The Mysterious Book is another entry into the Yoshi series that offers simple creative gameplay in a delightful artstyle. Aimed at younger/new players, the game is undoubtebly charming and a fun experience overall. However, the cutesy story & visuals, lack of difficulty progression, and bewildering bottom-heavy content design means that this largely good game, may slip under most people’s radar.

If you’ve been playing Nintendo games for a while – you’ll know that the Yoshi spinoff series (at least recently) has often been all about introducing younger or newer players to the playful platforming that the Mario creators have become known for. Since around 2015, the games have featured a sometimes quite straightforward set of mechanics built around a cute theme… wool, cardboard crafts and this time around a beautiful coloured-pencil story book. Yes it’s all a little cutesy, but considering this is the same series that gave us the baby version of our favourite Mushroom Kingdom characters, it’s a franchise that fits the bill quite well. In Yoshi and the Mysterious Book we get a game that perhaps leans even a little more into the ‘friendly for newcomers’ tag. And while it’s a perfectly good game overall – it will likely fail to have much mainstream appeal especially with a lack of the mustachiooed plumber’s own higher-skill-level title on the Switch 2.

Creativity for Dayz(ee)

What the Yoshi series has consistently excelled at, is a visual style that screams CHARM. While, Wooly and Crafted World would likely still rank a little higher on my preferred list of looks, Mysterious Book once again nails its target aesthetic. The art is adorable, with each setting and character seemingly plucked out of a sweet 5 year old’s imagination, but brought to life in a marvellous coloured-pencil storybook drawn by real artists. Like too much syrup on an already cloyingly sweet ice cream, overly pretty visuals can sometimes veer off into saccharine territory, but thankfully thanks to some whimsical music, and some genius touches (like having the physical start and end of a level appear like sketchbook pages which Yoshi can walk into and suddenly change from colourful riding dinosour, to a few sepia-tone doodles) it all worked for me.

The art is adorable, with each setting and character seemingly plucked out of a sweet 5 year old’s imagination…

Every new chapter in the book, is a new area to explore. In each area, you are tasked with investigating a range of new critters. These are almost all wonderfully kooky and allow Yoshi to explore new abilities by swallowing them, popping them on your back or even riding them. It sounds a little mad and weird, and it kind of is, but the creaitivity is off the scale. Plus, you can decide to name each new creature you find, and while this may sound a little repetitive, it is completely optional and I can’t tell you how much time I spent giggling and figuring our the best punniest names – and the names the Nintendo team came up with are mostly great too!

Sometimes Meh-chanical 

Most new abilities are easy to pick up and the range of ideas and powerups (which is essentially what each creature becomes) is insane. The game allows new players to safely stretch their legs in each area as Yoshi is basically invulnerable and the goal is simply to explore and try things. When it works, you’ll constantly fill up the pages of the book with new findings about each creature and honestly I don’t think there was a single area where I found everything. However, this is both a good thing and one that drove me a little insane… Sure there’s a supposed story about Bowser Jnr. and Kamek finding the book and looking for a magical Bewilder Bird within it’s pages, but narratively its super thing at best. And while that’s defintely not a problem in this kind of game on its own – when you couple it with a simple (almost aimless) gameplay I did find myself spending quite a bit of time hoping to figure out what I should do in each level – especially if you want to collect/unlock all the discoveries in each area.

There are long list of things to find and do in each area, but frustratingly you won’t always know what those are.

So, if you’re like me and a bit of completionist this is possibly both good and bad news. There are long list of things to find and do in each area, but frustratingly you won’t always know what those are. And it times I found myself basically mashing buttons and trying the most absurd actions – sometimes they worked, and at other times… nothing. There is a simple currency you collect which you can use give you hints but even that is not as useful as I felt it could’ve been and honestly, once I did get a clue it was often so arbitrary that I wondered how anyone would ever think to do that naturally during their playthrough. And I’m not saying it was necessarily difficult to do – it was just a little too random… like skatesurfing (or snurfboarding) over the same section of the map – jumping in a slighlty different place each time. It was occasionally a little too obscure for my taste. And while I totally get that this is a game not directly targetted at me – I would’ve loved a little more difficulty scaling so that more experienced players had more motives to continue exploring – where some colectibles are tougher to get so you need just a ltitle more skill rather than just a little more blind luck.

Bewildering but BeWONDERing

Finally, while the general gameplay is very accessible it’s still undoubtebly fun and getting to the credits is a really enjoyable ride, especially if you don’t stress about collecting everything on your way through. And I do think that’s how most people will play this game. It’s sort of what I decided to do about three quarters of the way through and iot defintely makes it a really great experience. However, once again (rather inexplainably) when you get to the end – you realise (without spoilers) that one of the best powerups is only available at then end… And then on top of that there’s suddenly a whole bunch of screen aids you can purchase to make exploration a little easier… And then several more chapters/areas open up post -credits. Now, don’t get me wrong I’m not against a generous helping of post-game content when you talking about a hefty single-player experience, but in a sweet game targetting new players – it seemed like a wasted opportunity to bottom-load (is that an expression?) a game with content that could’ve easily been served earlier on.

It’s clearly a Nintendo game – made with a ridiculous attention to detail and charisma with some fanastic ideas that I really do think most new players will love.

Now, while that may sound a little negative, the truth is – I really enjoyed playing this game. It’s clearly a Nintendo game – made with a ridiculous attention to detail and charisma with some fanastic ideas that I really do think most new players will love. It’s probably a great introduction to someone who wants to get into 2D platformers and I really think many parents are going to find this a perfect starter title. And that’s why i think it really is worth it’s score of a 7 (the quintessential good game score). Sadly, due to it’s look, it’s lack of difficulty-scaling and slightly odd pacing it’s probably also a game that’s going to fall through the cracks.

REVIEW CODE PROVIDED BY: NINTENDO

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