Pocoyo Party, the new educational game for very small children from RecoTechnology, came out last week. As a dad of a four-year-old, I was very interested in trying to engage my son with the game. My son often wants to play with his older sister and me, but his little hands just aren't coordinated enough to handle the complex controllers of today's consoles. Pocoyo Party seemed like a good way to meet in the middle.
My plan was two-fold. First, I put the Pocoyo cartoon into heavy rotation on Netflix, pretty much running it for four hours a day in our living room. Once my son was socialized to the show, I introduced the game. I am not exaggerating when I say that Pocoyo (and Pocoyo Party in particular) is now his favorite thing on the planet.
The game is specially designed to allow the tiniest kids to engage with it. The left analog stick is only used to navigate between activities and to pick characters. Button presses are kept to a minimum, typically just using X to select and O to go back. Most of the activities in the game are controlled by waving or flipping the controller - something a four-year-old can handle. A simple racing game simply challenges kids to hold down the X button to go, and let go when passing obstacles.
I sat with my son and held the controller with him for our first session, but he seems to get the gist of how to play Pocoyo Party pretty well now. The above recording was of our second play session, with my son almost entirely running the show. Unfortunately, PlayStation Network weirdness cut our voices out of the broadcast, which is a shame, because it was about the cutest thing on the planet. "I'm winning! I'm winning! I'm great at this!"
My son and I will attempt another stream in a few day, after all of this PS Network nonsense has settled down a bit. In the meantime, Pocoyo Planet is now available on PlayStation 4 and Nintendo Switch.
