When the 3DS died - and despite an impressive few years clinging on, I think it's now safe to say the beautifully eccentric handheld's time is finally up - alongside it died a certain type of game. Not exactly double-A so much as mid-budget and high concept, the 3DS was home to so many offbeat treats: things like Attack of the Friday Monsters, Crimson Shroud or Fantasy Life - all with lashings of charm and just as often spotty in execution, and all which came, one way or another, via Level-5.
Snack World is Level-5's latest, a multimedia assault akin to its hugely successful Yo-Kai Watch series that's also a manga, an anime and now this, a sizable action RPG that's finally made it westwards with The Dungeon Crawl - Gold. It places you in a sugar-sweet high fantasy world where you're joined by Chup, Mayonna, Béarnaise and several others in a series of bite-sized adventures as you level up and unearth new gear to equip and new togs to wear.
It's a world that's dizzyingly dense, the hub town of Tutti Frutti full of quest-givers and shops to peruse, the list of activities beyond the town's borders soon growing staggeringly long. You certainly can't fault Snack World when it comes to serving up content, nor can you find fault with the level of energy it puts into it all; this has all the noise, pizazz and high-pitched histrionics of the most upbeat anime, with an accompanying storm of weak jokes and puns that never quite land. Endearing? Maybe, though that depends entirely on your mindset and age. Snack World more often than not left me feeling like I was suffering through a hangover even though I'd not touched a drop the night before.