publisher, a British company known for its Paw Patrol and Peppa Pig titles.
Bluey: the Videogame is described as a treasure hunt-style game that will be available on PC, PlayStations 4 and 5, Nintendo Switch and Xbox.
“Follow the Heeler family on a holiday adventure to find a treasure hidden by Bandit and his brothers many years ago,” it says. “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.”
According to the same listing, Bluey: the Videogame is being developed by Madrid-based company Artax Games, who would have submitted 30 minutes of gameplay footage to have been classified under “level 2 gameplay”. It appears to be a different offering to Bluey: Let’s Play!, a mobile game being developed by Budge Studios, which released its own trailer earlier this month.
The new video game discovery comes days after executive producer Daley Pearson assured fans that the show would be coming back for a fourth season.
“There will definitely be more Bluey. The amount of families who have taken Bluey in is a privilege that we don’t, and have never, taken that lightly,” Pearson told the Courier Mail.
Earlier this month, the ABC announced that the Bafta, Emmy and Aacta-winning show had achieved the highest total audience of any series to air in Australia, at an average of 11 million per episode of its most recent season – a figure which includes views from all of ABC’s broadcast channels as well as iView. The most popular three episodes were Cubby (12.7m), Relax (12.7m) and Dragon (12.1m). (For comparison, the Tokyo Olympics Opening Ceremony got 3.7m viewers in 2021.)
Billy Joel, Ryan Gosling and Natalie Portman are among many high profile fans of the series, about a six-year-old Blue Heeler and her family. In 2021, the soundtrack became the first children’s album to hit the #1 spot on Australia’s charts; a follow-up album – Bluey: Dance Mode! – was released in April.
The series, created by Joe Brumm and produced by Brisbane’s Ludo Studios, is available in more than 60 countries, and season three’s ten most recent episodes just finished airing on Australia’s ABC. (It will be another year before those are available to watch in the UK and US on Disney+, where the 10 prior episodes of that season were only just made available.)
Bluey’s Big Play – a stage adaptation – premiered in Australia in 2020, and has dates until 2024 across the UK, Ireland, the USA and Canada.
Guardian Australia reached out to Ludo Studios, the BBC and Artax for comment.
