Mission in Snowdriftland

Oh, the dreaded snow level. The bane of most gamer’s existence. With the slippery ground made up of solid ice, this classic video game cliché was a much-maligned mainstay of the 8- and 16-bit era. But the new Switch game Mission in Snowdriftland not only embraces the frigid tundra, but celebrates it. With a snowman named Chubby and a quest to save all of your favorite retro gaming sprites, is this the perfect game to play this time of year? Find out now when I review Mission in Snowdriftland by Tons of Bits.

Times are tough for Chubby the snowman. No matter how hard he tries, he never gets cast in a role that actually fits his specific talents. There was that time when an inexperienced level design stuck him behind a tree and you don’t even what to see what happened when he was cast in a desert stage. He clearly needs a break. And, as luck would have it, he gets one by being the right snowman at the right time. You see, the nefarious El Pix has entered the archive room and stolen many historically significant artifacts. And to make matters worse, he’s hidden them in the last place anybody wants to go – the dreaded snow level. But Chubby doesn’t mind the freezing temperatures, he thrives in these conditions, making him the perfect hero for this extremely important job.

Mission in Snowdriftland is a fairly straight-forward side-scrolling platformer, the likes you would have seen in the early days of the Nintendo Entertainment System. Chubby jumps on bad guys, occasionally slides down hills and that’s it. There are no weapons, no power-ups, no special abilities to learn. This is a game where a snowman jumps on penguins in order to save sprites stolen from other, more famous games.

The game is spread across two dozen stages that take us through the icy lake, the forest, the mountain and into the dangerous caves. While the levels start out simple enough, they’ll get challenging as the stages introduce new obstacles and enemies. What makes the game tricky is that there are no checkpoints, so you better not run out of life or you’ll be starting over from the beginning of the stage. It’s a nice reminder of a time when platforming games were supposed to ramp up the difficulty.

While the game itself won’t take you very long to finish, there is plenty of incentive to go back through the stages. Or, at least, there will be. Currently, the main collectible in the Switch version of the game are the snowflakes. There are 24 of them in each level, some of which hidden in some real out-of-the-way places. Eventually, in a future update, there will be a hidden area inserted into every stage, allowing you to pick up a glitch icon. These hidden areas are currently found in the PC version, but the Switch port is lagging behind a bit. That’s disappointing, because hunting down these glitch icons adds a lot to the game.

Without the collect-a-thon tasks, this really is a very simple and barebones game. Don’t get me wrong, Chubby handles well and the level designs are really well done, but it often felt like the game was missing something. It needed an extra ability that played into snowman lore, like maybe rolling his body in the snow to grow bigger or using his carrot nose to stab penguins. Perhaps there could have been warmer levels that would melt our hero into a puddle, forcing him to rebuild himself. There really isn’t anything like that here, and Chubby could have been swapped out with literally any other character without having to change his moves.

I also found the game to be weirdly inconsistent at times. One example of this involves the penguins, one of the first enemies we’re introduced to. These little guys are easy to defeat, because all you have to do is jump on them. But watch out, because the bigger version will inexplicably hurt our hero if he tries the same tactic. But hang on, the only way to defeat this even bigger penguin is, you guessed it, to jump on its head a bunch of times. Why can I jump on the small and large versions, but not the medium penguin? What sense does that make?

Thankfully, the good outweighs the bad. The level designs are increasingly interesting, the enemies are constantly changing and the bosses, while a bit on the easy side, are all on theme and fun to beat up. It also has a nice clean look and embraces the snow level conceit. The game knows that this is most people’s least favorite retro game cliché, and I like how it makes the snow-covered terrain all their own. Mission in Snowdriftland isn’t going to win any awards for originality, but it’s a well-made platformer with a festive holiday theme. Sometimes that’s all you need to have a good time.