As a fan of puzzles games I knew as soon as I saw Captain Toad that I really wanted to play it. Captain Toad is an isometric puzzle game that lets you rotate your perspective to find your way around small and compact stages. This a fairly unique offering from Nintendo as more often that not we see Nintendo stick to more traditional platformers. The story is fairly shallow but I don't expect much of a narrative from Mario franchise anyway. I'm happy to say however I was pleasantly surprised by many aspects of Captain Toad from the amount of objectives in each stage to the length of the game as a whole. Don't let the simple design fool you there is a surprising amount of depth to this well polished puzzle-platformer.
In Captain Toad you play as both Toad and Toadette in an attempt to rescue each other from a giant bird named Wingo. On your journey to help the two toadstools reunite you must explore several bite-sized levels. When you start a level you can only see a small fraction of the whole space. You must rotate the camera so you can not only see where you are going but spot different paths, obstacles, and collectibles. You're goal in each stage is simply to reach the star but there are many additional challenges that help fill out the experience. In each stage their are three hidden gems and to find each one will require fully exploring each level. Also, each stage has an objective such as to not be seen by enemies, take no damage, or find a usually well-hidden golden mushroom.
To some extent Captain Toad still plays like a platformer. You can move Toad and Toadette around the stage to collect coins, avoid enemies, and interact with various mechanisms. Not only will you be moving your camera to see new parts of the level but you may have to rotate sections of the map or tap different parts to move platforms around. Doing this will grant you access to places you either couldn't see or reach beforehand. Since Toad can't jump enemies are a big threat and many times you have no choice but to simply avoid them. Get hit once and you shirk down to a little toad and if you don't find a mushroom a second hit will kill you. If you can get up high you many be able to fall on their heads but this often isn't available. Thankfully, many stages offer turnips which you can pull up out of the ground and throw them at an enemy to take them out.
I feel like the Mario franchise aesthetics lend itself perfectly not for creating cute little worlds featured in Captain Toad. While the stages are pretty to look at it is still easy to see where you can traverse and what you can interact with. I was shocked by how long this game was. I didn't count exactly but it has to be near a hundred stages! What really extends the length and amount of challenge offered are all the secondary objectives. Beating the levels really isn't too difficult but if you want to find all the gems and get the bonus objectives you'll have to work a bit harder. Also their is a pixel toad to find on every level and a time trail mode is unlocked eventually. If you want to nice pick up and play puzzle game you'll have a hard time finding one as nicely broken up or as polished as Captain Toad.