Rugrats: Adventures in Gameland - Switch Review

Nickelodeon fans have been eating good lately when it comes to video games with the recent Nickelodeon Kart Racers and Nickelodeon All Star Brawl series', but now it's time to see if they can handle a game focusing on a single franchise again, starting with Rugrats: Adventures in Gameland. After watching a commercial for an upcoming Reptar video game, Tommy and the gang decide to scour the house to look for enough money to buy it, letting their imaginations run wild in the process.

The Good

Rugrats: Adventures in Gameland harkens back to classic NES platformers, none more so than Super Mario Brother 2, even though the character lineup and abilities are the same. Tommy is the all-rounder like Mario, Chuckie has a higher jump like Luigi, Phil is the strongest like Toad, and Lil can hover after a jump like Peach. Hey, if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.

Continuing the game’s love for the classics, Rugrats: Adventures in Gameland uses a lot of chiptune-style music in its soundtrack to evoke the feeling of playing an old game from the 80s or 90s. And to top it all off, you can choose to play the game with a more showy, accurate art style or a classic 8-bit art style. Personally, I preferred playing with the 8-bit art style; paradoxically, the show's accurate art style made the game feel cheaper, if you know what I mean.

TL;DR

• Solid controls
• Fun soundtrack
• Clean and respectful art style

The Bad

Nickelodeon games in recent years have been notorious for not including voice acting in their games and Rugrats: Adventures in Gameland is no exception. I understand why; this is a small game, so it would drastically increase the game’s budget (and the sad fact that some of the voice cast has passed away in recent years), but the lack of voice acting is still felt.

Rugrats: Adventures in Gameland’s level design can be a bit confusing to navigate sometimes. The game’s levels work like how classic Megaman levels work, where if you reach the edge of the screen, it will scroll the next area in. This worked in Megaman because for the majority of the level you’re going in one direction, but in Rugrats: Adventures in Gameland the levels are wider and want you to explore more, leading to the player getting easily lost. Also a quick pro-tip from me: play the game in 8-bit mode. The show's accurate art style adds a lot of extra detail, making the levels even more confusing to navigate while also making it difficult to tell what is a platform and what is foreground set dressing.

Rugrats: Adventures in Gameland is VERY short; I managed to beat the game in a little over an hour and I’m no platforming expert. The game tries to artificially lengthen itself by blocking off the final level behind needing to collect around 90% of the game’s hidden collectables, but even then it wasn’t enough to slow my progress. I had to repeat a few levels for those collectables, and I was still shocked by how quickly I beat it.

Rugrats: Adventures in Game Land comes with three difficulties: easy lets you play with no penalties; on normal, you can swap between characters but if one loses all their health, they are unavailable for the rest of the level; and hard locks you out of swapping characters unless they lose all their health. Hard mode in this game goes against how some of the levels are designed; some jumps are too high, so you need Chuckie to reach them or some gaps are too long, meaning you need to switch to Lil. If you play on hard mode, you are forced to sacrifice one of the kids to switch in for the one you need just for a single jump, which is extremely annoying because there's a chance that when you respawn, they won’t be suited for the platforming sections you have to do to get to the jump you needed them for in the first place.

TL;DR

• No voice acting
• Level design can be confusing
• Short but strict gameplay
• Hard mode goes against the game’s core design

Final Score: 3/10

While Rugrats: Adventures in Gameland looks good on the surface, ultimately it is a game trying to be Super Mario Brothers 2 and is nearly forty years too late to scene. It’s short, strict and just not worth the price tag they’re offering it at.

Thank you for checking out our Rugrats: Adventures in Gameland Switch review, thank you to The Mix Games Inc for providing the review code and thank you to our Patreon Backers for their ongoing support:

• Andrew Caluzzi (Inca Studios / Camped Out)
• Bel Cubitt
• Bobby Jack
• Jack Caven
• NintenVania Podcast
• RedHero