Captain Toad: Treasure Tracker Review

When Nintendo announced Captain Toad was getting his own game everyone was delighted, overjoyed in fact, thinking of a downloadable Captain Toad puzzle game. Then Nintendo said; “No, actually, this is a full retail release”, and it sounded a bit weird to everyone. The Captain Toad minigames in Super Mario 3D World were fun and cute, but would an entire game revolving around them really work? Would it even be fun when it’s just Captain Toad, the only Super Mario character who is seemingly incapable of jumping? As it turns out, yes it works, yes it’s fun, and no he can’t jump.

In Super Mario 3D World there were just a small handful of Captain Toad stages: 3D dioramas where moving the camera around the stage would reveal every secret, all that was left was to navigate the vertically challenged Captain Toad towards stars to collect the only way he knows how: slowly waddling there. Although it seemed silly, giving the character an environment that can be navigated without jumping was actually a fantastic idea which completely changed the pace of the Mario formula.

Now we have Captain Toad: Treasure Tracker, where Captain Toad is setting off once again to collect stars and precious gems along the way. It all starts out very similarly to the 3D World stages, with the player twisting the camera about to discover gem locations while making Toad waddle towards them and around those pesky enemies. It’s all fairly simple stuff, but the real joy of the game comes from locating hidden gems and finding the (usually) well-hidden paths; by the time you finish a level with all collectibles you will know every hidden pathway and secret, unless you’re still looking for those Golden Mushrooms, as they can be a nightmare.

Captain Toad: Treasure Tracker is an interesting game, because although the concept seems limited the level design makes everything feel incredibly varied. Taking many of the level themes from Super Mario 3D World and putting them into Captain Toad’s levels make them all feel very different, even though they may seem familiar to players of 3D World. Truly the lack of sheer gameplay variety is entirely made up for in level design and structure – just like all good puzzle games!

Captain Toad is the sort of game where you become angry with yourself more often than with the game. Many puzzles are often made of two or three moving pieces and it’s a simple case of moving the pieces until the solution becomes obvious. This is where the camera comes in. The camera is designed to go all the way around the level, underneath and over the top, allowing you to see all routes. However, even the mighty camera may find that some tunnels are obscured; navigating the stages in these cases is incredibly difficult. More than once I was “stuck” only to find that I was missing a hidden pathway the entire time. Indeed, Captain Toad is a simple game that somehow manages to utterly baffle and confuse you.

There’s a story to Captain Toad, too! However it’s one that’s entirely told through cute animations in cutscenes, and not at all through dialogue. Despite this it’s easy to understand what’s going on, especially with a story as simple as this one.

There are also “boss battles”, however one of them is actually repeated with a mildly increasing difficulty multiple times. It’s a shame that this was ignored, after highly polishing the rest of the game.

In terms of audio and graphics the game is easily on-par with Super Mario 3D World, with music and sound effects equally catchy and atmospheric, while the graphics look gorgeous running at 60FPS. Does such a simple game need such a framerate? No, but it’s there and it helps the entire game feel more polished and even feel more like a big-budget game.

Once the game is complete you unlock a selection of stages from Super Mario 3D World to explore and complete as Captain Toad, although not being able to jump and only slowly walk really hinders the design of these levels – although it’s a neat little distraction, they don’t feel fun to play like in Super Mario 3D World, nor do they feel as fun as the rest of Captain Toad’s levels.

But one thing I came away from Captain Toad thinking was: “I want to play this again” and it’s rare I get the urge to replay games once complete. This is probably helped by the fact that each stage has an additional (usually fairly difficult) challenge attached to it that you only discover once the level is complete. It’s almost like having an extra difficulty unlocked for each stage once you finish them and is more than enough reason to revisit the Captain’s beautiful world.