Captain Toad: Treasure Tracker review - Nintendo’s distinctive brand of playful charm

£39.99; Wii U; Nintendo

At the start of each of his stages in Captain Toad: Treasure Tracker, the mushroom kingdom’s resident loot-truffler shouts “ready for adventure!”, a cute summation of one of Nintendo’s most ingenious spin-offs.

Based on the puzzle platforming bonus levels found in the magisterial Super Mario 3D World, Captain Toad: Treasure Tracker presents a virtual storybook of isometric cuboid levels ripe with Nintendo’s distinctive brand of playful charm. Encumbered by a backpack and helmet, Toad’s inability to leap between platforms turns each short yet sweet stage into a gauntlet of logic puzzles with a star and three hidden crystals waiting to be discovered.

An optional objective for each stage offers a modicum of replayability and challenge, but rather than ratchet up the difficulty, Treasure Tracker is quietly content to coax you into its placid world with its buoyant soundtrack, cutesy aesthetic and Toad’s broad array of excitable chirrups.

While the roaming Goombas and Shy Guys can topple our funghi friend with ease, the real enemy in Treasure Tracker is the camera. Rather than cementing itself to fixed axis points like in Mario’s recent 3D adventures, the viewpoint can be fully rotated around the jigsaw-esque environments, which is a necessity when trying to avoid stupidly falling foul of a collapsing bridge.

Controlling the camera with the GamePad’s right stick functions perfectly well, but it frequently collides with the mandatory gyroscope camera controls. Maintaining steady control of the Wii U’s GamePad is painfully awkward, especially when having to glance to and from the second screen when using the touchpad to move certain platforms.

Control niggles aside, it’s hard to pick major fault with the video game equivalent of a child’s pop-up picture book. Like a blissful technicolour dream, Captain Toad: Treasure Tracker is over all too soon (abated slightly by the reduced retail price), but it’d be difficult to find a more calming way to spend a cozy afternoon than with Nintendo’s unsung hero finally striking gold.