Coraline is a 2009 action-adventure game developed by Papaya Studio for the Wii and PlayStation 2 and by Art Co. It was published by D3 Publisher to coincide with the theatrical release of Henry Selick's stop motion animated film adaptation of Neil Gaiman's novel.

The Story Behind Coraline

The Nintendo DS version features no voice acting. The film, adapted from Neil Gaiman's novel, was scheduled for theatrical release on February 6, 2009. The programming team was made up of Karl Lai, Jefferson Hobbs, Jordan Lehmiller, Geren Taylor, and Valentinus Boentaran.

The game was released in North American retail stores on January 27, 2009. The Nintendo DS version's credits include lead programmer Mitsunori Takemoto, art director Toshihiro Hirosawa, and designers Toyoharu Moriyama, Aya Sakurai, and Masumi Yanagawa. The game was designed by Chris Eddy, Dan Shocknesse, Khaled Elhout, and Steve Bianchi, using the Havok engine.

How Coraline Plays

A variety of mini-games drive progression, encompassing arcade-style activities like slingshot target shooting at pests, apples, or beehives, card matching, cooking pancakes, balancing on pipes, and music sequences requiring precise, non-rhythmic button inputs on the D-pad and face buttons. In the basement theater, she confronts grotesque taffy-like versions of Other Spink and Other Forcible, extracting the second eye from their grasp. The story closely follows the film's plot, with Coraline encountering her doting but button-eyed Other Mother and enjoying an idealized alternate life before uncovering its dark underbelly.

The Other Wybie helps her escape through the tunnel, but back in the real world, Coraline finds her parents missing and realizes the Beldam has kidnapped them. Collectible buttons serve as currency, earned from mini-games and spent to unlock outfits or purchase passes to skip challenging tasks. Gameplay revolves around exploration, fetch quests, and a variety of mini-games.

Why Players Still Load It Up

Platt and Casamassina cited technical shortcomings that compounded these flaws, including long and frequent loading times (exacerbated by unskippable door-opening cinematics) on the PS2 version, as well as game-crashing bugs that prevented completion in some cases. Critics found the core experience dated, repetitive, and unengaging. Reviewers portrayed the title as a missed opportunity that is competent in presentation but undermined by uninspired mechanics, uneven difficulty, and a failure to translate the source material's sense of wonder and darkness into interactive form.

However, she faulted the audio for its repetitious musical snippets, adequate sound effects, and lack of voice acting. The cutscenes and in-game events were said to gloss over key moments, leaving the narrative choppy and incomplete for newcomers. Dylan Platt of GameZone and Matt Cabral of GamePro credited the characters and settings for closely mirroring their cinematic counterparts despite hardware limitations, particularly on the PS2.

Coraline — Frequently Asked Questions