TGS 2026 — Snack World: Reloaded Hands-On Preview: Fun to Play With, Not to Eat

Among Level-5’s impressive stable of RPGs and multimedia franchises, Snack World is rather overlooked in the West. With Level-5’s other heavy hitters present at their Tokyo Game Show 2026 booth, namely Professor Layton and The New World of Steam and Decapolice, I wasn’t sure I’d even have time to fit in Snack World: Reloaded—but I’m sure glad I did.

For context, the original 3DS The Snack World: Trejarers (an official but rather ugly romanization of “Treasurers”) was exclusive to Japan in 2017, but was remade and globally released as Snack World: The Dungeon Crawl – Gold on Switch and PC in 2020. Snack World: Reloaded is another crack at the same game, now with an adorable diorama-like art style in the vein of the Switch remake of The Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening, or the recent Dragon Quest VII Reimagined.

Players control Chup, a small but feisty hero who loves nothing more than chopping through evil monsters. Backing you up are a beefy Donkey Kong-looking warrior, Béarnaise, the stout and dopey goblin, Gobson, and the irritable young witch, Mayonna. Most of the “snack” in Snack World seems limited to puns in the names of characters and places; otherwise, the game has a very traditionally Western approach to fantasy, albeit with a mix of creatures from various cultures.

In older Snack World games, the sultan of the kingdom sends Chup and co. on various monster-slaying quests, which Chup gladly takes on in order to woo the sultan’s daughter.

I didn’t get to play around the hub of the kingdom in the demo for Snack World: Reloaded, but was instead placed on a “Treasure Board” of a quest where I could select various areas and their rewards as I navigated across the board to the end goal of one of two bosses.

First I was in a forest biome. Typically, you clear a medium-sized area of monsters before moving onto the next area, though other objectives pop up as well. In keeping with previous Snack World titles, these areas are randomly generated in layout and enemy placement to keep experiences fresh. As Chup, you lead the party around and slash and blast through groups of cutesy monsters. I don’t have a ton of experience with dungeon crawlers (such as the cross-franchise Mystery Dungeon series), but the game marries dungeon crawling loot and roleplay elements with action-adventure combat very well, so it’s easily approachable if you’ve played, say, a Zelda game.

Chup can block, dodge-roll, and wield a variety of weapons, though each weapon eats up JP (Jam Points, often localized as Miracle Points), meaning the game forces you to frequently switch up your playstyle and approach to combat, including ranged bows and heavy axes alongside your standard sword and shield.

Snack World: Reloaded Screenshots

You can clearly see your three party members’ health on the UI, but they mostly follow along, acting of their own accord to varying degrees of effectiveness. I often forgot Gobson was there until I saw him getting smacked back by a baddie. Enemy and ally aggro can be seen by arcing red arrows, though the combat is so fast and chaotic that I, as a newbie, was a bit overwhelmed, so I focused on keeping my party healed with potions. Common enemies at a low level posed little threat. I was surprised, then, when I chose the Medusa boss at the end of the treasure board.

First off, Medusa looked terrifying in a way that was very contrary to the cute, toy-like visuals elsewhere. Then, the camera shifted downward: more third-person action than the usual isometric view. Medusa was a nasty customer, whipping her tail in huge, damaging sweeps and frequently slithering around the open arena of her temple. I really had to use that roll button to get behind her—and thanks again to Gobson for eating so many of those tail whips.

When her health was low enough, Medusa charged up a huge stony glare attack. There was ample time for me to hide behind a pillar, though Béarnaise was repeatedly frozen in stone from that time on. When Medusa was finally down, I got a trove of items, weapons, and treasures as my reward… and the demo ended before I could try them out.

After just a taste of Snack World: Reloaded, I’m ready for the full meal. The game is set for a yet-to-be-announced 2027 release on PlayStation 5, Switch 2, and PC via Steam.