Panda Games

Roll, sprint and leap through bamboo forests against the clock.

Christmas Panda Run

NEW PANDA RUN

Run Panda Run

Baby Panda Run Carnival Christmas Amusement Park 2

Crash Bandicoot and Little Panda: On the Run! 2

Panda Christmas Adventure Run

Tap-to-play care and discovery games for the youngest players.

Baby Panda Care

Baby Panda Up

Baby Panda Dentist Care

Baby Panda Drink Bar

Baby Panda Hurricane Safety

Baby Panda Ice Cream Truck

Why the panda keeps getting cast

A panda is a designer's gift: a soft ball with two black patches that reads at any size, cannot look threatening, and bounces convincingly because it is already the right shape. That is why the animal turns up in so many games that have nothing else in common. The shelf gathers everything whose tag or title puts a panda in the lead, and most of it is bright, short-leveled and tuned for a young or relaxed player. It sits inside the broader animal games hub the way a single actor sits inside a cast, and the largest slice is the platformer games style, where the bear jumps across bamboo stalks and rolls through caves collecting whatever is edible. The rest is a spread of puzzles, kitchens and co-op pairs that share nothing but the star.

The label reads as a children's shelf, and it mostly is; the kids games hub filters the same tone across every theme. But it is not only that. Some of the platformers are stiff physics challenges that take an adult a few tries, the panda kitchens are real time-management games with a queue and a timer, and the co-op pairs demand two people talking to each other. What the panda promises is not that the game is easy but that it is kind: no gore, no jump scares, a fail state that is a comic bounce rather than a death. Players who want that promise on a different animal can wander to the penguin games shelf, which shares almost exactly the same crowd and the same slapstick sense of falling over.

Categories:AnimalPlatformer

Roll, bounce, feed

Three ways of playing account for most of the shelf. The first is the roll-and-jump platformer: arrows or a swipe to move, one button to leap, and levels built around momentum, since a round bear rolls downhill whether you meant it to or not. The better ones lean into that with slopes and bounce pads, and the hardest levels belong beside the jumping games hub. The second is the physics puzzle, where you cut a rope, tip a plank or pop a balloon so the panda drops onto its bamboo; those are one-tap, portrait and reward thinking rather than reflexes, and they overlap with the puzzle games hub. The third is feeding, in every form from catching falling shoots to running a noodle counter with a panda in an apron.

The cooking games end of the shelf deserves a note because it is bigger than it looks. Panda restaurants are ordinary time-management games in fur: customers arrive, you tap ingredients in order, serve before the patience bar drains, upgrade the kitchen with the earnings. They are portrait, one-thumb and endless, which makes them the shelf's best fit for a phone. Controls across the whole label are simple by design: on a desktop the arrow keys and space bar do nearly everything, on a phone the games switch to on-screen buttons or swipes, and the start screen says which. Nothing needs an install; a level that loads slowly is fetching artwork, and pandas come with a lot of it. The baby-panda games for the youngest players are simpler still, a tap on whatever moves.

Categories:PuzzleCooking

Two pandas on one keyboard

The most distinctive corner of the shelf is the pair game. A run of levels is built for two pandas at once, one on the arrow keys and one on WASD, each with a different ability — one is light enough to cross thin ice, the other heavy enough to press a switch — so neither can finish alone. It is the design that turns a single keyboard into a co-op machine, and it lives here and in the two player games hub at the same time. Played by siblings it produces exactly the arguments you would expect and exactly the shared triumph when a level finally falls. A solo player can manage both bears with practice, but that is not the point, and the levels are more fun with someone to blame.

The solo adventure games are the shelf's longest stays: a panda on a journey across a map of levels, with a story told in pictures and a boss at the end of each world. And the bubble shooter games with a panda at the cannon are the shortest, a few minutes of aiming and popping that ask nothing of you afterward. Between those two poles almost anyone finds a fit. The shelf is a safe browse for a parent, a soft landing for a player who wants nothing sharp, and a surprisingly good place to test a friendship on a shared keyboard. The sections below split it by the words that appear in titles, so the runners, the restaurants and the baby-panda games each have their own row.

Categories:2 PlayerAdventure