“Kids are quite discerning, actually,” says someone who has never really spent any time with kids, and perhaps doesn’t even know what a child is. My experience with kids has revealed that, no, they aren’t discerning at all. They are happy to watch absolute drivel, demand to be bought ‘toys’ that are little more than sludge, and dress in whatever triple-stained clothes they’ve been wearing for the last week. So, when a game is labelled as an imitation of a huge franchise, but “for kids”, my quality alarm sounds and I expect the worst.
Enter Wobbly Life, launched into early access on Steam five years ago, and a year later on Xbox. It’s technically a “GTA for kids”, yes, if you simply don’t want to use many words due to being chronically lazy or rushed – but this would actually be doing a quite wonderful game a massive injustice. It’s essentially an open, knockabout world of activities and exploration, playable by up to four players cooperatively, with a focus squarely on physics, laughs and fun.
As a ‘gamer’ parent (I do know quite a lot about video games, contrary to what people on message boards might say) to an 11-year-old and a four-year-old, I’m immediately narked when a game designed for kids fails to give that audience an ounce of respect. Yes, games for young players should be simpler to grasp, but that’s no excuse to make them buggy, dull, tiresome messes. A lot of these games feel like they are exploiting loved brands for a quick buck, but Wobbly Life couldn’t be trying harder to offer an experience that keeps on delivering.
Over the five years since its initial early access release Wobbly Life has seen update after update, adding new areas, new jobs, new missions, new vehicles, new activities… new pretty much everything. Now on its 1.0 release, on Game Pass (as well as all major platforms), I honestly don’t think there is a better game for kids to mess around with. Part job sim, part life sim, part go into space sim (thanks to the latest update), you might one moment be taking a job delivering newspapers via a nifty truck equipped with a paper shooter, then buying that new house you’ve always dreamed of, then jetting off into space to see what adventures await.
I’ve watched my son play Wobbly Life aged seven to 11, and this game simply has the juice. What this juice is made of is hard to pinpoint, but I think the key ingredient is a commitment to quality. None of the activities, missions, or jobs here are detailed enough to stand on their own, but they do just enough and let kids fill in the blanks. Kids are great at this (my daughter likes to pretend she is an assortment of doughs, then jumps into an invisible oven to bake, the only real-life prop being the dings I make to signify the time is up). You can be a farmer here, not like in Farming Sim, but how a child sees being a farmer, and it’s perfect.
While the big hitters on Roblox bring in an obscene number of players, have you actually seen what the majority of these games are like? Busywork and clicking with the only goal being to accrue enough currency to buy the next macguffin, to allow you to do even more busywork and clicking to buy that same mcguffin, but bigger. The actual gameplay within these games is so narrow it simply funnels kids down these content tunnels, always offering a new carrot tied to an increasingly dazzling stick, with the added peril of premium currency to shortcut that drudgery.
Wobbly Life doesn’t care about what players are doing or how. Developer RubberBandGames just keeps on throwing more and more toys into the playpen, then sits back and lets the kids get on with it. I’ve heard my son squeal with joy while playing (often online with friends), and the core gameplay is simple enough for any family member to jump in and have a good time. The fact that this game has 14,500 English reviews on Steam and is currently sat on “Overwhelmingly Positive” says it all.
If there’s any justice in the world of game development (and given the state of job security in this industry, I am leaning towards there not being any), RubberBandGames received a bumper-sized truck full of cash for putting its wonderful game on Game Pass. Beyond that, games like this deserve just as much praise as the headline-grabbers, the triple-As, and the financial quarter heroes. I don’t want my kids playing slop where the ‘content’ is nothing more than a road to profit. Instead, I’ve got four years of brilliant memories tied to Wobbly Life, a game with heart that you don’t need to buy in a store.
A copy of Wobbly Life was purchased by the author.
