Straddling the difference between relaxing puzzler and children’s game, Pumuckl and the Crown of the Pirate King by Quantumfrog is one of the best successors to Captain Toad: Treasure Tracker. The local coop mode adds even more to the family fun.
Pumuckl and the Crown of the Pirate King is an incredibly special game in several ways. First of all, a game’s main character could not be more deeply entrenched into German children’s minds, except maybe if it were the ‘Sandmännchen’ (Our Little Sandman, a mainstay of children’s TV since the GDR still existed).
The last time Pumuckl graced the screens of a game console (and a Nintendo one at that) was in 2000, when Acclaim released Pumuckl und das Geisterschloss, the successor to Pumuckls Abenteuer bei den Piraten. If you are stumbling over the German names, that’s not incidental: The games were only released here in Europe, in German. Not surprising, since Pumuckl is such a deeply German cultural phenomenon: Based on the children’s book of a Munich author and taking place in the carpentry shop of a grumpy Bavarian, a TV series from the late 1970s has been aired in Germany for generations and has received a successor and several films in the 2020s. You can read more on the history of the Pumuckl brand here in our interview with developer Quantumfrog, if you need more context.
Now Pumuckl, a nautical goblin that gobbles down pudding and lovingly creates chaos everywhere he goes, gets his first game in 26 years. Pumuckl and the Crown of the Pirate King releases on 5 March on Steam and on Switch, with a physical Switch edition made by Pumuckl Media, the licensors of the Pumuckl series, in cooperation with Publisher THQ Nordic.
That was a lot of preamble for a game that needs explaining its cultural context outside of Germany. But how is the game itself? Tasked with cleaning up his room, Pumuckl makes a mess so bad that he is sucked into a pirate world inside a bottled ship, where he meets a child pirate named Captain Krimskrams. Both now must find the titular Crown of the Pirate King that fulfils wishes, to either go back home or wish for unending supplies of chocolate, whatever sounds better. To find the crown, Pumuckl needs to collect dubloons from small vignette levels, either alone or in local coop with a second player controlling Krimskrams at his side. And here’s where it gets interesting:
Pumuckl and the Crown of the Pirate King is a spiritual successor to Captain Toad: Treasure Tracker (CTTT). In fact, I’d say it is the best game inspired by CTTT I played so far. And it is entirely designed to be enjoyed by children as well, either alone, together or with a guardian.
In the game, Pumuckl enters small island levels that each have their own puzzle experience. The game is controlled from a top-down perspective, but as in CTTT, the camera can be swung freely to see all nooks and crannies of the area. That is not only useful but necessary to find hidden items like collectable starfish in the cleverly built diorama environments. The tropical beach setting is lovingly depicted and does wonders for the chill experience of puzzling through the levels, and the interactables that make up the puzzles fit the theme as well: Pumuckl can pick up shells to throw onto enemies (or sneak around them instead, depending on how players want to solve threatening situations), can pull ship’s chests to make stairs or can turn steering wheels to manipulate the level architecture. Pumuckl’s own skills as depicted in the series can also be used: For stealth sections, he becomes automatically invisible, but can be discovered if he carries an item or walks through paint. At collectable paintings in the game world, he pulls out a pen and draws funny scribbles on them. Pumuckl can even crawl through cupboards that are used as teleporters in some levels.
Pascal Wagner
Each diorama only takes about five minutes to solve, at least in the beginning and depending on player’s skills, age and experience of course. Later dioramas become much more challenging, but slowly ramp up to it to learn all mechanics. That makes for pleasurable short sessions, especially on Switch, and will probably be a good thing for parents as well, to play “just one more level” before bedtime with their kids.
The game runs smoothly on Switch as well as PC, with no technical hiccups in my experience. Shortly after release, the game will receive a big update that adds full German voice acting to the entire story, added by Chunky Panda Studios from Berlin and edited digitally to sound like the original Pumuckl speaker Hans Clarin.
Pumuckl and the Crown of the Pirate King releases 5 March 2026 on Steam for an MSRP of 29,99€ and Nintendo Switch for an MSRP of 39,99€. Xbox and PlayStation versions are already in the works as well.
Straddling the difference between relaxing puzzler and children’s game, Pumuckl and the Crown of the Pirate King is one of the best successors to Captain Toad: Treasure Tracker. The local coop mode adds even more to the experience.
