Yoshi and the Mysterious Book

The result of all this is that although I genuinely liked many of Yoshi and the Mysterious Book’s components, I’m a bit let down overall, and uninterested in revisiting it to finish all the discoveries I missed, or do much of its substantial post-game content. I just don’t have it in me. I don’t think the idea of a game fully focused on the sort of secret hunting I do as a side activity in other games is a bad one; I just think Yoshi and the Mysterious Book needed something more—whether a real plot, or a reason to revisit levels, or actual rewards, something!—to justify its more laborious sections. As it is, I’d rather go back to the risky, optional secret hunting of something like Mina the Hollower, even if it means I die 20 times along the way.

My instinct is to say that I hope to see these ideas fully realized in a more traditional Yoshi game, but I’m not sure if that would be the right solution. Turn Yoshi and the Mysterious Book into a proper platformer where you need to use creatures’ powers to solve your way through levels, and you basically have a Kirby game. What makes this unique is how contained it is, even if that’s what holds it back too. It’s as if you’ve been tossed into the whimsical playtesting lab Nintendo uses to poke and prod at every creature it designs for a new game — more of an extension of Super Mario Maker’s creative freedom than Super Mario Bros. Wonder’s meticulously designed platforming. If anything, a sequel could stand to drop the level-based structure entirely in favor of a true sandbox full of critters to be experimented on. The idea never fully hatches, but I can appreciate the playful concept it’s flutter-jumping towards with great effort. It doesn’t capture that timeless joy of experiencing World 1-1 for the first time, but it at least helps you understand how Nintendo engineers those magical moments.