Moonbug hopes that its latest venture will allow young kids to express themselves in an entirely new way as the studio is teaming up to produce a video game that preschoolers can control using just their voices. 

Under the deal, the studio and its partner, San Francisco-based video game producer Volley, will develop voice-controlled educational games based on a number of Moonbug series, including CoComelon, Blippi, Little Baby Bum, Oddbods and Morphle. 

The Moonbug games will be accessible through the Volley app on Fire TV and Roku. Volley is launching on smart TVs so it can highlight the strong visuals of Moonbug’s brands, says a Volley spokesperson. The goal is to release the first Moonbug game in the first half of 2025. 

Founded in 2016, Volley has made games that target a broad audience of kids, parents and grandparents, but this deal marks its first foray into building games specifically designed for the preschool set. The challenge is that understanding children’s speech has traditionally been difficult for the sort of AI-powered tech that powers Volley’s games, and toddlers expect very simple and streamlined technology, according to the gamemaker. 

However, the upside is that kids who are still developing motor skills—and might struggle with a remote control or a bulky controller—can still play video games just by talking, according to Volley. 

The gamemaker has created original titles including Question of the Day and Karaoke, along with licensed games based on the TV series Wheel of Fortune, Jeopardy! and Are You Smarter Than a Fifth Grader?.

Volley’s games don’t require any extra hardware. For example, its Karaoke game lets players download the Volley app on Roku TV, and then use their Roku Voice Remote—or their phone if their remote doesn’t support voice input—as a microphone to sing along to karaoke tunes. 

Volley’s games have been played in more than 30 million homes, and it raised US$55 million in a Series C funding round in July. The developer is using the money to build out the tech powering its games, including speech-recognition and large-language models.