• Price: $14.99 USD (currently on sale for $7.49 – lowest price ever – until February 13th)
  • There appears to be an ownership discount for those who own other Switch games from Forever Entertainment
• Developer: Polygoat
• Publisher: Forever Entertainment
• Release Date: October 24, 2024

I’m just bearly barely too young to have seen much of the Care Bears series when it first came out in the early eighties. But I’m familiar enough with the adorable cast and their infamous “Care Bear Stare.”

The series seems to be making a comeback lately, with Care Bears: Unlock the Magic (2019) providing about 50 episodes and specials for viewers to enjoy. That TV show inspired Care Bears: To The Rescue, a platformer released a few months ago on Switch.

I thought it looked pretty cute, so of course I wanted to check it out. The premise of the game is that Bluster, leader of the “Bad Crowd,” has lost control of his latest scheme, causing a massive “Bad Seed” to spread throughout the Silver Lining. The Care Bears must remove it before it’s too late!

Players will travel through 5 different sections – or “worlds” – and complete the stages within to make progress towards destroying the Bad Seed. There are 5 platforming stages in each world, which each have their own biome and theme.

You can choose between 5 different Care Bears to control, including Funshine, Good Luck, Share, Cheer, and Grumpy Bear. Each Care Bear has a unique special passive effect, such as hints on where to find sticker collectibles, HP restoration, or a speed boost. For the most part, I found it pretty easy to find the stickers, so I didn’t really use that bear.

Instead, I mostly used Share Bear for their healing ability. The bears all have 3 hearts worth of health, which they can lose if you run into environmental hazards like Bad Roots, or if enemies attack you. (I did think it would have been more interesting if the bears had different amounts of hearts, speed stats, etc.)

Use your bear’s Belly Badge Power to “defeat” enemies by removing the effects of the Bad Roots and turning them back into regular critters. The Belly Badge Power can also be used to remove some Bad Roots from your path, or in tandem with another Care Bear to activate some sort of path ahead.

The controls are very simple to use, with only 3 buttons to press. Initially the levels are short and fairly simple too, but they gradually get longer. They included checkpoints to keep your progress if you mess up and fall.

While falling will reduce your hearts to zero, the game doesn’t have lives or anything; it just puts you back at the start of the level or the last checkpoint, and you apparently keep the stickers and stars you’ve collected so far. I think this is a pretty forgiving game.

The platforming sections (and game performance) are pretty decent, but I did have a few critiques. For one thing, we can’t use Belly Badge Powers mid jump, which would have been helpful. Those powers all look – and perform – the same, so it can get a little monotonous at times.

Additionally, the stars we collect don’t seem to have much use. I think it would have been nice if we could have spent those stars on stat increases. And it would be cute if we could spend stars on little costumes or accessories for the Care Bears. (Maybe even a palette swap?)

I did have a decent experience with the platforming overall, though. I really liked some of the mechanics in those levels. It was entertaining to watch the Care Bears slide down rainbows and float across the sky on vines carried by bees. The third world had my favorite ways to get around.

After you finish the 5 platforming levels in each world, there’s also a “shoot ‘em up” level where you control a flying vehicle to go after parts of the Bad Seed. You have to dodge rocks, lasers, and other obstacles to get to the Bad Seed and shoot your own lasers at it. I didn’t love these stages, but they’re not too bad since you just reappear if you lose all of your hearts.

The seventh and final stage in each world is some sort of mini game. I liked these better than the shoot ‘em up stages because they were much easier.

I wish that they would have included story scenes for each stage, as the story is fairly short in the first place. It only takes a few hours to beat the game. There are a lot of things to like about it, with cute animated scenes and a fantastic soundtrack. I liked a lot of small details, such as the arrangement of the stars in some areas.

Care Bears: To The Rescue could certainly be a good first platformer for kids, but that’s not to say that adults couldn’t enjoy it, too. There’s a multiplayer mode I was unable to test, but that might be a fun option for family and friends to play together.

For more Care Bears fun, you might want to check out the Care Bears: Unlock the Magic game coming out in late March. Different from To The Rescue, Unlock the Magic is a party game with 12 mini games spread across more than 200 levels.