Hungry Baby : Party Treats
Nintendo Switch

Developed By : Digital Melody
Published By : Qubic Games
Category : Board Game, Party, Puzzle
Release : May 24, 2019

Any parent knows that in the world, there is one constant and absolute truth : babies are always hungry. Digital Melody looks to take this simple truth and put a fun twist to it in Hungry Baby : Party Treats on the Nintendo Switch. Play as any one of dozens of different types of food, and go wake and feed the baby!

Each level of the game is presented as a board. You’ll begin on one side, and on the other will be the baby that needs to be woken and fed. Scattered around the board are a number of alarm clocks, all of which need to be collected to wake the baby. Once this is done, just get to the baby and be consumed! It may sound simple, but as usual : there’s a catch.

Plaguing all of the levels are tons of traps that serve to hinder your progress. You’ll encounter circular saw floor-traps, and gigantic stamps that will come down from the ceiling…both of which will instantly kill you and send you back to the start point. The trick on top of the trick however, is that these traps don’t really present themselves until you occupy the space on which they reside. If you have an almost immediate reaction, you just might be able to pedal backwards and save yourself, but more often than not you’ll be getting sent back. But be warned, the traps are plentiful so you’ll be looking for that one and only perfect path to find your way around.

You have some power-ups that can help you too. As you move along the board, you’ll notice a small XP-like bar filling up with each successful move you make. Each time the bar fills you’ll earn a special ability that can you help you along on your navigation by revealing everything in the immediate squares surrounding you, or creating a checkpoint so you won’t have to go all the way back to the start.

As an adult, Hungry Baby isn’t much to get excited about. There are so many traps, and almost no chance you’ll get to retreat in time if you hit one, so the game seems more like a memory game than strategy. The one thing that made this game better for me to play was turning the sound down…the music choice got incredibly irritating after only a few moments.

However, we at The Switch Effect wanted to do something new with this game, and it’s something that we will feature when we are able to with applicable games. We wanted to toss in quick review opinions of a couple young ones, so I had my almost 3-year old son and my 10-year old step-son try playing this for a bit.

The younger boy has only recently been getting introduced to playing games, so the concept of navigating the almost invisible maze was lost on him. However, he thoroughly enjoyed choosing the different food characters and bouncing around endlessly on the boards. The older had a much better experience with the game, and found himself enjoying figuring out how to move around and learning the special abilities by trial-and-error.

In the end, if you’re looking to pick up a game for your little one, grabbing a copy of Hungry Baby : Party Treats in the eShop might not be a bad decision. In the opinion of a couple of kids, the game is fun, and easy to learn and sink into. The nature of it being a memory-like game can also help with pattern recognition, so you could even eke out some educational value from the game. Top that all off with the low price (normally $4.99, currently on sale for $2.99 as of writing this) and you can’t really go wrong.