Games / Game Reviews

Review: Captain Toad's Treasure Tracker

By Sean Booker
December 15, 2014 - 11:01

Captain Toad’s Treasure Tracker is a simple, cute perspective-based puzzle platformer with a good deal of variety. First seen as rare bonuses in Super Mario 3D World, these puzzle box-like stages have you traversing areas filled with fun camera tricks. The levels are creative and there are a good deal of them despite starting off fairly low in difficulty. The whimsical nature of the game easily helps your enjoyment last from start to finish.

Toadette has been kidnapped and it’s up to Captain Toad to track her down. Armed with a backpack far too heavy to allow the ability to jump, you must walk and run your way through various stages finding gems and coins along the way. Such as in modern Mario, there are three hidden collectables in each stage as well as a bonus objective. This extra usually requires completing the stage differently which adds a nice level of diverse replay value. Collecting enough will even also unlock extra stages from 3D World that have been reworked to allow for our non-jumping protagonist to work through. There’s a good amount of content to play through while working to save your friend.  

Perspective and how you control the camera is center stage to this game. You will have to rotate the gamepad (or, more easily, use the right analog stick) to position the camera around the map. Doing so will reveal hidden routes and lead you along the course. Like a very light version of an M.C. Escher drawing the perspective is the key to making your way to the end and finding the hidden bonuses scattered throughout. This causes you to have to pause often in order to survey the area from every angle before proceeding, making sure not to miss any hidden corner or enemy. It’s a fun and unique puzzle solving mechanic that works nicely with the slow speed to which Toad moves.

The stages are nicely varied which is great to see. Toad can’t perform many differently actions but the levels all cater to his small skillset. Some will replicate the small cube-like worlds we saw in 3D World whereas others may be mazes or confusing haunted houses for example. Unfortunately the degree of difficulty is quite low for the majority of these. Collecting all three gems is quite simple and the bonus objective usually doesn’t push you much further. For the majority of the main story you will be flying through these stages which doesn’t help when you factor in the the low number of them.

This may be the case for the, approximately, two to three hour main campaign but upon completion you unlock another series of stages that greatly increase the difficulty and layout variety. This second section makes the first seem like easy mode in comparison. The stages are longer and will require replaying a number of times in order to uncover everything. It’s great that there is a real challenge to find in Captain Toad but a bit of a let down that you have to slowly work through so much else to get to it.

Though the game starts off slow, it’s charm and cute aesthetic will be enjoyable the whole way through. The levels have a good degree of variance along with interesting puzzles to solve. Planning your moves and spinning the camera all over the place in order to find the doorway forward can be quite fun. Finishing the story leads to the best reward of, easily, some of the best stages in the game and that’s why you should make sure to play through to the end.

Rating: 8 /10

Last Updated: August 31, 2023 - 08:12