Have you ever wanted to be part of your favorite TV show as a kid? In Bonnie Blob in Shapeville you and your children can now take part in the adventure. Bonnie Blob, Monkey Noise’s first Steam release, is an interactive and educational children book.

When you start the game you are given two choices. You can either choose a book from the bookshelf or play the matching game. There are four books to read: Bonnie’s Day at the Beach, The Quest for the Missing Puzzle Piece, Bonnie’s Birthday!, and Bonnie’s Day Trip. All the books are centered around our protagonist, Bonnie Blob. I love how you choose a book. Initially you see a bookshelf, and a book comes out with a small animation. You can then cycle through the available books and click on your chosen book to start reading.

If you decide to play the matching game, you are presented with three choices; easy, medium, or hard. The easy one has eight cards to match, twelve in the medium, and sixteen in the hard mode. All three modes are easy enough even for very young children. The game is quite simple. It’s a memory game, so you open a first card and try to match it. If you can find the second card with the same character they stay face up, otherwise you have to start again until all the cards are face up. It’s an easy game, but offers a good challenge for children especially the hard mode.

I love the artwork. It truly feels like you stepped into a children’s TV show. Children will be attracted to its bold and vibrant colors. All the characters are shapes, besides Bonnie Blob of course. This makes the characters simple, but perfect for kids. Even the soundtrack sounds like the kind of music that you would hear in a children’s TV show. There are also sound effects to nearly everything you click which helps immerse the player in the game. The text is both spoken and written, and the voice acting sounds professional. It’s read slowly enough so that the younger audience can follow along. In each scene, there are a couple of short sentences, but only one is shown on the screen at any time. What I loved about it is that as the narrator reads the text, the word they say is highlighted in a different color. It makes it easy for young kids to follow along, learn new words, and eventually read it for themselves.

Almost everything in Bonnie Blob in Shapeville is interactive. Most of the time when you click on an object you see a short animation. Some even have more than one. In Bonnie’s Day Trip when Bonnie is in the bath, you can click on her to make her go into the water. When she comes back up she has a ‘bubble mousse’ mustache, but if you click again it’s a hat. In Bonnie’s Birthday!, there is also a small bonus game. During the birthday party while you are in the yard with Bonnie and her friends, you have to find some hidden candies.

My only issue with Bonnie Blob in Shapeville is not with the game itself, but actually with the game’s achievements. This game is obviously geared towards a younger audience, however some of the achievements are quite difficult to achieve. There are three achievements related to the matching game. You must get the highest possible score for each mode. If you want to get these achievements, you have to get a perfect score. Because of the nature of the game and the fact that it’s randomized, you have to be very lucky to get all the matches without any mistakes. For example, to get the easy achievement you have to score 10 000 points. I played it several times to see if I could get it, and never reached more than 6 800 points even with minimal mistakes. It seems like it would be extremely difficult for a small child to reach, and I fear they might get discouraged. I like that the developers have thought to add achievements, but I don’t feel like these three specific ones are right for a kid’s game.

_{*The achievements have be rethought since this review. These new ones are much more attainable now that they have been modified, and yet they are still challenging enough for a younger audience. They are now perfectly suited to the game. I was also pleasantly surprised at how open the developer was to constructive criticism, and also quick to modify the overly difficult achievements. I will still be leaving the original text as is for integrity’s sake even if it doesn’t apply anymore.}

Bonnie Blob in Shapeville is a delightful children’s book come to life. The art will surely appeal to children with its vibrant colors and cartoonish style. The soundtrack is upbeat. The addition of different sound effects every time you click an object makes you want to click everything just to hear the sounds and see the short animations. The bonus matching game is perfect to keep children entertained between books. Bonnie Blob makes learning a fun and engaging experience for the whole family.

Positives

• Bonus matching game
• Educational
• Bold and vibrant artwork

Negatives

• Some achievements are too difficult for children
• _{*Achievements have been modified to better fit a younger audience}