If you’re like me you grew up on the NES playing many touch but fair 2D side scrollers. Also you likely played a lot of touch but extremely 2D side scrollers. All that said when I say this games first trailer drop I was immediately intrigued as I also grew up watching the show as well
Back about 5 months ago, the demo for this game got featured at Pax East. Was I there? No, I live in the pacific north west, why would you ask that? Anyway, the demo was featured there, and the devs compared the gameplay to Super Mario 2. Anyone who’s watched the websites podcast knows I’m a Mario fan. I also grew up watching the show so I knew right away there was a good chance I’d enjoy my time with this game I tried it the day it dropped on Steam. I loved it and couldn’t wait to play the full game. So the question is, did it live up to my anticipation? Well…
So What Are The Rugrats Up To?
The game starts with Tommy’s parents going to get dinner and Pops falling asleep while watching them (Shocker!). Our four well-known Rugrats, Tommy, Chucky, Lil, and Phil, see a commercial for a game they want to play. After some banter that involves Angelica telling everyone babies can’t play games and Chucky bringing up their lack of funds, Tommy brings up the idea of collecting Reptar coins from around the house to fund there quest to get a video game, in a video game. Go figure. This isn’t the most involved story but it’s enough to get you going.
Gameplay
Much like Super Mario 2, in Rugrats Adventures In Game Land, you’ll get to choose between the 4 familiar characters I mentioned earlier. Tommy will play like Mario, who was the most balanced play, Lil has Peaches float jump, Chucky has the long but erratic jump that Luigi uses, Phil has the speed like Toad. Unlike Super Mario 2, you can pause the game and change between characters as you like. Be warned that if one of your characters dies, they will no longer be available.
You’ll have an over world with 5 levels to chose from. There is a 6th, but without the correct amount of Reptar coins you can’t really do anything in there just yet.
The over world take ended up being a big plus as when I got stuck I was able to just switch levels and go back later. Each level has a screw driver you must obtain before entering that levels boss. Each boss has different mechanics that music be exploited to beat them. Every level is well designed and pays homage to the TV show.
It has classic 2D platformer tropes to go with it’s NES tough but fair style. Slipping in on ice, digging in dessert ground and climbing up trees can all be found here. Each level seems to have sections that were designed around the idea of switching between the lovable Rugrats. While many spots encourage it, a couple seemed impossible without certain characters. This was slightly annoying but not the end of the world. As if that wasn’t enough to pull at your NES heart string there’s an 8 bit filter that can be swapped out in the pause menu.
As much as I did like Rugrats Adventures In Game Land I have a major gripe. This game is short. Painfully short. It’s 6 levels took me about 2 hours to beat. Honestly for me that was a pretty hard pill to swallow. Your mileage may vary though as the list of the 2D NES style games I’ve beat is longer then the average gamer for sure. This might not be so bad if it had more replay value. After my first 2 hours was up I had already earned 14 of the games 20 achievements so I wouldn’t look to those to help.
Performance
As far as performance goes there’s not much to speak of. Rugrats Adventures In Game Land is hard locked at 60FPS and never dipped even once while playing. The game never jumped above 15% usage on either CPU or GPU. I think it even hit 0 on CPU at one point but that may have been a glitch. Typically I’d a do Steam Deck section but it’s not worth doing as performance was basically the same I’ll be it at the typical 720p resolution as apposed to the 1440p of my PC.
Conclusion
All in all I enjoyed my time with this flash back to NES platforming goodness. Both it’s art style, 8 bit filter and game play serve as a reminder of how good these types of games can be. However it was brought down by the length of Rugrats Adventures In Game Land. As much fun as I had I was left questioning my purchase as the credits rolled and I’m not the type of gamer that usually equates price to hours in a game. This likely could have been filtered by a few more levels with the TV show had plenty of content from which to base it on.
This Game was reviewed on PC. Rugrats Adventures In Gameland is available on Steam, Epic Games, Nintendo Switch, Xbox Series X/S, Xbox One, and PlayStation 4 and 5
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