Snack World: The Dungeon Crawl Gold

There’s a lot to digest when it comes to Snack World, and like red bean paste, you either love it or can’t stomach it. If the idea of a glorified casino with a simple battle system and insane level spikes makes your mouth water, Snack World is a dungeon crawler worth delving into. There is in fact a significant amount of content with side quests, crafting, and collecting that gives prospective explorers plenty to take part in. But the gameplay still turns up incredibly repetitive, and the smorgasbord of comedy styles makes it even more tedious getting from one dungeon to the next.

A dungeon crawler in kawaii sauce. Entertaining, but it could have been much better.

Snack World: The Dungeon Crawl - Gold is a good entry to the RPG genre, but it may be too simple for some experienced players.

The main campaign will take you at least 25-30 hours to beat, and if you’re having fun, dozens more hours can be sunk into end-game content. As long as you don’t want it do, the quest for better gear never ends.

It can be good, simple fun when it wants to be and even in its most aggravating moments, it manages to be carried by a cast of entertaining characters in a bizarre, charming world.

What Snackworld: The Dungeon Crawl - Gold lacks in gameplay depth, it makes up for with it's great sense of humour and vibrant style.

Snack World finally comes to Europe with its latest version, fully equipped with dozens of hours of content. This is great at first glance, because if you like the game and you enjoy its mechanics, the enjoyment is just guaranteed. However, despite the well-executed multiplayer options and a huge variety of content, the overall experience comes out to be so repetitive after 20 hours or so, which is a pity as Level-5 doesn’t explore the gameplay options as much as it could have been.

It's not an essential video game, nor does it seek to be: it meets the playable, although it stands out in terms of fun thanks to its sense of humor. In addition, audio-visual seems like a very round work.

As a dungeon crawler, Snack World doesn't stand out among all the other similar (and better) games. But the sense of humor, powered by a magnificent Spanish translation and dub, manages to achieve great levels of charm an personality. If you're looking for something simple and fun to be in a good mood... This is it.

There's a lot that I wanted to like about Snack World. Lite-dungeon crawling, a deep loot system, colourful visuals, quirky 'meta' humour – all the right ingredients are here for a staple dish in my personal video game cuisine. While it all looked great on the menu, though, what has eventually been plated and served is more like fast food than fine dining. It's still enjoyable, but it hasn't been made with the same love and care and can make you feel a bit uneasy.

Charming loot and monster hunt with a high grind factor and unfortunately without any splitscreen option.

Snack World has a great sense of humor, great bosses and it’s a lot of fun with friends… but it’s also very simple and repetitive. It could’ve been a much better game, but we’ve still had fun with it.

Snack World: The Dungeon Crawl - Gold is a journey with highs and lows. The gameplay itself is quite entertaining with cool weapons and slick movement. On the other end, it is also very grindy, with dialogue that can become real grating. Some of these problems fade away in multiplayer, which makes it such a missed opportunity to make that aspect a bigger focus. Snack World isn't a bad game, but it’s somewhat misguided in how it wants to present itself. If you can deal with the frustration, you will find that the dungeons themselves can be fairly entertaining.

Overall, there really is nothing fundamentally wrong here, but with its reliance on deriving humour from treating RPG standards as dated and ripe for mockery, Snack World: The Dungeon Crawl - Gold pretty much shoots itself in the foot. Leaning into these tropes, and really investing the time into a combat system that is as much of a treat as the rest of the game could have really elevated this above a saturated market. Collecting 'Snacks' and using them as party members is fun, and a worthwhile curiosity, plus visually it has charming designs, reminiscent of Final Fantasy: My Life as a King, which both enthrals and delights. Sadly, though, without a sturdy and, more importantly, fun battle system driving this forward, this may leave a sour taste for those expecting something of the calibre of Level-5's past RPG efforts.

It's just a shame that half of the crawl is getting past the game's process – and ego. [Issue #45 – March/April 2020, p. 68]

Snack World works as a tasty, but not entirely satisfying, appetizer, with too much filler and some strange balancing choices.

Everything in the game, from the bad humor to the kinda fun combat, coalesced into a mess that I wanted to continue exploring, if only out of morbid curiosity and my love of loot. Unless you are a die-hard dungeon crawler, I don’t see this game holding your interest.

Snack World really isn't my thing. As much as I am a fan of Level-5, the pitch of this one is out, and as such, too much of it falls flat. It's a satirical game that's trying too hard and if it was funny, then the jokes it makes would be directed at its own faults as a game. It's a workable dungeon crawler without being inspired, but unlike the rest of Level-5's library, this one is focused on being attractive to one demographic at the expense of just about everyone else. Where most other Level-5 games are a joy and delight, this one really felt too much like a slog.

What has the ingredients to be a compelling RPG with roguelike side dishes, unfortunately, boils down to a mediocre cold buffet of half-baked ideas and passable visuals that never fully gets the taste buds tingling.

Snack World is a repetitive and rough dungeon crawler which kids will love; adults and fans of the genre not so much.

Its mediocre ideas result in nothing more than a functionality that spoils solid art. Snack World: The Dungeon Crawl – Gold could have been a unique take on the genre but unfortunately cashes out too early to make any kind of lasting impression.

Snack World: The Dungeon Crawl Gold falls short in most areas with it's dull, monotonous gameplay. Repetitive missions and gameplay lead to this one wearing out it's welcome after a few short hours, despite having lots of content.

Level 5 clearly had a card to play in offering a dungeon crawler for a younger audience, but unfortunately, Snack World is a bad draw. The title quickly becomes boring and despite a few interesting systems, the fun starts running out after a couple of hours. If you are a dungeon crawler enthusiast, keep moving, Snack World won't scratch your itch for exploration.

Snack World could have been a great gravel game for on the go but is stranded by the many confusing underlying systems and moderate writing. A pity, because the idea behind this game is perfect on the Switch.