Snack World: treasure hunting – Gold in the Test

Welcome to the Snack World, a Fantasy world, which – in addition to monsters and magic, even pleasant things of modern life, such as Smartphones and super markets offering. As the title suggests, revolves a lot around food. The town is called Croquetta, Monster the to fight chestnut or cabbage dog – it’s called Snacks and the residents have culinary names like bag of wind, Carbonara or Tartar.

Why have I never heard of it?

The brand of Snack World is a so-called Multimedia Franchise. That is, it is – at least in the Asian home market – on a wide variety of digital and analog channels in parallel distributed: in the Form of several video games, Manga, CGI Anime, and – of course-very important – as a toy series. The challenge on the domestic market: There are only game in this video.

The collectible toy series? Planned, but never realized. The Manga? Failed display, a first Band to appear sometime in mid-2020. The CGI-Anime: Not in English translated and only in a few countries (but not, for example in Austria) on Streaming-Services available in English. And finally, the video games: There was in Japan in 2017, a 3DS game which was ported in an expanded Form 2018 to the Switch, while South Korea got an MMO for Smartphones. The Rest of the world had to wait until now and get with the present Version now in a revised variant of the Switch port.

The main change, in addition to Translation to: In Japan, 3DS and Switch work in combination with the toy set, collectible key chains in the Form of weapons and monsters. Similar to how Amiibo & co. are installed in these NFC Chips, whereby the respective subject / the monsters in the game can be accepted. Since the Western market is not available, has been deleted, this Feature simply. Instead, you can play once a day for a fortune teller wheel of fortune and good luck *maybe* one of the collection objects to win.

Difficult according to some of the cross-entry in the game will fall. Anime, Manga & co. twist around the classic hero trio: an inexperienced but brave young hero, a hot-tempered, but (presumably) good-hearted sorceress and, of course, a good-natured, but simple powerhouse. The clichés will also be Packed otherwise, continues to grow strongly: in Love with the Hero in the Princess of the country – unfortunately a spoiled Brat, and her father, the king, wrapped around your Finger has. The king means well, but as I said under the thumb of his daughter. And of course there is an evil / actually, ridiculous villains, who played the young hero evil. And so on, etc. PP … but it really doesn’t matter ‘ cause we generate to start the game with a completely own character, which meets the above-mentioned protagonists, although from time to time, but don’t really have much to do with them.

Story: Diet. Dungeon Crawler: Standard Fare

The Story is rather flat, but tries at least to score points by self-irony and Humor. Do … sometimes. The Moisturizer is the Princess of an octopus needs to be under a lot of physical effort “produced” or that the “oarlocks Dschinnis” for your “complement Rumba” are famous, some enjoying themselves, others perhaps less.

But we come to the actual heart of the game, the Dungeon crawl. To the extent known standard fare, albeit in some cases with different names: cure potions, perfumes have a short-term status effects. Different weapons (Jaras) are at different speeds and have different attack patterns. Each weapon also has two randomized special attacks, up to two random bonus powers, and the conclusion can finally be as “killer” is particularly effective against certain types of monsters/Snacks. No one needs to remember now but, what are the ax against creatures of nature and/or which sword against the Undead was more effective. And also whether or not the Eichkater as a warrior, as the Masked melon (answer: no) does not need to be memorized. You against the opponent, the attacking, a more effective weapon on the Jara-keyring, this is indicated accordingly, and with the pressure of the shoulder button will flash quickly changed to the more effective weapon.

Is played alone or off – and online with up to three other friends. Gain one occasionally gets from NPCs and also Monster (Snacks) can be in our group, if a Snackie-photo opportunity (Selfie + Snack …) offers. These can then be used as a group snack and accompany us from now on as a NPC companion, including the stage of ascent, when we use it particularly often. Alternatively, you can use but also as a pocket snack. Means: Occasionally and for a short period of time we can transform ourselves into the appropriate Snack, and all of his skills to use. Just for boss battles often mean the rash.

Again, again, ok, that’s enough

The tasks themselves, although in a Story and in addition to the tasks separately, are actually always the same: The spoiled Princess, the king or one of the other residents of Croquetta asks us for help. Then we run through the predefined area maps (forest, desert, etc.) or by a random generated Dungeon. Annoying: The camera can be only within a fixed 90 degree angle swing. Between Level-A and -output, we do X enemies, collect Y pieces of Z and/or defeat a certain Boss.

Unfortunately, the album with variety, extremely. After several hours, it was a countless times in the same area of forest and in the desert on the road and has the – sometimes better, sometimes worse – randomly generated Dungeons at least x times from the top to the bottom.

The reward for our effort: ingredients!

Not only are the areas to be recycled in the missions themselves excessively, even the Looting System of the game, forcing a practically to repeat specific missions “voluntarily”. At the end of each Mission – usually done in five to 15 minutes – waving, depending on the performance of the service, a different number of treasure chests. Each of these can contain the in advance well-known the main prize of the Mission, in most cases, but there are just more ingredients for our inventory.

Of these ingredients you collect in the game over the course of countless. You can let your schirren number but not confuse you. In reality, almost every ingredient that belongs just to a particular material category or color. “Rusty coils” and “high-tech RAM” are both, for example, in the high-tech area, the “Green mushroom” and the “mint green jam” deliver – Surprise! – the color Green. Why do we need this?

While weapons, shields, and potions, found, won or bought can be allowed to headgear and garments are also manufactured even. The System is very simple, you only need the appropriate recipe and the right ingredients. You want to Tinker, for example, a wool cap, you need just a Flag, a unit of cotton, two units high and three units of White. Done!

Similarly, the improvement of weapons, shields and Potions work. Really better variants of basic variants of sword, shield, axe & co. can be found in the game are rare. In the menu “” may combine to Reinforce, we are, however, two objects of the same type with a few ingredients and you will then get a better and stronger new Version.

Hip & trendy: Less role-playing calories

To belong to a real Dungeon Crawler also features role playing game elements, of course. Our character has seven character values – beauty, strength, wisdom, etc. – but can be only increased by 5 levels, and each level corresponds to a specific, somewhat arbitrary Bonus. Inspiration Level 1, for example, increase the critical hit rat, wisdom on Level 2 of the resistance against the damage type darkness, and especially beautiful people are well prepared against the Wind better (Three weather Taft?).

Equipment offers little surprisingly different bonuses to attack, defense, and so on. Who is allowed to work for a real Princess, but also look accordingly. Regularly we are informed of what brand, color and Style is currently “in”. Who dress accordingly, it gets a Bonus to the Chance of especially rare treasures to find. Practically, that may attracts the game like a button push as well as possible and, in fact, worn equipment (use of equipment) and what others see (with cutout detailing armor) are different.

CONCLUSION

Snack World would probably be more interesting if it would not only give the video game in our Latitudes. So the emotional attachment to the game world and its inhabitants is somehow missing. Some of the limitations (keyword: camera, repeat areas of the end) realizes it is also the port from a handheld title. Overall, solid, but not really exciting Dungeon Crawler is full of self-irony, trying sometimes a little too desperately to be funny.

What Snack World: treasure hunting – Gold is? An entertaining Dungeon Crawler.
Tested: Version 1.0 on Nintendo Switch
Developer / Publisher: LEVEL-5 / Nintendo
Release: 14. February 2020
Link: Official Website