Pocoyo Party

Pocoyo Party is a party video game developed by Zinkia Entertainment and published by RECO Technology for the Nintendo Switch and PlayStation 4 on April 15th, 2021. It is the third Pocoyo console game to be released, and is also the first one to be released after a long time, due to its predecessor, Pocoyo Racing coming out nearly 10 years before this one.

Plot
Angry Alien disguises as a mailman in order to steal the invitation cards for a party that Pocoyo is going to have, due to the former believing that he is not going to get one. When Pocoyo and the Narrator find out who the mailman really was, the former and his friends then set off to get them back by playing through 6 simple minigames.

Bad Qualities

 * 1) Extremely little content, especially for a party game released in 2021, as there are only six minigames as stated above.
 * 2) Speaking of the minigames, most of them tend to have a poor implementation of motion controls, thus leading to them being outright unresponsive/broken, and overall being a tad too difficult for young children to handle properly, or them just simply being boring. This includes, but is not limited to:
 * 3) *In the window cleaning minigame, in order to wipe the window with the sponge, you must roll over the controller in your hands just to move the sponge up and down, which may not be something a 5-year-old would be able to do.
 * 4) *In the fishing minigame, in order to pull the hook, you have to flick the controller up. Sometimes, this doesn't work.
 * 5) *In the bee racing minigame, you don't have any control over your bee, as all you can do is just hold down the accelerator button.
 * 6) *In the blocks minigame, in order to move the crane, you must tilt the controller left, right, up, or down. Even when you stop doing one of those 4 actions, the crane would still move in that direction.
 * 7) Despite there only being 6 minigames, some of them tend to drag on for a bit too long, as they usually last for 2 or 3 minutes, while in most party games, (specifically Mario Party) they usually last for less than a minute. This can be seen as artificial padding.
 * 8) The graphics, despite looking decent, have shoddy lighting, as the characters noticeably clash with the backgrounds of the game, unlike in the TV series, and as of 2022, Zinkia still hasn't released any sort of patch in order to fix the lighting.
 * 9) Pocoyo, Pato, Elly, and Nina are the only playable characters in the game, while other characters from the TV series (such as Fred and Sleepy Bird) aren't playable, despite also appearing in the game, and in 4 of the 6 minigames, the game only lets you play as either Pocoyo or Nina, which is unacceptable for a party game.
 * 10) Speaking of Fred, his 3D model looks pretty uncanny and doesn't really look like how he did in the TV series.
 * 11) Apart from the photo-taking minigame, the game doesn't even let you choose your character in the multiplayer mode, which is something that you are normally allowed to do in party games.
 * 12) False advertising: The PS4 trailer for the game claims that this is the first Pocoyo game, when it's actually the third, considering that there were two games that released before it: Hello, Pocoyo! and Pocoyo Racing, which were released in 2008 and 2011, respectively, and the game even re-uses some of the soundtrack from the latter.
 * 13) The Switch version of the game isn't compatible with a Pro Controller, and also isn't even compatible with handheld mode, meaning that you can't play the game on a Switch Lite. This is unacceptable for a Switch game, especially for one that's aimed at young kids.
 * 14) Most of the soundtrack is recycled from Pocoyo Racing. For example, the music that plays in the bee racing minigame is the main menu theme from said game, which is pretty lazy on the developers' part.
 * 15) The game's UI looks more like it belongs to a mobile game rather than a Switch/PS4 game released in 2021. Not helping by the fact that this game was made in Unity.
 * 16) The game is very short, as it can be beaten in less than 2 hours, which is far too short for a party game, and there's not a lot of replay value out of this either.
 * 17) Adding onto BQ #12, despite the game being too short, there are 8 save slots, which is highly redundant.
 * 18) The game is overpriced, as it costs $30 USD on both the Nintendo Switch eShop and the PS Store, despite the game not having a lot of content in it.
 * 19) Some of the unlockable episodes have the wrong titles and thumbnails.
 * 20) Due to the game not having a lot of content in it, it can make many preschoolers and Pocoyo fans feel pretty bored.

Good Qualities

 * 1) The graphics are decent, and almost look as good as the TV series it's based on, despite having shoddy lighting.
 * 2) You can unlock unreleased episodes that were meant for Season 4 of the TV series and watch them in-game, which is a nice touch, and may be the only reason to actually play the game.
 * 3) Despite all of the problems listed above, some people, especially younger kids may find the game to be enjoyable, considering that it's aimed at children between 3-5.
 * 4) Thankfully, the motion controls aren’t required in some of the minigames, as you can just use the analog stick instead.
 * 5) The concept of the game is at least, decent. Alas, we got this.

Reception
The PS4 version of the game received mixed-to-negative reviews on Metacritic via 3 critic reviews, and a user score of 7.4 indicating "mixed or average" reviews, (with most of them being sarcastic) while the Switch version has a user score of 5.8 based on 4 ratings. The game was mainly criticized for its lack of content and a poor implementation of motion controls, but some aspects of the game were praised, such as having the ability to unlock and watch unreleased episodes that were meant for Season 4 of the TV series in-game.

Trivia

 * This the first Pocoyo game to be made after a long time, due to its predecessor, Pocoyo Racing, coming out nearly 10 years before this one.
 * This is currently the only Pocoyo console game to not be exclusive to Europe.
 * This is also the first Pocoyo game to be released on a non-Nintendo console, due to its predecessors being only released for the Wii and DS.

Videos
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