Wobbly Life Review — A Kid-Friendly GTA for Family and Friends

Some games launch on multiple platforms yet seem particularly well suited to the audience of one console. Open-world sandbox Wobbly Life is one of them. You can play it on all current consoles and PC, where it has already found a following, but it feels especially at home in the Nintendo Switch and Switch 2 libraries, where party games with local multiplayer have traditionally been popular. If you've already had your fill of Super Mario Party Jamboree or, say, Overcooked! All You Can Eat and are looking for another dose of multiplayer chaos, this is a solid option.

The release of a dedicated Switch 2 edition in August gave me a reason to try it for myself — and that's the version I played.

In Wobbly Life, you play as a "Wobbly," a little yellow person who looks as though they're made of gelatin. They wobble around an open world, completing various jobs for cash because Grandma has insisted they find work. Funny situations arise constantly thanks to the game's physics: Wobblies move in amusing ways and struggle to interact with their surroundings because of their jelly-like bodies. Two controller buttons control their hands, but even calling an elevator or picking up a ball is deliberately awkward, making everything happening on screen that much funnier.

You can spend plenty of time aimlessly experimenting with the physics, bouncing on trampolines and the like, but it's much more interesting to go looking for work: missions that take the form of creative minigames. There are dozens of them, covering all sorts of activities. Options include working at a diner, where you assemble burgers using the specified ingredients, disposing of waste at a nuclear power plant, and competing in races. The developers have come up with plenty of unusual scenarios that, thanks to their time limits and the Wobblies' floppy physics, almost always lead to something funny. Assembling a burger isn't quite so easy when you're in a hurry and buns, cheese slices, and patties are flying everywhere.

Interestingly, Wobbly Life bears some resemblance to the GTA games of the 2000s. There's an open world with city neighborhoods, suburbs, and countryside, a wide variety of vehicles, and the freedom to cause chaos between jobs. Even the island's overall layout brings Vice City and San Andreas to mind. You can spend your earnings on a house and a car. The minimap looks somewhat familiar, too, though it doesn't work particularly well: for some reason, GPS guidance cuts out just before you reach your destination, occasionally forcing you to check the map again to figure out exactly where you're supposed to go.

Although Wobbly Life has no full-fledged storyline, shootouts with enemies, or criminal activities, its underlying structure is what connects it to GTA. You head out to tackle a job, only to spot a vehicle you want to try or something fun to do along the way, and soon you're off on an entirely different adventure. That makes Wobbly Life a pretty good way to introduce a family member or child to the freedom GTA offers, without the violence, explicit content, and profanity of Rockstar's series.

Wobbly Life is worth checking out both as an open-world co-op game and as a more focused party experience for a group of friends. A separate Arcade section includes four different modes. One of these is Wobble Run, which has you racing through obstacle courses. It's essentially a miniature Fall Guys, complete with a surprisingly large selection of maps. A game within a game, really.

The Switch 2 version also supports GameShare: someone who owns a copy can share it with three friends to play together online or over a local wireless connection. Alternatively, you can gather on the couch and play on a single system: Wobbly Life on Switch 2 supports split-screen for up to 4 players.

Unfortunately, the technical side of this version leaves something to be desired. The frame rate feels like it hovers around 30 FPS, even in single-player. The graphics aren't anything special, either, with visible jagged edges on some objects. Combined with the camera bobbing as your Wobbly walks, which I couldn't find an option to disable, that frame rate gave me motion sickness fairly quickly.

While we're on the subject of visuals, the art style deserves a separate mention. It's minimalist and extremely unremarkable, even by indie standards. There's no shortage of creative ideas in the gameplay, but the plain art style means videos and screenshots alone don't really do Wobbly Life justice.

If you can look past the mediocre visuals, Wobbly Life offers plenty of fun for kids, parents playing with their children, and groups of friends gathering for some couch co-op. The Switch 2 version is somewhat disappointing on the technical front, but GameShare means a single copy lets you play with three friends on separate consoles, which is a major selling point for this edition.