While some people love to complain about Nintendo making too many games aimed at kids, in the indie space I’d say they’re a little more rare to find. Yes, there’s a smattering of educational games, or ones that are meant more for earlier years in some way, but there actually aren’t all that many for early gamers ready to start cutting their teeth on something a little more like they see their parents playing. Enter Nicktoons & The Dice of Destiny, a very kid-forward take on the action RPG genre that may not rival the likes of Diablo or other heavy hitters, but at least makes the most of its license and delivers something thoroughly family-friendly and playable.

Brought together by a mishap involving a misguided wish to play Creatures and Chasms for real on the part of Timmy Turner from The Fairly Oddparents, characters from a wide variety of Nickelodeon franchises from over the years have been assembled. Given the theme in question, each character has chosen a different character class to represent, so there’s absolutely a little bit of everything, and plenty of play styles to adopt. In terms of play, I think the best description would be serviceable, as the animations and flow can be a little clunky, but you will be armed with a variety of skills as you level up and you can absolutely get work done. If you’re able to play with some family or friends, and have people covering both offensive might and some support, you can absolutely do some damage, so thankfully you’ll also have the option to up the difficulty or even lower it if you’re finding it doesn’t suit your skill level.

In terms of criticisms, I want to be clear that in the context of a game to be played with family, this is perfectly fine and actually represents an audience that’s typically overlooked. That said, if you and your friends are really into the genre, and have played a variety of games in it, this will absolutely look like a pedestrian effort, and it may be but that’s also somewhat by design. I do understand the need to have a unified animation style that can work for every franchise represented in a reasonable fashion, but I will admit that I’m not really a fan of where this landed. It works, and there’s no question to who everyone is, but it does look a bit off, and perhaps a bit cheap somehow in terms of overall effort. Regardless, if you either have kids or are simply a massive fan of both classic and contemporary Nicktoons, this should be a fun romp, even if not necessarily a very deep one.