Yoshi games for me have always resulted in the same feeling, oh another one, while enjoyable they never really offered something unique, even the green guys last outing had been done before, but with Crafted World, it feels special, but is that enough. Or is the tape starting to peel back already?

The game starts out with Yoshi and the other Yoshi’s hanging out on their island, along with the Sundream Stone, only for Bowser Jr and Kamek to swoop in and attempt to steal and while the Yoshi’s all put up a valiant effort to stop that from happening, the result is that everyone if flung off the island, the gems from within the Sundream Stone are thrown further away and then the adventure begins. The plot remains basic, which is fine and whilst the main characters are entertaining, especially given that you have choices you can make at set times, influencing the outcome, it makes it feel more interactive. The Blockafella crew though, are not that interesting, whilst I appreciate the name, the gang never really have anything of interest to say.

As far as gameplay goes, the game is a Yoshi game, but it adds enough new content to make it feel fresh. The game is broken up into a series of worlds that each contain only a few levels, or a boss fight and every few worlds, the game throws some special stages at you, breaking up the left to right gameplay. As you explore these levels, in order to get all the flowers at the end, you will not only have to collect 100 coins, but all 20 hidden coins and remain at full health, which in the earlier stages is easy to do. If you missed a red coin or two, jumping back into the stage will allow you to only collect the missing ones, as the ones you have found are transparent, meaning you don’t need to worry about them, it is handy, as some of them can be quite devious in obtaining. Obtaining 100 coins might be all you want to do, in order to check off each item on the end of stage screen, but the coins you collect can also be used to unlock costumes that Yoshi can wear, which all provide armour for the little guy, it is a fun way of being able make this Yoshi your own. If you don’t want to spend any coins, selected amiibo can be scanned, providing you more that way as well, the Yarn Yoshi amiibo provide the best, in my opinion.

Once you have completed a stage, regardless if you have collected everything or not, you can venture back in and experience two additional ways of playing, scavenger hunts and Poochy Pup tracking missions. The first are given to you by the Blockafella gang, as they will ask you to locate something found only in that world, some of them are easy to find, others are quite well hidden, but sometimes they will ask for multiples of something, so tracking them all down can be a challenge. Obtaining the requested item will reward you with a flower, increasing your balance as you progress, but the overall impact is that it is just a very simple way of taking a break from trying to collect all the items, to just have a closer look at the stages.

The second mode, the Poochy Pup missions, will have you enter the flipside of each stage, meaning the world is flipped around and you see everything from behind. Each stage has three pups hidden throughout, and while you can hear them when you are close by, discovering them and then hitting them with an egg is harder. While you are doing this though, you have a time limit to beat and if you do, you are rewarded with another flower. The entire point of collecting the flowers is that the game requires them to unlock new worlds, thanks to the Blockafella gang, some require only 10 flowers which are easy enough to get from most worlds, other require more, so doing all you can to collect as many as you can is key. Collecting flowers is easy as most are just tucked away in a corner or nook, others though, are given if you complete a specific challenge, like collecting all the blue coins, defeating all the monty moles and more, the issue though is the game does not explain the objective on the first attempt of each, leaving you to have to revisit the level to get that single one.

The problem that the game has though, is that it requires you to aim your egg throw at either the enemy in front of you, or in the background and foreground, but it is never quite on target enough for when it is in the right spot. If you move the cursor up and it happens to go over something that is in the background, it will target that, but if you push past it, you are back to the 2d plain again. As there are some levels where you get very little time to aim, shoot and hit the item in the background, this becomes an issue. The other problem that I had with the game was the overall lack of depth, not the kind related to the multiple plains, but with the stages and worlds as a whole. Most stages are not challenging to complete and the few that provide a challenge are short enough that it cancels itself out.

Of course, it is hard to look at the game and not be wowed by the visuals, while the game has a very low-tech look, thanks to the arts and crafts inspired design. But while the world might look like something a primary school kid might throw together, there is no denying that the level of detail across the entire game is staggering. Platforms are not just there, they can old cans wrapped in paper, bridges are not made of wood, but supported by paddle pop sticks and more, everything, apart from Yoshi and the basic enemies are made out of materials that one might use in a school project. Even the bosses are made from that, characters that we have known from the Yoshi series, like Burt, are built just as the rest of the world is, even the final boss is the same. This approach comes into its own very early on, but it is highlighted even more when you attempt Flipside levels, now you get to see that the paper that wraps around that can, does not cover the entire thing, the clouds are hanging from wire, but you can see the coloured tape that is holding them in place, it looks basic but is just wonderful.

Sadly, the games audio is not as inspired, whilst is nice and I enjoyed, a lot of the music you will hear are variants on the main theme from the game, from water versions, dark ones, space ones, slow and fast ones; the main theme is not inherently bad either, it just is overused. When the game has other music to play, that is where things come to life as each track matches the accompanied stage, beautifully and the result is a game that is nice to look at as it is to listen to.

Yoshi’s Crafted World is a game that is easy to recommend to Yoshi fans and to those looking to play a game that enjoys a wealth of content. I would have liked to have seen more challenging platforming levels, even if they were optional

Review copy provided by Nintendo