Don’t worry, Lego Horizon Adventures won’t scar your kids with “devastating” and “heavy” moments

You’re in luck, parents, as you won’t have to play through Lego Horizon Adventures before your kid does just to make sure it isn’t too dark.

Anyone that’s played either of the Horizon games knows that there are parts of the game that are quite serious in nature. After all, it’s a post-post apocalypse game, it was never going to be a family friendly adventure. Except, well, it soon will be, as Lego Horizon Adventures was announced at Summer Game Fest last month, and the Lego games have always been targeted towards kids, much like this one. So of course there comes the question, “will this game actually be suitable for kids?” Its PEGI 7 age rating certainly suggests so, but in a recent interview with GamesIndustry.biz, Guerrilla Games’ narrative director James Windeler explained how they made it suitable for a younger audience.

“We have tried to keep as much of the story as possible,” Windeler explained. “A lot of what happens in the world, like the destruction of the old world… that’s a pretty heavy theme for an eight-year-old. So we needed to find ways to keep that present in the story, because it is essential to Horizon. But it is also not something we leaned on. You won’t find some of those devastating reveals from the first game, like those corporate masterminds dead around the table or anything like that.”

At the same time, Windeler did make it clear that they made sure it still felt like Horizon, despite the tonal change. “We have definitely bent the rules a lot. But the characters remain core to who they are. I think we’ve found a really good balance with it. We have a lot of help. Ashley Burch is back as the voice of Aloy, and JB Blanc (as Rost). And you would have heard the exuberance to their performances. It is different to what the other games are, but they’re still recognisable. They’re part of it and they bought into it, and that’s been a huge boon to us.”

Lego Horizon Adventures doesn’t have a release date just yet, but it is due out this holiday season. Despite Horizon being a first-party PlayStation game, it won’t just be releasing on PS5 though, as it’s also planned for PC, and surprisingly, Nintendo Switch.