Rugrats: Adventures in Gameland Review – Baby’s Platformer

When I first heard about a new Rugrats game it peaked my interest, as I grew up with Tommy, Chuckie, Phil, Lil and all the gang. Unfortunately, Rugrats Adventures in Gameland isn’t really for me and that’s a shame, but it might be for you.

Game Name: Rugrats Adventures in Gameland
Platform(s): PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Nintendo Switch, Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S, PC (reviewed)
Publisher(s): The Media Indie Exchange
Developer(s): The Media Indie Exchange, Wallride
Release Date: 10th September 2024

An Adventure Done Better Before
So, first off Rugrats: Adventures in Gameland is a side-scrolling puzzle platformer that can be played either in Solo or Co-Op. After seeing an ad for a video game of all things, Tommy, Chuckie, Phil and Lil set off to collect Reptar coins to open a magic door behind the TV. The game comprises of several levels which are essentially the different rooms/areas in and around the Pickles House.

How Does It Play
Each level can be played as any of the four Rugrats, but in reality you will want to play as all of them. This is because as you navigate through the levels, and take damage from your milk bottle shaped health bar,  you will need to switch characters, each of which have their own health bar. Cookies, which you can find in each level, are a godsend as they heal you when your health bar reaches zero. Keep in mind that Cookies only apply to the character that picks it up.

That isn’t the only reason you will want to use each of the playable characters. In certain situations a specific character might be more useful than others, because they each have different stats. Lil for example is better at jumping and Phil is Stronger.

As for the actual gameplay, for the most part is very simple. You jump using A or Y on an Xbox controller, while in mid-air you can ground pound using X or B which is your main offence against enemies. At times you will need to crouch or in this case crawl, which you do by pressing the downward direction on either the left stick or d-pad. Around any given level you will at time you items you can pick up, such as ABC blocks. These blocks can be picked up by standing on top of them and long pressing B. Once you have the block, you can place it down to help you reach something you couldn’t before or throw it at an enemy, you do this by facing the direction you’d like to aim and pressing B.

There are some puzzles in this game but it tends to be just platforming to a different section to find Tommy’s screwdriver to open up a locked gate. Pretty simple right!? That is until you reach any of the Boss fights which are neat and break up the otherwise simplistic and frankly quite stale gameplay loop. The issue is that these Boss Fights have no instruction or tutorials and for what I can only assume is a younger audience that will play this game I don’t think that’s good enough. I understand that this is a retro inspired platforming game but it would have benefit from some modernization of it’s design; particularly when it comes to tutorials or even basic information on mechanics.

Presentation
I will say I was impressed by the presentation here. There are two graphics and audio modes which you can change at any time in the pause menu. Of course, we have the modern visuals which look about as close to the TV show as you’d expect this type of game to look. Modern was my personal preferred way to play, but if you want something a little different… there is an 8-bit mode. 

As you can expect, this looks very different and it was interesting to see everything in the game as 8-bit versions of themselves. That isn’t where it stops, the audio can also be put into 8-bit mode and it does sound completely different if you like video games from that era I think you will be happy with these options. Ultimately, the moment that iconic theme tune played on the start up screen I knew that one thing this game got right was the presentation.

Technical Performance
I can give Rugrats: Adventures in Gameland some praise in the technical areas. I encountered no bugs in my time playing and performance on my PC (specs below) was really solid ranging from 78fps up to 120fps which is the cap of my display. If you have a VRR capable display as I do, this level of performance is well within the range for VRR to be effective so things felt very smooth.

My PC Specs: Intel Core i9 24-Core Processor i9-14900KF, 32GB Corsair VENGEANCE RGB DDR5 6000MHz, 16GB GEFORCE RTX 4080 SUPER

Summary
While Rugrats: Adventures in Gameland isn’t a bad game, it is very simple while also being complicated due to the lack of tutorials. It’s almost like Rugrats can’t decide if it wants to be a nostalgia play for older heads like myself or a baby’s first platformer for younger gamers just starting their journey.

Review Disclosure Statement: A copy of Rugrats: Adventures in Gameland was provided to us by the Media Indie Exchange review purposes. For more information on how we review video games and other media/technology, please review our Review Guideline/Scoring Policy for more info.

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