The Gruffalo may have terrible claws, teeth and poisonous warts, but the enduringly popular children’s character’s new mobile app is distinctly un-terrible.
Gruffalo: Games is the work of Magic Light Pictures, which produced the animated films The Gruffalo and The Gruffalo’s Child, based on the books of author Julia Donaldson and illustrator Axel Scheffler.
As its title makes clear, the £2.99 app is not a digital book. Instead, it’s a collection of six mini-games based on characters from the Gruffalo stories, including snap, three-in-a-row, matching and jigsaws.
Its release follows Magic Light’s launch of Room On The Broom Games in 2013, based on another Donaldson/Scheffler book.
“We wanted to deliver something that we hope can be as good as the films, and that we dream of being as good in its own little way as the amazing books,” Magic Light’s Martin Pope tells The Guardian.
“What we’re doing is games from the world of The Gruffalo, which can encourage imagination. We had a phonics expert advise on the alphabet sequencing aspects, but it’s clearly not a book.”
That’s not a huge surprise, given that Donaldson spoke out in 2011 about her decision to rule out a book-app version of The Gruffalo:
“The publishers showed me an ebook of Alice in Wonderland. They said, ‘Look, you can press buttons and do this and that’, and they showed me the page where Alice’s neck gets longer.
“There’s a button the child can press to make the neck stretch, and I thought, well, if the child’s doing that, they are not going to be listening or reading, ‘I wish my cat Dinah was here’ or whatever it says in the text – they’re just going to be fiddling with this wretched button.”
Gruffalo: Games is less a case of Donaldson changing her mind, and more about a trusted partner finding an alternative way to bring The Gruffalo to touchscreens. Pope hopes it will inspire children to re-read the books, not just play the games.
“Julia is passionately in favour of reading, and particularly children and parents reading together: the joy of turning one of Axel’s beautifully-designed pages and discovering something new on the next page with your child,” he says.
“What we’re doing is something completely different: it’s in the world of The Gruffalo, and if you want to be using something digital, you can have fun and explore that world a bit. And we hope that children and parents will play it together.”
Magic Light worked with developer Stormcloud Games on both Room On The Broom Games and Gruffalo: Games, benefitting from the company’s skills honed in its own children’s mobile games: Mr Shingu’s Paper Zoo and Paper Ocean.
Pope says that six years spent making the two Gruffalo films – which have become staples of the Christmas television schedule in the UK – ensured that Magic Light took its time ensuring Gruffalo: Games was true to Donaldson and Scheffler’s world and characters.
“There is something wonderful about what they have created, and the challenge is to make sure that anything we do around it is amazing and can last for a long time. I believe The Gruffalo will be around for years and years to come, so we’ve got to make sure we’re thinking in the long term,” he says.
“There are certainly children’s illustrated books that have gone out, had a much bigger fanfare, and then a couple of years’ later they’ve disappeared. That wouldn’t be a good way of stewarding the bits of The Gruffalo that we’re lucky to be involved with.”
The new app is part of a wider (but still careful) digital expansion for The Gruffalo, including the two films’ recent appearance within British children’s app Hopster, which offers a mix of Netflix-style streaming TV shows and educational games.
“We think Hopster is a really interesting and delightful app: the people behind it are really good, and well-intentioned, and doing something that will reach out,” said Pope.
“We see them as a partner in the same way that the Eden Project was a partner when we had screenings there, or the Barbican when we had a live orchestra providing the soundtrack. It’s about people accessing the films in a new and interesting, but very nicely-curated way.”
With Gruffalo: Games now live, Magic Light is turning its attention to more digital projects: another Room On The Broom app, and a second Gruffalo app that will “try to encourage children to engage with the real world, as well as The Gruffalo”.
More mini-games for the current app are also a possibility, although Pope suggested that children will find plenty of challenge in the meantime pitting their reactions against the character’s notably un-terrible card skills.
“I quite like the fact that The Gruffalo is pretty good at Snap. He’s no fool!” said Pope. “Not all games would work with The Gruffalo playing against you though. I’m not sure he could play Battleships...”
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