De Pocoyo, I only knew the name. I even thought, to tell the truth, that this series of animations belonged to the past, since it dates from the mid-2000s. However, after a tedious work of investigation of about 3 minutes, I discovered that the series continued its merry way in Spain, with a highlight on Youtube Kids. This therefore explains why a video game is coming to Playstation and Nintendo Switch in 2021. Game on which I spent an hour... which was enough for me to test most of the content of Pocoyo Party.
Pocoyo dances to very... repetitive sounds!
Test condition: The game was tested on PS5, by an adult not yet too grumpy. The idea of leaving a DualSense to a 3-year-old child seemed a little too risky to me, so I took no risk.
For a game aimed at children between 3 and 5 years old, Pocoyo Party makes a strange choice from the start: an English or Spanish voiceover. Yes, of course, there are language-specific subtitles, but given the target age, I doubt most kids can read. The children of the other target countries will therefore be somewhat prejudiced, and it will essentially be necessary to base ourselves on what we see on the screen. Why not after all ? But for a game that wants to introduce the alphabet, numbers and other colors, the link will be difficult to establish for children who speak neither English nor Spanish.
Not always readable, but extremely easy to handle (one button, X)
Like any early learning game, Pocoyo uses the images quite intelligently and will make the mini-games understandable for as many people as possible. There are 6 mini-games to discover on this title:
- Mini-racing game: on the back of a bee, you will race down a series of circuits by playing on the acceleration (and deceleration) of your mount via the X button so as not to fall or get caught in obstacles.
- Dance mini-game: you have to "dance" to the rhythm of the music by following the choreography that scrolls at the bottom of the screen.
- Cleaning mini-game: you will have to clean the windows (filled with colors) by shaking the joystick up and down to reveal an object behind.
- Mini-game of bricks (to stack): you will have to use pliers to grab the right geometric shapes to stack them, before shooting in them and cleaning up.
- Fishing mini-game: we're fishing.
- Mini photo game: take photos at specific times to immortalize your friends.
In addition to these mini-games, we will have a small special section where we will collect thumbnails after each mini-game won, puzzles (to be assembled) and exclusive episodes of Pocoyo (English/Spanish with subtitles too). Most of the mini-games will disregard the buttons of the joystick and will favor the use of movements (via the gyroscopic function of the joystick). While for most games this responds well, the dance game is more annoying, as it requires positioning the joystick up, down, left and right, and the horizontal axis would respond once on two on my side. Same remark for the racing mini-game, where the camera strives to display the 4 characters, which sometimes gives very broken viewing angles where you can hardly see anything.
Each mini-game has a little "funny" introduction
Not much more to say about this Pocoyo Party. For around thirty euros, the content may seem light. For a child, he should find his account there, although other more complete games undoubtedly exist elsewhere. Note that a multiplayer mode is in the game. On the other hand, it will be necessary to take care to be at the side of the child so that he can understand the explanations given, the fault of an absent VF.
- PlayStation 4 - 29,99€
- Nintendo Switch - 29,99€
