The Lost Legends of Redwall: The Scout Anthology

What The Lost Legends of Redwall: The Scout Anthology is

The Scout Anthology is a single-purchase narrative adventure game set in the licensed Redwall universe, described in its own official FAQ as "a story-driven stealth adventure game." The player chooses one of two protagonists - Sophia or Liam - a choice that changes the dialogue, then explores Mossflower Wood to save the village of Lilygrove from the villain Scumsnout. It is fully voice-acted by a professional cast, and it bundles three acts that were originally released episodically into one complete game.

The signature system is stealth by smell: a real-time "dynamic scent system" using wind and particle simulation, so detection depends on where you are relative to the breeze rather than on line of sight alone. The story is "a brand new original story set the winter before the events of the first book," making it the first new official Redwall story since 2011. It was developed by SOMA Games LLC of Newberg, Oregon, with Forthright Entertainment as Steam publisher, and released on 20 February 2024.

Why Redwall families buy this rather than another subscription

The commercial shape is the first differentiator, and in this catalogue it is close to unique. Every other significant children's product here - TruPlay, Minno, Yippee, Lightgliders, Bentkey - is a subscription, which means the value question is permanently open and the household keeps paying to keep access. This is $24.99 once. There is no renewal, no tier, no upsell and nothing to cancel; the game either gets played or it does not, and either way the transaction is finished. For parents tired of managing six recurring charges, that alone is worth something, and it is the reason to consider a $24.99 outlay that at first glance looks expensive next to a $7.99 month.

The second differentiator is the licence and the craft on top of it. This is an official Redwall story - made in partnership with The Redwall Abbey Company Limited and The Random House Group Limited - and the first new one since 2011, set the winter before the events of the first book. For a child who has read the novels, that is not a comparable experience to a generic animated Bible game; it is a continuation of something they already love. And the game is built with more ambition than the licence required: two selectable protagonists with different dialogue, a full professional voice cast, and a stealth system driven by real-time wind and scent simulation rather than the usual vision cones. SOMA Games clearly made the game it wanted to make.

The dynamic scent system: stealth by wind rather than sightlines

Most stealth games ask you to stay out of an enemy's vision cone. The Scout Anthology asks you to stay downwind. Its signature mechanic is a real-time "dynamic scent system" built on wind and particle simulation: your scent travels, the wind carries it, and whether a patrolling enemy notices you depends on where you are standing relative to that airflow. It fits the source material exactly - a woodland world of small animals, where smell is the sense that matters and a mouse's advantage over a rat is knowing which way the breeze is blowing. The game is a stealth adventure rather than a combat game, so this system is not a side mechanic; it is the primary way you interact with danger.

Two consequences follow, one good and one practical. The good one: a stealth system based on an invisible, physically simulated medium is genuinely different from what almost every other game in the family space offers, and it rewards patience and observation rather than reaction speed - which suits a younger or less dextrous player better than a reflex game would. The practical one: real-time particle simulation is why the minimum specification includes a discrete graphics card. A GTX 1050 Max Q or Radeon R7 360, DirectX 11 and 8 GB of RAM is not a demanding modern specification, but it is well above what integrated-graphics school laptops and Chromebooks provide. The mechanic that makes the game distinctive is also the reason it will not run on the cheapest machine in the house.

The age-rating conflict: E for Everyone, Teen, or 9+?

There is no single answer to how old a player should be, because SOMA's own materials disagree. The official FAQ and product page state an ESRB rating of E for Everyone and describe "All ages gameplay." SOMA Games' own press kit for the same game displays an ESRB Teen logo. Steam shows no ESRB rating at all. The separate Redwall mobile app on the App Store carries a 9+ age rating. Those are four different signals from three vendor-controlled sources plus a store, and we are not going to adjudicate between them - the point of flagging it is that a parent who reads only one of those pages will come away with a firm impression that another vendor page contradicts.

Practically, this means the age question has to be settled the old way: by a parent looking at the game rather than at a badge. The subject matter helps - Redwall is a children's and young-adult book series about woodland animals, the game is stealth rather than combat, and the premise is rescuing a village from a villain. None of that suggests Teen-level content. But a Teen logo on the developer's own press kit is not nothing, and the absence of any rating on Steam removes the one source a buyer would normally trust to settle it. If the age of the player is the deciding factor in whether you buy, ask SOMA Games directly or watch gameplay footage before spending $24.99 on a product with no demo.

Platforms: what runs it, what does not, and what console buyers actually get

The full Anthology is a PC and Mac product bought on Steam. Windows minimum is Windows 10, an Intel Core i5-7500 or AMD FX-9370, 8 GB of RAM, a GeForce GTX 1050 Max Q or Radeon R7 360, DirectX 11 and 11 GB of storage. The macOS minimum is Mac OS X 10.9, an Intel Core i5, 8 GB of RAM, a GeForce GTX 775M and the same 11 GB - a specification that plainly describes an Intel-era Mac, with no published Apple Silicon support at all. Anyone on an M-series MacBook should treat compatibility as unverified rather than assumed. Languages are English, Spanish (Latin America), French, German and Portuguese (Brazil); the FAQ notes that other titles in the series have no localisation "due to resource limitations."

The console situation needs stating clearly because it is easy to misread. Xbox One and PS4 releases exist, but the official page says "Act 1 available on Xbox One and PS4" - so a console buyer is not getting the three-act Anthology that PC and Mac buyers get, and no console price is published anywhere to weigh against the $24.99 Steam figure. PS4 availability is additionally limited to "countries where English, French, Portuguese, and Spanish are spoken." And on the platform many families would ask about first, SOMA is unambiguous: "We do not have plans to port the games to Nintendo Switch at this time." For a woodland-animal adventure aimed partly at children, the absence of the handheld console children actually own is the single biggest practical limitation of the whole product.

Pricing

Where The Lost Legends of Redwall: The Scout Anthology falls behind

No Nintendo Switch, by explicit statement. SOMA's FAQ says "We do not have plans to port the games to Nintendo Switch at this time." For a game about woodland animals aimed at least partly at children, missing the handheld console that dominates that audience is the biggest single gap in the product - and because the statement is a plan rather than a technical obstacle, there is nothing to wait for either.

Console buyers get Act 1, not the Anthology. The official page states "Act 1 available on Xbox One and PS4." A PC or Mac buyer pays $24.99 for three acts bundled into one game; a console buyer gets one act at an unpublished price. PS4 access is further limited to "countries where English, French, Portuguese, and Spanish are spoken." That is a materially different product sold under the same name, and the difference is stated only in passing.

The vendor's own sources disagree about the age rating. The official FAQ and product page say ESRB E for Everyone with "All ages gameplay"; SOMA's press kit displays an ESRB Teen logo; Steam displays no rating. The separate mobile app is 9+. A parent cannot resolve this from the published material, and for a children's product the age rating is not a detail they should have to resolve themselves.

No demo, and the price is not on the official site. Nothing free exists on any platform, so $24.99 is spent before you know whether the game runs acceptably on your machine or suits your child. Compounding it, legendsofredwall.com does not print the price - you have to reach Steam to discover it. For a single-purchase product competing against subscriptions that all let you look first, that is the wrong side of the trade.

Hardware and localisation both narrow the audience. An 11 GB install plus a discrete-GPU minimum rules out Chromebooks and low-end school laptops entirely, and the macOS specification points at an Intel-era build with no published Apple Silicon support - a serious question mark for anyone on an M-series Mac. Five languages is decent for a small studio, but the FAQ concedes that other titles in the series have none "due to resource limitations," which sets expectations for future support.

Redwall: The Scout Anthology vs. TruPlay vs. Lightgliders

These are not the same kind of purchase, and that is the main thing to understand. The Scout Anthology is a $24.99 one-time PC and Mac game: finished, owned, single-player, licensed from a well-known book series, with a professional voice cast and a real stealth simulation. TruPlay is a subscription platform of Bible-based games, comics and videos for ages 4-12, ad-free and kidSAFE-certified, running on phones and tablets. Lightgliders is a nonprofit multiplayer world for ages 6-14 with weekly Bible-based activities and a documented approach to community safety. One is a game you buy; the other two are services you rent.

Accessibility splits them sharply. TruPlay and Lightgliders run on the devices children already have - iPhones, iPads, Android tablets - and both are free to install. The Scout Anthology needs a Windows 10 machine with a GTX 1050-class GPU and 11 GB free, or an Intel Mac with a GTX 775M, and offers no demo before the $24.99 is spent. If the household's hardware is a school Chromebook and a shared iPad, this game is simply not available to it, whatever its merits. That is a hardware verdict rather than a quality one.

Content-wise they aim at different things. TruPlay and Lightgliders are explicitly discipleship products - Bible stories, weekly faith activities, an evangelistic frame. The Scout Anthology is a licensed literary adventure made by a Christian studio, and it does not present itself as Bible teaching. Store signals are correspondingly hard to compare: TruPlay sits at 4.5 from 3,390 App Store ratings and Lightgliders at 4.2 from 100, while the 4.7 from 39 attached to Redwall belongs to the separate mobile app rather than to this PC game and rests on a very small sample. If you want faith content on a tablet, the subscriptions win. If you want a real game a Redwall reader will finish and remember, and you have the hardware, this wins outright.

Alternatives to The Lost Legends of Redwall: The Scout Anthology

TruPlay★ 4.5A subscription platform of Bible-based games, comics and videos for ages 4-12, ad-free and kidSAFE-certified - and it runs on the phone or tablet a child already has.→Lightgliders★ 4.2A nonprofit multiplayer world for ages 6-14 with weekly Bible-based activities and safe multiplayer play, free to install and openly documented on moderation.→Bible App for Kids★ 4.8The highest-rated children's Bible app there is, free, and the obvious first install for younger children before anyone spends $24.99 on a PC game.→Minno★ 4.5Christian streaming for ages 2-10 with VeggieTales, originals and screen-free audio. Passive viewing rather than play, but it works on every device in the house.→

More Bible Apps for Kids

Daily Bible Trivia & Quiz★ 4.9The free multiple-choice Bible game that has quietly become a nightly family ritual on millions of phones - and the closest thing the category has to a default pick.→Parent Cue★ 4.8Orange's free parenting companion asks for a child's name and birth date, then feeds you age-appropriate faith content one week at a time - a genuinely gentle piece of software with one conspicuous gap: nobody will tell you what the paid tier costs.→Bible App for Kids★ 4.8YouVersion and OneHope's free kids' Bible app has quietly become the default for families and children's ministries on six continents - and the curriculum bolted onto it is the part most parents never hear about.→Superbook★ 4.8CBN’s free animated Bible app has quietly become the go-to for car rides, Sunday school overflow, and bedtime - and it’s the rare kids’ app that holds attention without burning through batteries or budgets.→Adventures in Odyssey Club★ 4.7The official subscription app for the audio-drama series Christian families have been listening to since 1987 - and the rare kids product where the parents are already fans.→Slugs & Bugs★ 4.6Randall Goodgame’s Scripture-memory songs have quietly become the soundtrack of a generation of Christian homeschool kitchens - and they hold up far better than most things you put on for the kids.→