Hey Duggee: The Big Badge App

Review by eFreeware

Finding a preschool app that does not interrupt play with ads or ask for money every few minutes is harder than it should be. Most free options in the educational category have to make their money somewhere. Hey Duggee: The Big Badge App takes the opposite approach: it is a paid app from BBC Studios Distribution Ltd., costs $2.99, carries no ads and offers no in-app purchases.

It is the first official app tied to the CBeebies show, and that matters for parents who already know Duggee and the Squirrels. The appeal is not novelty for its own sake. It is that the characters, the Clubhouse setting and the badge-earning structure are the same ones your child already recognizes from television.

The app has been on Google Play since February 2016 and was updated in October 2025. It sits at a 3.9 average from 233 ratings, with more than 10,000 installs. Those are modest numbers.

A paid, quiet alternative to the free-for-all

What sets this apart from most preschool games is what it refuses to do. There are no ads and no in-app purchases, and the developer describes the experience as safe and trusted for young children. For a parent who has watched a toddler tap through an ad for something unrelated, that combination is the whole pitch.

The trade-off is scale. Six mini-games is not a huge amount of content, and the app is built tightly around the show rather than being a general-purpose learning tool. It is a play set with a badge theme, built around the characters and their activities rather than around educational outcomes.

It is also worth noting who made it. Scary Beasties, a BAFTA-winning studio that works on children's content, and Studio AKA, an animation studio with BAFTA wins and an Oscar nomination, are credited with the app. That is a serious pedigree for a small app.

Six badges, six small activities

The structure is simple: the Squirrels work toward badges, and each badge is a self-contained activity. The developer lists six of them, and each one maps to a familiar preschool play pattern. The Hair Badge lets you cut, color and style Duggee's hair with tools including a brush, scissors, dye and a hair growth cream for when you cut too much. It is the kind of open-ended play that does not have a wrong answer, which is useful when the player is three.

The Drawing Badge is a coloring activity. You pick from pens, pencils and paints and color in the Squirrels, and the developer notes that when you are happy with the picture, Duggee displays it in the Clubhouse. That small payoff matters. The Super Squirrel Badge follows a similar dress-up logic, with capes, masks and hats to mix and match, and a reveal where the Squirrels show off the costume.

The Cake Badge walks through a sequence: add ingredients, stir, let Duggee put it in the oven, then decorate with icing, sprinkles and fruit before presenting it. The Leaf Badge is a spotting game, where you help the Squirrels find the right leaves across interactive scenes and run into familiar faces along the way. The Tinsel Badge is the Christmas one: choose a tree, add tinsel and baubles and a fairy, then cover it in lights and watch the Clubhouse light up.

Across all six, the pattern is the same. A short setup, a few choices, a small reveal. For a preschooler, that is a feature, not a limitation: the activity ends when they are done, not when they lose.

Making something and seeing it again

The feature that ties the six games together is the gallery. A gallery holds a Polaroid of everything made in the games. Instead of six disconnected mini-games, you have a record of your own creations.

It also gives a parent something to talk about with a child. You can open the gallery and ask about the cake, or the hair, or the Super Squirrel costume, and the child has a concrete thing to point at. That is the sort of detail that separates a well-made preschool app from a lazy one.

The camera permission is connected to this. Camera access lets a child add a photo to a profile, which keeps their progress in the game. The app does not gather or keep personal information. For a parent who reads permission prompts carefully, that explanation is worth having in advance.

What a session probably looks like

The activities are short enough to fit into a waiting room, a long car ride or the gap before dinner.

The variety is deliberate. Hair styling, coloring, dress-up, baking, searching and decorating are different enough that a child is unlikely to get bored in one sitting, and the Christmas theme gives the Tinsel Badge a seasonal feel that parents can bring out in December.

Suited to preschoolers and the people supervising them

This is built for the pre-school audience of the show, roughly the three-to-five range, and for the adults who set up the device. The themes are familiar, and the content rating is Everyone. A child who already watches Hey Duggee will recognize the Clubhouse, the Squirrels and Duggee himself.

It also suits parents who specifically want a paid app. The $2.99 price, the absence of ads and the absence of in-app purchases are all stated. For families who have been burned by free apps with aggressive monetization, that is the main reason to consider this one.

It is less obviously suited to older children or to anyone looking for a broad educational tool. The activities are creative and playful rather than instructional. That is not a flaw in the app so much as a description of what it is: a companion to a specific television show, made for the audience of that show.

A small, well-made companion to the show

The case for Hey Duggee: The Big Badge App rests on three things: it is official, it is paid with no ads or in-app purchases, and it is built by studios with real credentials in children's animation and games. The 3.9 average from 233 ratings is not a rave, but it is a reasonable score for a niche paid app.

The case against is mostly about scope. Six mini-games, a gallery and a badge theme is a modest package. It suits families who want a playful badge-themed activity set rather than a structured lesson. If you want a quiet, safe, character-driven play set for a preschooler who already loves the show, the $2.99 is easy to justify.

My recommendation is for parents of Hey Duggee fans in the pre-school years who value an ad-free, one-time purchase over a larger free app with interruptions. Install it, hand it over, and let them earn a few badges.

What's new in version 1.10.2

Minor amends