(Wer einen detaillierten Eindruck haben möchte, wie vollkommen unmöglich dieses Spiel im Singleplayer ist, kann sich dieses Video hier ansehen: Taugt das was? - Think of the Children)

Ein Spiel, in dem man auf Kinder aufpassen und sie davon abhalten muss, sich auf alle möglichen und unmöglichen Arten umzubringen. Im lokalen Koop mit Freunden dürfte das makabere Konzept für einigen Spaß Sorgen, zumindest für eine Stunde oder zwei. Im Singleplayer ist das Spiel hingegen völlig unspielbar, denn es skaliert den Schwierigkeitsgrad nicht nach unten. Das heißt, man muss ganz allein auf genauso viele Kinder aufpassen und sie vor genauso vielen Gefahren schützen wie zu viert. Das ist vollkommen unmöglich. Dass auf der Shopseite angegeben wird, das Spiel hätte einen Einzelspielermodus, ist deshalb eine Unverschämtheit. Es ist wirklich nur im Koop vernünftig spielbar, und zwar nur im lokalen, den Online-Koop unterstützt es ja nicht mal.

I have been playing Think of the Children with my 8 year old son. After seeing Reginald get impaled through the face, he now realizes why I yell at him to "stop juggling the ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ kitchen knives" in the supermarket. Thank you, Jammed Up Studios, for helping me to be a better parent.

Some days you just want to play a game with your friends. Sit down and play something on a couch and pass the controller around. To me, think of the children is one of those games.

It's good solid fun, You get to growl at and hammer-throw children. All the while micromanaging a day out, don't burn the snags, slop sunscreen on uncle over there. And most importantly don't let the kids die.
The music is perfect. It just fits so we into the style of the game for me. It's bright, cheerful and energetic. The sound adds so much to the overall game feel, and personally it's fantastic.

Think of the Children is just so satisfyingly fun and chaotic. Definitely a recommended game from me.

Think of the Children is fun for a couple levels but ultimately gets repetetive and frustrating. My main issue is that it doesn't seem like there was any effort put into balancing the game for different player counts, the level seemed to be the same level of hectic for 2 players as it was for 1, and it already seemed like too much for 2 players (but by the end, we were sure that if it didn't scale, 4 players would be far too easy). Unfortunately the gameplay isn't all that compelling either. We were hoping it would be our next Overcooked, but there wasn't very much strategy to it. You get an A+ rating basically as long as you can complete a few tasks while keeping all of the children alive, and that just amounts to going wherever some kid is about to die whenever you're alerted to it, and completing tasks along the way. There's no need to think about who should do what when, or what route you'll take throughout the level while the clock ticks down. You just do it all, and it works, A+ (assuming you have at least 2 people). The graphics were nice, and I don't remember the music being offensive, but I also don't remember what it was like. The writing was great, the court room scenes were always fun but I felt like they slowed down the flow of the campaign a little too much with them being between every level. Finally, the game's pretty buggy. We had a 100% repeatable issue where if we started in campaign with two players, moved to party, and then switched back to campaign, the 2nd player would move to the 3rd player slot or take up 2 slots, and then in gameplay would just be replaced by player one's avatar and be unable to move. The final level in the game also bugged out on us at least twice forcing a restart. Also on the optimization front, my PC sounded like it was working much harder than the visuals would make me think is necessary, but I didn't notice any drops in framerate so that was nice.

I've been really harsh, and I'll admit my expectations were higher than they should have been, but I was still disappointed and I don't think the game is all that worth the time. It is at a nice price though, so if you're really looking for some great writing and almost Overcooked like gameplay, you'll find some fun here. Oh, and there's a lot of optional content although I didn't feel compelled at all to go for it after completing the campaign (took 2-3 hours to beat, my playtime on steam isn't representative as I played the drm-free version while waiting for steam key from humble).

I received Think of the Children in the most recent Humble Bundle. I've only played it for about an hour with my partner and we've had a decent time with it so far. Despite that, there's absolutely no chance I could recommend this game to anyone who isn't getting it in aforementioned bundle. Here's just a few reasons why.

The game is buggy: Controller support randomly stops working in the menus. I then went to my computer, restarted the game without a controller. Half of the prompts were keyboard prompts, the other half controller. The select level screen was stuck as if my controller's analog stick was stuck, but my controller wasn't connected.

The game is broken: Think of the Children is completely imbalanced. The first complaints made about the game are from as early as October 2017, when the game released. These complaints are posted everywhere from Steam reviews to the Community Hub to True Achievements. They all say the same thing: the game is unplayable solo. One of the devs (Tyrienous) responded back in Oct/Nov 2017 saying that a patch was being worked on. It's now nearly 2 years later and said patch is nowhere to be found.

The game is impossibly frustrating solo. It's challenging with 2 players. I imagine 3 players would be fairly easy and then 4 player local co-op would be a walk in the park. The fact that the game isn't balanced at all from solo to 4 players is ridiculous. It's quite literally the laziest thing you could do for a game that features those player options.

Think of the Children isn't necessarily a bad game. It's just completely unfinished and unloved by the devs. The developer or publisher shouldn't be agreeing to sell their game in bundles if said game desperately needs fixing. For that reason, I can't recommend it.

Wow, as a parent of 5 kids I can confirm that this game is pretty close to real life in just how stroke inducing taking care of a small herd of children can be! The devs have created a real couch co-op gem here with funny yet challenging gameplay, and if you like a challenge and having to use a little strategy than even the single player can be surprisingly rewarding too. I created a little lets play overview for your viewing pleasure that covers the first 3 real levels after the tutorial. https://youtu.be/w8bGjpVVXsE Enjoy and game on everyone :)

P.S. Sorry for the audio tick in the video, for some reason this game causes it but no other games do?

Went to the park
Threw some kids around
Threw one into a BBQ
Threw another into a Dingo
Last time I saw them
CPS took the rest of the kids away
Got Tosser Medal
Went home
Played some Think of the Children

Good times were had.

I had previously been suffering from acute parenting troubles where I wasn't able to function properly as an adult let alone as a parent of children, however I was recommended this game by my epihany in hopes it would help reduce my need to throw children into hordes of seagulls. Turns out this game was quite accurately my cure for the illness, and I couldn't be any happier with how well-equipped I am at dealing with my children when the need arises to rescue them from kangaroos or those awkward shopping moments.

You've done wonders for my health and for my three child- ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ JERRY GET AWAY FROM THE BIN CHICKENS.

Most of the bad reviews say it's really hard without friends. This is true. This game is meant for 4 people.

Pros:
Loads of funny costumes
Less then $10
Easy to learn, Hard to master
Slightly Educational
Great For Team Building

Cons:
Not enough levels
Only 4 player maximum
The achievements are broken
Difficultly Escalates Too Quickly

A fun concept for an overcook-like couch coop game, but unfortunately a not so fun (at least for us) implementation of the same.
The game becomes very quick very frenzied and very confusing, lacking the clean design of OC. The large scene and small scale of the interactable also doesn't help focusing, and things go too wild too fast to be entertaining for long enough.
Were I the dev, I would certainly consider the idea of a sequel with a cleaner and simpler design. Sometimes less is more (also, maybe I didn't find it, but a sprint option would be awesome and make things a little less stressful).
Gets a 50/100 from me, a near hit, but still a miss personally.