A happy chat about Bluey’s Happy Snaps with Gameloft Brisbane

Bluey’s Happy Snaps released earlier this month, and just before it dropped, we were able to talk to the studio that created it, or at least one person there. At PAX Aus 2026, we got to sit down with Karl Von Der Luhe, who’s the Game Manager at Gameloft Brisbane. Yep, that’s right, the latest Bluey game was indeed made here in Australia, and in Brisbane again, too.

Because the interview is from a couple of weeks ago, there are some things in there that we didn’t know at the time but have since found out. It’s still a good yarn.

Bluey’s Happy Snaps is out now on Nintendo Switch, Switch 2, all other consoles and PC.

Bluey is well known for promoting imaginative and creative play. Was this the forefront of your mind during development?

Absolutely. We made sure that each location is a good representation of those locations in the show, but they’re also full of interactive toys to play with and some of them, they play for real life. Each location has three play for real life moments, which are a bit more narrative with characters that are well known from the show and teach the player something that they can recreate at home, whether it’s creating a barky boat, that they can put a few tree twigs in a leaf on a little boat, put it in a stream, or if they don’t have a stream nearby, they can do it in a bathtub or a bucket or a sink. There’s also many, magic cauldrons in the first level.

There’s many that are reflected from some of those games that are seen in the show, but also some that we’ve created ourselves. So that’s really encouraging that creative play. 

Were you ready for Pokémon snap comparisons, like being in a game based on photography, how important was it to make the game feel different to, other photography-based games? 

I think a big part of the experience is running around in these locations as Bluey and Bingo. And of course, the camera is the central gameplay piece, but it’s not the be-all and end-all of the game. So it’s, we think we have a much broader experience than just a photography game..

One of the reasons Bluey is so popular is because it finds ways to appeal to the adults, like watching the shows along with the kids. Would you recommend Happy Snaps to adults? Were those shared experiences part of the plan during development? 

Absolutely. We imagine that they can play to happen a lot between adults and their children and the adults will have a very good time with it. And we’ve also seen with a lot of adult players.

And of course, it’s a game that we take pride in the game, we’re making, we make sure it’s a game that we all enjoy playing ourselves as adult gamers. So, you know, we like to think it’s a well constructed game with a lot of, looks great, animations, the way the characters work is excellent and there’s a lot of real fun with the gameplay as well. So I think there’s a lot of inner child in any adult will enjoy playing this game.

It is such a shared sort of experience where you tend to watch a lot of Bluey, the kids are enjoying watching Bluey, and it doesn’t sort of talk down to everyone, it’s got really cool messaging, It’s good to have that co-op experience where it’s like, oh, no, you can both do it, and you’re both like, yeah, it’s not someone’s having to tolerate playing through something. 

We hear that anecdote all the time from parents and then, you know, their kids are watching Bluey and they’re like, oh, great, the kids are watching. I’m gonna do something else…Well actually, then they’re watching the episodes themselves with their kids because it’s such a great TV show and it absolutely is when I really wanted to recreate with the game that it’s not not something that the parents just put their kids in front of and walk away and do something else.

It’s an interaction between the family, both as a co-op experience playing the game, but then also away from the screen, recreating some of that fun in real life.

This will be the 3rd Bluey console game so far. Each has captured the Bluey animation, the animation style in different ways. Were there any technicalities of getting the style right? Like, were you given anything by the studio, like an animation Bible or anything to work from? 

Yeah, Ludo Studios is only a 20 minutes walk down the road from us in Brisbane, so we, especially early on, we worked a lot with them. We have different, very different tool sets being TV show and a game. some of the fundamentals of how shoulders and elbows work and which expressions and what the pupils do and what rules for their eyebrows was very, you know, very clearly discussed early on, and then, and then later on, it was much more about showing them the final product and getting some final tweaks and feedback from them.

The biggest technical achievement that we have is having those 2D characters in a 3D world and how smoothly they move around and can rotate at these different angles and it’s no mean feat to do that. and definitely something we’ve put a lot of effort in, and we even have two GCAP talks talking about some of those technical hurdles we overcame.

With the locations and the game being based around where Bluey lives in Brisbane, Queensland, there’s also a celebration of animals and culture from all over Australia. Was it difficult to balance keeping the game strictly Brisbane-based with branching out a bit more to showcase what the rest of Australia has to offer?

It is very much a Brisbane-based show and by Southeast Queensland, there’s some episodes in the show from Sunshine Coast or Gold Coast or even in the Scenic Rim. So we’ve reflected some of those, the camping level is more sort of towards the border of New South Wales and the Scenic Rim. But in general, it’s been focussed on the fauna and what you would be experiencing in and around Brisbane. So I think we’ve been, we’ve been very focussed on that.

We’re used to seeing Australian shows tone down those elements so they’re more familiar to international audiences, but Bluey seems to embrace them wholeheartedly. The game captures so many of those everyday experiences that feel familiar to Australians. I grew up in South Australia and now live in Melbourne, and there’s so much in the game that resonates with me.

When we played the game, we noticed that the photography mechanic doesn’t have a scoring system. Was that something you considered during development, even if it didn’t affect progression?

It was something we considered early on, but in the end, we really wanted to focus on that creative play and the ability of the player to express themselves as they want. So if you fully complete a level and go back to it, you can replace all of the photos in your album and that’s our way of seeing sort of the players wanting to create their perfect albums. Like, what is the best photo of a kid for themselves, for their album, rather than a specific score.

We do have in the Grannies gameplay, which is exclusive to the deluxe version. There is a high score and a time trial of how much carnage you can do with the Grannies little car in the backyard. So there is the one scoring system we have, but we’ve intentionally kept it very specific. But also the travel gameplay does also have that aspect of trying to catch more, to capture all the animals. And so there is a bit of a high score there. 

You’ve mentioned the for real life play, the game features the focus on the for real life play as well. Can you tell me a bit about that? Like, was testing the games for real life part of the development?

Yeah, it’s been a pillar from the very beginning, the “why” of our game of having meaningful play between families, especially of parents and kids, but it could also be siblings of different ages and really trying to encourage the things that you’ve learned and experienced in the game to be stuff you can do outside of the game. And you were mentioning earlier about how specific some of the some of the aspects of the game can be to Queensland or even to Australia.

We’ve made sure that the play for real life can be recreated anywhere in the world. So in our rendition of Barky Boats, you’re creating twigs in the Scenic Rim and going down a beautiful stream. But when you get the page that describes how you’d recreate that at home, you could do that in your bathtub with, you know, certain props around the house, so it doesn’t have to be in the glorious Australian bush, it could be recreated in a high rise apartment anywhere in the world. 

Can you talk about the differences between the Switch and Switch 2 versions and does the Switch 2 version use any of the system specific features like the mouse?

Yep. So, yes, the Switch 2 has 60 frames per second, whereas the Switch version is at 30.

And the scrapbook is a big creative feature of the game, where you can decorate your scrapbook and do colouring in. The mouse functionality of the Switch 2 is one of the best ways to enjoy that. So, yeah, just enabling the mouse functionality allows for more precise colouring in and placement of stickers. So, for sure, that has been a benefit.

We found that with the touchscreen as well that that is a way to interact with the scrapbook, and the moment we looked at the Switch 2 exclusive features, the mouse was a no-brainer for that aspect of the game.

The fact you can just pop off the 2 Joy-Con so you can easily from someone playing it, you know, in a handheld format and then handing one of the Joy-Con to a friend and it just immediately becoming that couch co-op, that simplicity that you can do on either of the Switches is sort of definitely a plus.

Thanks to Karl for his time. This interview has been lightly edited for clarity and readability.

Where to Buy

Bluey’s Happy Snaps

Amazon $68 Big W $59 EB Games $69.95 Gamesmen $69.95 JB Hi-Fi $68 eShop $54.94 Target $59

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