Yoshi’s Crafted World is a side-scrolling platform game developed by Good-Feel and published by Nintendo for the Nintendo Switch. The theme of the game is that everything looks like cardboard. It looks like a child made an arts and crafts project and it’s visually stunning. This is like how the previous title, Yoshi’s Woolly World, was made to look like a world of wool. The adorable Yoshis are now back with their “ho-hum” and oh-so-cute licking sound effects and all.

The Story

The last game I can remember that had Yoshi as the main playable character was Yoshi’s Story for the Nintendo 64 back in 1998. Many enemies from then make a comeback, such as Ravens and Burt. That was a nice dose of nostalgia for me. Yoshi’s Story was an excellent game that also let you choose between different colors of Yoshi. It also had a very similar plot to what we see in Yoshi’s Crafted World. Those Yoshis had a Super Happy Tree, a fruit-bearing tree that gives joy. This made Baby Bowser jealous, so he steals their tree and transforms their island to a storybook.

Yoshi’s Crafted World is about a Sundream Stone that can make anyone’s dream come true. Kamek and Baby Bowser see that this stone is in the possession of the Yoshis and begin to fight them for it. This causes all five of the Dream Gems inside to scatter across several different islands. Yoshi games have never had elaborate stories so this is fine as the gameplay is where the focus of the game lies.

You travel across 45 levels collecting 254 total Smiley Flowers in order to advance. However, not all of those Flowers are needed to access all the islands. You can do all the levels over again on the Flip Side – more on that later – in 40 Poochy Pups Courses (minus the bosses) to get 160 Smiley Flowers total (4 in each level). You can pick two Yoshis to go with you, if one of them will be your Player Two in a local cooperative mode.

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Gameplay

Most levels are exactly what you’d expect when you compare this game to others from the series. There’s a lot of jumping around from platform to platform and avoiding falling to your death. You can stomp on the heads of most enemies, eat them to make eggs, hit them with those eggs, or ignore them all together. Eggs are very much needed in this game to not only kill certain enemies, but to also grab certain items.

You can walk toward the background in specific areas but not everything you see is reachable with your character. You’ll have to keep an eye out in the distance and aim your eggs at fishy cardboard objects for extra coins. This may also yield important red coins or Smiley Flowers. It feels almost like a shooter with how important this element is in the game. You can get more eggs from certain blocks but you still need to use those eggs sparingly.

The Goals

Before you enter a level, you’ll be able to see just how many Smiley Flowers there are to collect which will increase in number as the game becomes more difficult. Three other Smiley Flowers will be awarded at the end of the level if you managed to get 100 or more coins, full 20/20 health (hearts) and all 20 red coins. Having these goals to accomplish in every level makes it a lot more fun and engaging. Everything is hidden so you have to fully explore every nook and cranny before exiting the level. Sometimes there will even be little puzzles to solve and other missing items to gather to assemble larger objects.

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Mini-Games and Other Fun

Unfortunately, a lot of levels felt repetitive with just new scenery (i.e. forest, beach, sweets) even when they tried to break things up by adding different mini-games. I will say that there was one level in particular that threw me for a loop and frankly did not belong in a Yoshi game. That was the level where the information block gave you this message: “If he sees you, run away…” Then you promptly get bombarded with creepy axe-murdering clowns that chase you around.

Poochy and Vehicle Rides

Some levels have Poochy who you could ride on to traverse lava or rivers, or just to bulldoze enemies and reach higher platforms. Then there were levels that let you ride vehicles. You could ride planes and trains and shoot fast-moving targets from them. There was even a level where you had to race to the finish line and one where you could ride a pirate ship and shoot cannonballs. There were interesting levels that let you use extra objects like the Go-Go Yoshi; a giant Yoshi machine that let each player control a boxing-type arm to punch obstacles out of the way. Also, a level where you used a skeletal dinosaur head to break boulders.

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There were levels that were once unique but in the end I found repetitive. Those where the ones where you are being chased by something (i.e. skeletal dinosaur, lava monster). It just felt like a recycled idea when the developers could have thought of something else to do in the level.

The Flip Side and Side-Quests

Instead of just adding more levels or content, they also created the Flip Side to every single level. These levels were the exact same but everything was backward. You were seeing everything from behind with the duct tape on cardboard to keep it together. It was cute at first until you realized you were just doing the same thing over again but with less beautiful things to look at. They did add three Poochy Pups to find in these levels however with a time limit if you wanted to attempt that challenge for an extra Smiley Flower.

You could repeat every level because a character in the hub world wants you to find a hidden cardboard item and hit it with an egg (i.e. 5 cardboard seagulls). That would have been a lot more fun if I could do it the first time around but the game waits until you finished each level before you can do this.

Adorable Costumes

A feature in the game that I quite enjoyed was the fact that there were costumes that you could collect. You had to purchase them with coins from a vintage gumball vending machine except there were Yoshi eggs in them. Inside each egg was a randomized selection of the costumes. Costumes not only looked incredibly adorable and hilarious but also gave you added protection against enemies.

Green eggs are Normal costumes with three health bars, red eggs were Rare costumes with four health bars, and golden eggs were Super Rare with five health bars. Once you depleted all of the health bars by taking damage, you would lose the costume only for the rest of that level. This gave you a great reason to collect coins in every level beyond the 100 that give you a Smiley Flower.

Playing Two-Player

Normally, I absolutely love playing local co-op but there was one element in this game that soured my experience; the ability to jump on your partner’s back to then be carried around until you jump off. The reason for my hatred of this is because it happened by accident all of the time which can ruin the current move you or your partner where performing. When you are on each other backs, only the person on top can shoot eggs and the person on the bottom can lick or jump.

Aside from performing a stronger ground-pound, there wasn’t much benefit to this action. All the developers had to do was make this a button choice rather then something that could just happen by jumping. I also hated the fact that you can accidentally swallow your partner, when your intention was to swallow the enemy. This not only interrupts them but causes them to lose all of their eggs. My partner and I spent so much time yelling at each other out of pure frustration that we made sure that our Yoshis were separated as far as the screen would allow.

Mellow Mode Vs. Classic Mode

The game offers two modes; Mellow and Classic. Mellow gives you the addition of wings on your Yoshi which makes the game very easy – maybe a little too easy. With the wings, you can jump and then stay hovering in the air or continue to float up even higher until you reach the top of the screen. It can give you a huge advantage to overcoming certain difficult bosses but if you use it the whole time during levels, you miss all of the puzzles that were designed to make you figure out how to get to new heights.

It honestly felt like cheating the game although this may be more fun for children. You also get more health, enemies hit less hard, and enemies give you two eggs instead of one. Something that’s very handy is an alert for when Smiley Flowers are nearby and the fact that the amount you have to find is visible. It shows you which Flower you collected in which order.

Other than the few issues I personally had with the game, the overall experience was a good one. Next time however I hope we get something a little more creative or innovative with the Yoshi series. Like what Nintendo did for the Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild or Mario Odyssey. The graphics, music, and costumes were all part of what made this game great as well as certain levels that stood out from the rest.

For more reviews on cooperative games go here for Chocobo’s Mysetry Dungeon Every Buddy and here for Unravel Two. To purchase Yoshi’s Crafted World, go here.