I adore the 1995 Super Nintendo game, Super Mario World 2: Yoshi’s Island, but I am mature enough to admit that each new Yoshi game is worth examining on its own terms. Yoshi and the Mysterious Book has no obligation to be a new retread of that 30-year-old game and it isn’t. I admire the willingness to try something different. This adventure plays more like a unique puzzle game with Yoshi aesthetics, and the result is a largely rewarding experience that rarely challenged me, but didn’t have a problem delivering the charm.
You’re still eating creatures and throwing eggs as we have been for three decades, but The Mysterious Book doesn’t fight against you. Yoshi really can’t take damage, and the closest thing to a traditional video game death is falling down an endless pit that immediately transports you back to safety. I would almost be comfortable calling it a cozy game, an admittedly fuzzy genre qualifier, but it does mechanically play like a smooth, classic Nintendo 2D platformer.
4K resolution looks good on Yoshi, and exploring the pages of Mr. E with Yoshi’s stilted movement gives it a stop-motion style that is inviting to look at. The designs of all the creatures, both familiar to the world of Yoshi and completely new, look great, but it’s their various animations that stand out. You don’t spend much time in the “real world” where Yoshi is just a boring old shiny dinosaur who uses every single animation frame, and I was always eager to be back in the pages to embrace the paper visuals.
The reward for progress isn’t overcoming jumping and combat challenges, but rather figuring out and acknowledging every little potential interaction possible in each level. That process can be joyful when you accidentally activate unexpected interplay, like getting mud all over a flower character riding your back and washing them off by running through some water. When the game points that out, marks it down in the book, and says, “Isn’t that neat?” I am inclined to agree.
It is less fun, however, when the key to completing a level or puzzle is something vague like, “You should probably look for a cave somewhere,” or the solution is arbitrary, like eating all the butterflies. Thankfully, few puzzles create impassable barriers, and you can purchase hints too, but it also means there isn’t much incentive to find everything and chase forward progress beyond seeing what’s new.
As is the case with many recent comparably structured Nintendo games, you will see credits and experience the paper-thin narrative conclusion at what is ostensibly the halfway point of the game. I like this setup, and without spoiling specifics, the tools, nostalgic references, and levels after the credits are a highlight. They don’t address my inconsistent feeling of reward for solving puzzles, but I appreciate how the game opens up at that point.
Yoshi and the Mysterious Book is, by design, an inviting game with little challenge – a pleasant vacation where all the animals want to be friends and the soundtrack sounds like colorful bubbles bursting in front of a double rainbow. I admit I pined for the stress I associate with Yoshi taking care of a helpless baby, but this low-stakes adventure (potentially Yoshi’s lowest) does take care in making you feel acknowledged and generally rewarded in its attempt at a new style of puzzle-platformer.
