Mario’s dinosaur pal Yoshi has been making platforming outings for more than three decades at this point. The Yoshi spinoffs have been something of a proving ground for inventive platforming ideas ever since he got his first starring gig in the mid-1990’s, with all manner of colorful and striking experiences along the way. That all continues with today’s subject, the puzzle-oriented adventure of Yoshi and the Mysterious Book.
Chronicles of Yoshia
A group of Yoshis encounter one Mr. E, the titular talking mysterious book. Mr. E asks the Yoshis to scour his pages in order to chronicle and research various different lifeforms and creatures who inhabit his pages. A great many of these are quite familiar characters and enemies to people who’ve played many different Mario and Yoshi games, but Yoshi and the Mysterious Book takes a bit of a different course with them.
Eschewing linear “reach the goal”-oriented platforming, Yoshi and the Mysterious Book is a puzzle platformer that involves exploring compact levels each themed around an identified subject. Much of the time, you will be effectively researching what the creatures do via various interactions. How do they respond to Yoshi’s usual moveset, such as throwing eggs at them, ground pounding on top of them, or trying to eat them? How do they respond to and interact with their surroundings and other specimens? You can often pick up an enemy and carry them on your back, taking them to different places in the level to see what they do. Many such interactions reward you with stars that you need to clear each level. You also need to accomplish a sort of grand objective within each level in order to clear it.
Each level takes place in a gorgeous little page of Mr. E, with stop-motion animation and a drawn, cartoony aesthetic. The game generally leaves you to your own devices to make discoveries in each level as part of its main hook, and levels typically have a variety of unique interactions to uncover. Once you’ve cleared each level, you can even choose to name the creatures, regardless of what their canon name is (e.g. I named Shy Guy “My Dude” because I still find that marginally funny). Between the visuals, the enemy designs, and the peculiar things the little guys in the pages can be made to do, Yoshi and the Mysterious Book is a game absolutely chock full of charm. Which makes it unfortunate that it’s not equally chock full of fun.
Bedtime Story
While the game had plenty of occasions where I went “that’s pretty cute”, there weren’t nearly as many where I was like “that was pretty fun”. Many interactions in stages are pretty trivial and mundane to actually make happen, and the overall experience becomes rather repetitive. Occasionally the game would yield a laugh or an aww or an even more rare “wow” moment via its interactions and discoveries, but the vast majority of the time it felt like empty calories given how often the interactions happen by just screwing around aimlessly or even by accident. The stimulation came from doing something that is just kinda there to be done, without much genuine satisfaction from having done it.
Yoshi does not take damage and cannot die in the overwhelming majority of stages. Only a handful have anything resembling a true fail state, and the navigable space is typically small enough that hitting the reset button on one will generally not cause you to lose much. There have been a few platformers that make this sort of design work, but in Mysterious Book it felt like all I had to do was screw around until a thing happened. Getting stuck trying to figure out what the grand objective was (whenever it wasn’t super obvious) led to just stumbling around trying to figure it out in a way that wasn’t all that fun. A great many interactions are rather isolated, so there’s seldom some special “Eureka!” moment to figuring out the puzzle for any complex chain of events given how few of such sequences there actually were. Many levels have fairly obvious main goals, but a few of them just left me fairly stumped for a bit as I fumbled around trying to figure out what the game wants me to do, and some of them I would figure it out quickly but have to resort to a very slow and tedious task to make it actually happen.
I struggle to identify exactly who I feel Yoshi and the Mysterious Book is for. The chill, low-stakes vibe and cutesy aesthetic lead this game to feel like it’s for kids. However, Yoshi’s actual moveset as a playable character is a bit more complex than games for younger audiences often feature (and which felt a tad wasted on a game like this given how simple the actual platforming is), and the times that I found myself getting stuck were not the sort of situation that felt rewarding to figure out. I feel like child me wouldn’t have found much, if any, more excitement from this game than adult me, and would have likely gotten bored from its docile nature. And while I can enjoy mundanity to some extent in games, it’s a hard sell for a puzzle-oriented game where the goal is to find a solution and actually clear objectives. The game embodies that weird sense of difficulty where it’s very non-challenging to get to the end yet deceptively tricky to max out for 100%…but seldom did it ever truly feel particularly gratifying to accomplish much of anything regardless.
The game does at least get progressively more complicated, particularly after the main story levels, but the lack of challenge to most levels doesn’t really inspire me to want to dig through each level to get all of their stars. The post-game does allow you to unlock several neat features, some of which maybe should have been unlockable during the main game because they do enhance the experience in a meaningful enough way. By that point in my playthrough, my interest was already pretty low.
There’s a lot to do and uncover in this game despite having a relatively short path to unlocking the credits, and it has plenty of charm with its more unique interactions. It felt like an experiment for a new sort of gameplay design with the lovable Yoshi, but one I can’t say uses the flutter-kicking egg-throwing dinosaur in a manner that feels as effective or groundbreaking as what they’re trying for.
Verdict
Yoshi and the Mysterious Book tries to take Yoshi platforming in a different direction from his more traditional previous games, opting for a more puzzle-oriented experience. Alas, actually playing its levels resulted in a few exciting flakes sprinkled over an otherwise bland meal. The ideas are there, but the execution is a lot more miss than hit. It’s still a charming game that has its high points, but there are plenty of consistently better platformers to spend your time and money with on the Switch 2 right now.
WAIT FOR SALE ON YOSHI AND THE MYSTERIOUS BOOK
If you are looking for another 2D platformer for Nintendo Switch 2, take a look at our review of Super Mario Bros. Wonder – Switch 2 Edition.
Many thanks go to Nintendo for a Switch 2 review code for Yoshi and the Mysterious Book.
Been playing games since my papa gave me an NES controller in the early 90’s. I play games of almost all genres, but especially focus role-playing, action, and puzzle-platform games. Also an enjoyer of many niche things ranging from speedrunning to obscure music from all over the world.
