Playable Advent calendar is heading to the Switch

The life of a snowman is already hard. Chubby, the game's protagonist, will never take a trip to the Caribbean, never can his hands Warm up by the fireplace and is dragged through cold cocoa from start to finish while working in the Video Game World because hot cocoa would melt him.

So to complain, he goes to UPIXO, a company that organizes video games, and complains to the receptionist about his suffering. But the management there has a completely different problem than poor customer service: El Pix, a penguin with a programming error, gained access to UPIXO's laboratory and bagged a whole sack full of video game artifacts.

He then went to the so-called Snowdriftland, where it is too cold for most video game heroes. In desperation, the managing director and his laboratory boss turn to Chubby, who can finally prove what he's made of in a return mission.

Source: PC Games

Ice flowers and hibernators

Snowdriftland is divided into four areas in which Chubby has to navigate through six jump-and-run levels. We don't have to be a second Einstein to figure out that this results in 24 levels that coincidentally mark the exact period between the first of December and Christmas Eve.

So if you have more patience and willpower than one of the children in the famous surprise egg commercial, you can play a level every day until Christmas. Or we just play everything at once (like the children in the Ü-Ei commercial)!

Even though the area is not called Snowdriftland for nothing – after all, we slide over blankets of snow and collect snowflakes everywhere – the ecosystem of each area offers different conditions. In the half-frozen lake, we balance over ice floes and climb glaciers.

In contrast, we moult our way through tree stumps in the forest and climb over spider webs. The mountain with its ice caps is somewhat reminiscent of the lake, but instead of teetering ice caps it gives us wafer-thin clouds to jump on, and in the cave the snowman works up a sweat watching the lava fountains.

As a reward, after each completed level we get one of the artifacts that El Pix stole from the UPIXO company. They each pay tribute to a specific title from video game history. For example, we collect a pixel alien that is very reminiscent of the descending Space Invaders and an antique tennis set that consists of two parallel lines and a dot like in Pong.

Source: PC Games



In addition to the normal platforming levels, Chubby also faces a matching boss at the end of each area, usually an oversized version of the enemies in the worlds, who receive our combined fury from the heart-destroying wights.

When he reaches the end of his artifact hunt, Chubby faces El Pix and has to steal one last piece of stolen goods from him by deleting the broken penguin from the hard drive.

There are also 24 snowflakes to collect in the normal levels, which with a lot of patience and spit give us access to a large bonus level.

The Steam version already received a content update on November 27, 2024, thanks to which each level now contains a secret room in which we have to collect an additional item. These additional items then enable Chubby to visit another bonus level. However, this content will not be released on the Switch until mid-December.

Easy to learn, hard to master

On his way through ice and snow, over hill and dale and into the unexplored depths of the video game world, Chubby doesn't have many tools at hand. He can run left and right, jump and slide down slopes because of his smooth butt, and nothing more.

But the simple controls in Mission in Snowdriftland are well done and also work without any problems on the Switch… Well, at least without any unintended problems. The game is still quite challenging at times because the controls don't require much understanding.

Maybe Chubby should ask for stopper socks for Christmas, because he happily slides around on any surface. When running, we often have to save the little snowman from an early death in the ice water by changing direction and rarely stand still.

Source: PC Games



But we get a surprising amount of control over the jumping mechanic. Width, height and changes of direction in the air are included. With a little practice, we can double our jumping power by jumping on opponents' heads and achieve previously impossible heights.

Speaking of enemy heads, the only defense mechanism snowmen have in Video Game World is trampling. We can only do damage from above, and not to all enemies. Unfortunately, the indestructible opponents are not clearly marked, and so we have to learn through painful trial and error who has a deadly hairstyle and whose head we can dance samba on.

Still water hurts

The most treacherous danger in Snowdriftland isn't the burning fireflies or poisonous spiders, but water. There are no checkpoints in levels, but they are quite short.

So if we fall victim to the waves at the bottom of the screen, we have to do everything all over again because we are immediately knocked out. Other attacks, be they from angry penguin moms or from grumpy trees, only draw Chubby one of the three at the start, More hearts later when we find the respective heart containers in the world.

What works well in the environment, but has often doomed us to failure with opponents, is the merciless collision detection. It's nanometers that we jump past an enemy's head and Chubby starts flashing and the heart meter fades by one heart. This feels a bit unfair at times, especially in boss fights with larger enemies. With the oversized sprites, the hitboxes are not always clearly visible. Overall, however, this is a huge criticism.