For years, fans of Yoshi’s Island have wanted another game that reaches the highs of the original. Frankly, I’m in the camp that everything that followed was trying to relive the past and imitate the same success to a degree.
However, Yoshi and the Mysterious Book looks to do something different. It’s familiar enough to anyone who’s played a Yoshi game – a 2D platformer in many ways, but designed for a younger audience. There are no lives to lose, there are no dastardly jumps or enemies to stress over, and you can’t lose health or be damaged.
While I can see that this is a game that won’t be for everyone — diehard Yoshi fans will likely be let down by this — it’s something that won me over after I was on the fence about it. Yoshi and the Mysterious Book’s a creative endeavour, but I’m not sure it’ll resonate with the older crowds. Its open-ended level design is a standout, and its focus on puzzles and platforming finds a wonderful balance.
Yoshi and the Mysterious Book Is For The Kids
The new game stars Yoshi, who discovers a mysterious character named Mr. Encyclopedia — Mr. E, for his friends. Yoshi picks up the book and finds it filled with strange creatures and a ton of information about them, prompting him to dive in and investigate.
By exploring the book, Yoshi discovers many creatures you will want to note. The more you explore Mr. E’s pages, the more creatures you’ll discover that are hidden throughout. Each chapter has you combing through pages to find discoveries, so you will want to look out for creatures hiding within the pages.
The levels aren’t traditional, as in previous games. Instead, you enter the book and explore Chapters, spread out across the various creatures. You scan the pages, then enter a level to learn more about it. This pacing gives you a nice, easygoing sense of discovery, as each time you enter the book, it offers a stage for learning more about its creatures. Where most games might want you to beat the clock or get to the end of a stage, Yoshi and the Mysterious Books wants you to explore to your heart’s content.
Every creature in the book has a given name by Mr. E, and those are the official names, but you can also choose a name for each creature. It’s a nice little way to fill in the blanks of your adventure, so take advantage of freely naming creatures because it can often lead to fun situations.
At some stages, Yoshi can bounce off creatures, all of which sing the Solfège (or sol-fa). In another, you meet the Crazee Dayzee, a cute flower, which, according to the book, tastes sweet, and can turn colour if you feed it an apple.
The More Curious You Are, The Better
You’ve seen the Glubbit, a weird-looking creature with a hole-shaped head that can spit bubbles. I named the Bubbly, and now anytime they’re mentioned or checked in the book, you see Bubbly. Anyway, you can also put the creature on your back to carry it around, which it spits out bubbles for you to use to get around, to collect items or reach out-of-the-way spaces. If you feed the creature fruit like an apple, the bubbles become bigger, too. Other foods have other effects, like a radish turning the creature pink, and the bubble is heart-shaped.
The idea behind Yoshi and the Mysterious Book isn’t about the inherent challenge. Rather, your job is to interact, observe, and take note of what the various creatures do, how they react, and then use what you know to move forward. Whether that’s the Glubbit’s bubbles to climb higher or the Birds who sing and unlock items if you complete a series of musical notes to earn Flowers.
There are tons of discoveries within the pages, and many put a smirk at minimum or a smile on my face as I had Mr. E tell me more about the various creatures. And that’s why I really like the fact that there are no lives lost or danger to contend with — exploring the book is much more fun when those hurdles are gone.
Fill the book with memories
Yoshi’s moveset remains largely unchanged from previous games. Yoshi can eat, run, float, throw eggs, and ground pound, but now can also pick up creatures to put on his back. His skillset is adaptable to most situations, thankfully, so if you have an obstacle in your way, it might require you to use Yoshi’s abilities to adapt to the new setting.
Of course, that isn’t to say there isn’t any challenge to deal with. No, later levels present their own hurdles, such as completing tasks or gathering all the items before the timer runs out. But what might be the most challenging part is something I faced a few times throughout: being unsure of what Mr. E was hinting I should do.
There are some levels that’ll be a breeze to get through, offering an incredible flow state that lets you uncover a dozen Discoveries by the time you hit the end goal. When those levels connect, they leave you feeling impressed by how much you achieved. Other levels do the opposite by making you feel like you’ve done nothing, and there’s very little you can do unless you back out to find a hint of a potential direction to go in. It can be deflating after a wave of success, and that’s when I feel the objectives can sometimes seem unclear.
You can use the tokens to predict a creature encounter or pay 100 tokens to reveal a hint of what you need to do to unlock stars. To progress through the chapters, Yoshi must collect stars, which you gather by discovering things about the creatures. Take the Crazee Dayzee: you earn one star for learning that it tastes sweet if Yoshi eats it, two stars for learning how many colours there are, or three stars for watching them bloom fully.
Each creature also has a unique number of stars to collect, so multiple visits are encouraged (although you can sometimes uncover many things about a subject if you hit a flow).
Most chapters in Yoshi and the Mysterious Book are great, and I rarely had any issues understanding what I needed to do. Unfortunately, I ran into a few instances where I was completely lost, and even Mr. E’s hints were not helpful. Yoshi collects tokens through each level, which are hidden in corners, underground areas, and even behind creatures. The omega-shaped tokens are used to unlock hints if you’re looking to collect stars.
And there’s so much to do within each chapter. Watching Mr. E sketch out the discoveries you uncover throughout the pages may lead to other secrets. You might get further in only to be pulled back to an earlier chapter by your new friend who’s discovered something worth your attention. Even with most main objectives checked off, there’s usually something on the second, third, even fourth time you reenter the page — so be prepared to revisit stages to thoroughly get to the bottom of the situation.
Verdict
Yoshi and the Mysterious Book varies from its predecessors by focusing on a sense of discovery. Each chapter in Mr. E’s book is filled with wondrous creatures, and every encounter with them as Yoshi provides something new to learn and experience. The more I played, the less I cared about the absence of lives or health; I was far more invested in doing my best to learn about the remarkably cute creatures in front of me. And that’s what makes this adorable adventure charming: the familiar mechanics paired with relaxed platforming for everyone.
[The publisher provided a copy of the game for review purposes.]
Reviewed on: Switch 2
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Author: 360 Technology Group
