Poochy and Yoshi’s Wooly World is a brand new version of the 2015 Wii U title, Yoshi’s Wooly World. For those that didn’t play the original, the game is a platformer featuring Yoshi himself. It draws heavy inspiration from Yoshi’s Island on the Super Nintendo in the sense that you need to swallow enemies to get eggs, which you can then use to shoot items and unlock secret areas.
That’s really what Yoshi’s Wooly World is about. You can easily breeze through pretty much all of the levels, but part of the fun is unlocking the 5-7 secret paths in each level and collecting every item. Each level contains five collectible flowers, five pieces of wooly and twenty stamp patches which are hidden behind certain needs.
There’s actually a good reason to find these collectibles too. Collecting every flower will unlock a secret level in each of the worlds whilst collecting all the bundles of wool will unlock secret patterns for Yoshi.
There’s 55 levels in the main mode of the game with no new ones added. It’ll take you a decent amount of time to get through each level and as I mentioned earlier, the added collectible component will keep you going for more than 10-15 hours. For the most part, levels are inspired and have unique concepts to them which keep each of the levels feeling fresh and fun.
The game still looks vibrant and detailed on the 3DS, although everything is obviously a little bit smaller which makes certain secrets much easier to miss. The game runs great on the New 3DS at 60fps whilst it’ll run at 30fps on the older console.
Mellow Mode is a brand new addition to Poochy and Yoshi’s Wooly World. It’s clearly designed for the younger or more casual gamer. You’ll gain three Poochy Pups which are absolutely adorable and designed to make your life in-game a lot easier. They’ll point our secrets to you as well as attack enemies if they get too close. Whilst I didn’t mind the fact that they’d point our secrets as some can be quite hard to find, Yoshi also gains wings in this mode which makes the game ridiculously easy and probably a step too far in the Mellow direction in my opinion.
There’s a number of new modes and adventures to play through. The Yoshi Theatre features 30 stop-motion videos featuring both Yoshi and Poochy and will unlock each day as you play through the game.
Poochy Dash is a bonus mode in which you control Poochy whilst trying to collect as many beads as possible. There’s also a number of challenges that you have to complete whilst doing so. In all honesty, this was my favourite part of the game. It was perfectly suited for the portable version of the game and a ton of fun. I wish that there was more of these in the game.
When it comes to Amiibo support, each of the Yoshi Yarn Amiibo will bring a second Yoshi into your game which will allow you to reach areas only available through co-op mode (which isn’t available in the 3DS version). The brand new Poochy Amiibo will unlock a brand new time attack mode to Poochy Dash.
CONCLUSION
Poochy and Yoshi’s Wooly World is an incredibly fun and solid game as most Nintendo titles are. I love these types of games as they provide a genuine wind-down and don’t require a huge amount of mental investment as most open-world games do these days. In my opinion, the levels felt a little less uninspired compared to Kirby’s Epic Yarn, but that was due to the fact that Kirby can inhale and take on his enemies attacks which added for an extra gameplay element. Poochy and Yoshi’s Wooly World is great for gamers of all ages and there’s enough content here to keep you going for a long while.
