New Bluey video game developed in Brisbane

Quite late in the process of developing Bluey’s Happy Snaps, the Gameloft Brisbane team realised that something was missing.

Enter: the grannies.

“The grannies level is just about creating mayhem,” Gameloft head of studio Manea Cantet says. “The more chaos you create, the more points you win.”

To demonstrate, Cantet uses a PlayStation game pad to steer Bluey as the granny “Janet” in her toy car as she knocks over plants and toys in the Heelers’ backyard and tries to locate hidden cans of baked beans.

“The grannies have actually become everyone’s favourite part of the game,” marketing manager Mark Fordham adds.

Cantet suddenly puts the console down and covers his ears. “I don’t want to hear this [bit],” he says. “I want to discover this with my daughter.”

We’re at the CBD offices of Gameloft Brisbane, the developers tasked by BBC Studios with the designing and marketing of Bluey’s Happy Snaps, the new video game for PC and console, on sale worldwide from October 15.

The Gameloft building is just a 10-minute walk from Ludo Studios in Fortitude Valley, where the 154 episodes of Bluey were made.

I’m amused to note it’s across the road from the old Hotel Orient, where Custard, the band of Dave McCormack, the voice of Bandit, regularly played in their early days. (McCormack, Melanie Zanetti and other cast members contribute their voices to the new game.)

Gameloft originated in France, and has branches in 10 cities spanning Europe, Canada, Vietnam and Indonesia. The Brisbane business is the fastest growing. In 2014 it had just 15 employees; now it has 130, and plans to have 200 by 2030.

Meanwhile, over in Red Hill, close to where Bluey’s fictional Queenslander house is said to be, is the headquarters of Halfbrick Studios, makers of the previous Bluey game, Bluey’s Quest for the Gold Pen.

Halfbrick put Brisbane on the gaming map with the billion-download Fruit Ninja back in 2010. For Gold Pen, which was released in December 2025, chief executive Shainiel Deo collaborated directly with Bluey creator Joe Brumm on a game based on the characters’ fantasy drawings, tapping into the show’s imaginative ethos.

Ron Curry, chief executive of Interactive Games and Entertainment Association for Australia and New Zealand, says the two Bluey games from two different studios are a reflection of the talent and creativity of Queensland games design.

“Around 27 per cent of all [Australian games] employees are in Queensland, and 17 per cent of the studios,” Curry says.

“Those are last year’s figures, and that will maybe even go up for the current year, because we know how successful, for example, the expansion of the team at Gameloft has been.”

Queensland is second only to Victoria for digital game production, bolstered by Screen Queensland and the federal government offering a combined 40 per cent tax offset.

The IGEA estimates that Queensland-developed games supported by the state government’s Digital Games Incentive have generated nearly $120 million in consumer revenue.

But it wasn’t just smart accounting that brought Bluey back to Brisbane. Bluey: The Videogame, developed by Spanish company Artax in 2023, received something the world’s favourite blue heeler dog is not used to getting: negative reviews.

“It feels like a merchandising attempt, rather than a proper extension of the show,” Leigh Stark’s assessment on Pickr.com said, opining that “it’s a total missed opportunity to not employ Australian game developers”.

Luke Reilly’s review for IGN.com said the game looked like the show but was “rife with annoying bugs, frustrating controls, and a bafflingly brief runtime of a little over an hour”.

“I cannot speak for what happened for [that] game,” Cantet says, “but what I do know is that from the beginning both Ludo and BBC said that for Bluey ’s Happy Snaps we really want a high rating, a positive reception.

“Some people care a bit less about the quality for kids’ games, and I think that’s wrong, I think that’s almost the opposite. I am a father of a six-year-old daughter, I want her to have the best game possible.”

The new game’s premise is that Bluey and Bingo have found their dad’s old Polaroid camera and must use it to take snaps of objects hidden around the house, receiving a “sticker” for each successful find.

Subsequent missions take them around Brisbane locations familiar from episodes of the show: New Farm Park, Mount Coot-tha Lookout, and South Bank, as well as the camp site (from the episode Camping), and Hammerbarn (aka Bunnings).

But the game isn’t simply a treasure hunt. Players can mess around with objects they find along the way: kicking and rolling balls, drawing with chalk, jumping on a trampoline and such, with popular supporting characters from the show popping up throughout.

“It’s an open sandbox where we give them a tonne of toys to play with, exactly like in real life,” Cantet says.

Gameloft worked with QUT’s Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for the Digital Child to ensure the game fosters creativity, safety, identity and collaboration.

Unusually for a video game, Bluey’s Happy Snaps has frequent touchpoints encouraging off-screen play, including a packet of cards in every box with ideas of “Things to Find” and “Family Fun”.

“We really want you to turn the console off and go outside,” Fordham says.

Being based in Brisbane, Cantet says, was “critical” to making a game that’s as much a love letter to the city as the show is. Game artists spent weeks visiting the locations – “to create them as faithfully as we can. You will see many things that you don’t see in the TV show, but that are here in real life in Brisbane.”

Cantet indicates a pink cockatoo in the New Farm Park setting. “You hear the bird? It’s the real bird that our audio team spent time recording in the Currumbin Sanctuary, which again could have been done only here.”

So is the new game worth the $69-$85 price tag? My focus group of two played it for two solid hours before bedtime and only got through two levels.

The ability to take photos of anything within the world of the game, and to play mini-games on the way towards achieving goals, kept them enthralled.

A reminder from Bingo between levels to go and take a “tactical wee” caused much hilarity.

Cantet wants the launch of Bluey’s Happy Snaps to spotlight the importance of the industry in Queensland.

“Last year, if you take all the revenue generated by cinema box office, music, books, and combine all that together, multiply by four, you get the revenue of the video game industry. And this year it looks like it’s going to be times six.

“It’s a really big industry, and it’s an industry where Australia is well positioned.”

The game was launched at Queensland’s Parliament House on Thursday night, which Screen Queensland head of games Jed Dawson says “feels like a real milestone”.

Future Bluey games made in Brisbane are a distinct possibility, Dawson says.

“I think the BBC were very impressed by the game studios that they came out here to do a recce on. So keep your eyes open, there might be more on the way.”

Bluey’s Happy Snaps is released on all platforms on October 15.

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