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It was with enormous ease that we all fell in love with Yoshi during his Super Mario World debut. As far as dependable dino-steeds go, it doesn’t get much better than Mario’s other green bud. Unfortunately, my love affair with Yoshi was cut short—his solo games weren’t ones I’d generally gravitate to with Mario’s best on the shelf, which led to a lot of sideways looks when we’d all meet up to race karts. His latest spin-off, however, Yoshi and the Mysterious Book, has caught my attention, and I was fortunate to go hands-on with it recently at Nintendo.
Unsurprisingly, the premise is equally novel and charming, as Yoshi stumbles upon a magical, and obviously mysterious, book named Mr. Encyclopaedia, or Mr. E for short. In perhaps the most staggeringly existential thought from a Nintendo game, he acknowledges that although he’s a book, he can’t read himself. So he enlists a band of Yoshis to leap into his pages to observe and catalogue the creatures that live within his pages—all in the name of good old-fashioned curiosity.
There is a plot that involves Bowser Jr, and perhaps the Koopalings as a whole, along with their broom-straddling butler, Kamek, as they skim the book’s pages in search of something else. Although we didn’t get a great sense of how nefarious their motivations were during our hands-on, it’s encouraging that shenanigans are pushing along the sense of wonder and discovery at the game’s heart.
As expected, Yoshi still has a lot of his old tricks up his sleeve. Quicker than Taco Bell cruises through my system, Yoshi digests creatures and fruit, converting them into eggs that can be scrambled after a good, hard throw. He’s also still able to flutter jump, defying gravity and, all the while, mewing cutely. One of Yoshi’s new tricks is the tail flick, which lets him place creatures, sometimes against their will, on his back for a ride along.
Each of the game’s chapters, of which we got to experience two of the six chapters that’ll be available at launch, has a dedicated page within Mr. E’s contents. One by one, creatures will crawl from the woodwork, prompting Yoshi to venture into the pages to learn more about them specifically. The creatures themselves are darling and cute, most of the time at least, and from experience, they’re seldom dangerous. They exist as passive inhabitants of the book that exhibit unique powers once engaged with. For example, the first little flower I happened upon was able to help other plants’ buds blossom and fast-tracked the growth of mighty trees when brought to them by Yoshi.
Once enough discoveries are catalogued, Yoshi will be able to return to the chapter page. It’s at this point you’ll be prompted to, just like a star picked out of the sky by an eagle-eyed gazer, name your discovery. It’s a small, cute detail, but seeing the creatures pop up in later levels, saddled with the moniker you picked out for them hours earlier, can be fun.
Every creature has unique traits and characteristics, and they each affect the world around them in different ways. Although a few discoveries per creature are a given, for example, their digestibility, how they linger on Yoshi’s palate, it’ll take some experimenting within the level’s confines to arrive at the rest.
There are hints of Scribblenauts in that if you think you can do something, you probably can. There’s a hoop-mouthed frog that blows bubbles that Yoshi can encase himself in to rise through the level. If that frog eats one of the chillies found around the level, not only does he start blowing up like a spent kettle, but the bubbles change as a result. Countless imaginative little examples add up to an immensely wonderful, inventive experience.
On face value, if you were to follow the golden path all six chapters, or worlds, of the titular book, you’d probably be looking at around six hours or so, with each world taking about an hour to get through. Thankfully, and to the game’s credit, noticeable changes and mysterious ink blot critters begin to appear throughout the book, beckoning the player back to its parchment playground, where the level’s goals and characters will seem slightly remixed.
One such example I saw was where one in a flock of musical songbirds, who twitter “Twinkle Twinkle” as you bounce atop their leafy hats, was listless, uninspired, and resulted in a flub note when jumped on. Having to tinker and work out how to perk him up required a bit of lateral thought, and I’m excited to see how silly Nintendo gets with these small changes.
The level design, as well as keeping on track for its respective objective, is perhaps the most confusing thing at first. Each stage is staged like a traditional platforming level, although it’s more of a sandbox than it is a linear, left-to-right waltz. Because experimentation is such a key component of this Yoshi game, the freedom to go anywhere within the respective “two-page spread” kept things uncertain and let that natural curiosity take over. There’s often a big key discovery you’ll make that prompts the level’s ending; however, you can choose not to hop through the exit portal and keep poking around for other things. I do love that the game repeatedly pays off on the player’s wanderlust.
Although I’ve not played another Yoshi game, this one seems to most mirror Yoshi’s Island in terms of its approach to art and design. For a game that looks hand-drawn, I’m glad Nintendo resisted the urge to lean into the low-hanging, uninspired arts and crafts gimmicks for the gameplay hook. With that said, the game is still effortlessly adorable and, as a guy who’ll play Mario games without spending a lot of time with his extended friends group, I found it fun to see certain characters, like Shy Guy, pop up.
The juxtaposition between Yoshi’s life outside of the book and the time he spends inside is an appealing clash, as sharp, bold colours of the book’s leathery, mustachioed cover and the curious Yoshis surrounding him fast give way to determined, but imperfectly, sketched entries in an old journal, where the backgrounds, while still beautifully illustrated, feel more crude and rushed than the more important details sat in the foreground.
Despite rather underwhelming fanfare in the lead-up to its launch next month, Yoshi and the Mysterious Book has all the makings of an unexpected sleeper hit, which is nuts to say about a Nintendo game, but the marketing for this game has been subtle, to say the least. Yoshi’s latest adventure has charm and a whimsical premise that stokes the player’s embers of creativity, so they’re able to explore, observe, and catalogue the colourful, cutesy critters of Mr. E’s contents.
