PEPPA Pig is no stranger to video games, with a number of games released in the last decade for the children’s animated icon.
The latest game in the series, Peppa Pig: World Adventures, was recently released, and unfortunately it isn’t very good.
Peppa Pig: World Adventures might look the part, but that’s where the good times end
On its face, you would expect the game to be an edutainment product aimed at the core age group of four to six year olds, but it fails on two parts.
The first is that it doesn’t understand children in this age group, and the second is that it doesn’t offer much beyond shallow stereotypes.
You’ll travel to eight locations in World Adventures: New York, Hollywood, London, Paris, Italy, Germany, and Australia.
You might notice the last three are countries, and not cities, and that’s because there’s very little consistency here.
When you go to Barcelona, you’ll go to “Les Ramblas” and play football on the beach after completing an unusually complete tour of La Sagrada Familia.
After that, you’ll head to Australia, to a town that on the map looks pretty close to Alice Springs, but the landmass curiously has New Zealand attached to the bottom of the country.
You’ll have a picnic in the outback, followed by a submarine ride to the Great Barrier Reef, which is quite far away from Alice Springs in the real world.
While realism isn’t exactly expected with this kind of experience, greater care could have been taken to ensure correct spelling and accurate landmarks.
As it stands, there’s very little education going on about these locations, as the portrayals are just too far from the facts to be useful.
There are some moments of fun and joy, as in the London section, but it would have been nice if other locations were as well researched and executed too.
The central issue of World Adventures is that it simply doesn’t understand what four to six year olds are capable of.
Children at this age can develop very quickly, and they’re always looking for ways to challenge and push themselves.
Many kids in this age group are playing games like Pokemon, Mario Kart, or Kirby, and while they don’t play well, they’re at least developing motor skills and pushing themselves.
The core gameplay in Peppa Pig, on the other hand, is simply holding a button, and there’s very little else in the way of gameplay.
You hold the button to make the elevator go up, hold the button to raise the bridge, hold the button to put a pizza in the oven.
You can walk around in some parts, but even when playing football, the goalie never attempts to defend the goal, making it borderline impossible to fail or learn.
If the game was instead made for younger children, they would probably struggle with their fine motor skills, even if they could grasp the concept.
They would be able to control the game a bit better if there were any kind of touch controls, but even on Switch there are none.
There’s also a host of technical issues, including long loading times, brief flashes of incorrect scenes, and activities that sometimes despawn.
Peppa also likes to call out what she’s doing, regardless of what else is happening, meaning she’ll often talk over other characters.
Given this game is largely aimed at non-readers, this could make actually listening to what characters are saying very difficult.
Peppa Pig: World Adventures doesn’t do much to entertain, and does even less to educate, often missing what makes the beloved TV show so popular.
It’s hard to know who it’s really for, as it doesn’t seem to be right for any particular age group, and it’s hard to imagine a child getting much enjoyment out of it.
Written by Georgina Young and Oliver Brandt on behalf of GLHF.
