Yoshi and the Mysterious Book review: A cosy, creative collectathon ...Middle East

Yoshi’s back! That is, to be honest, all there is to say... right? Well, hopefully not, because we've written a full review of Yoshi and the Mysterious Book for you.

Ever since his first outing on the SNES, where he battled Bowser's forces while protecting a baby Mario (those annoying cries still haunt us), Yoshi’s side adventures have been fun explorations into the Mario universe, and this entry is no different – with Yoshi quite literally writing the book on creative creatures and collectathons.

The Mysterious book in question is Mr E, an anthropomorphised leather tome complete with monocle and a moustache to be envied (one day, top lip... one day you’ll feel the warm embrace of an iconic cookie duster).

With Bowser Jr running riot amongst his pages in search of a unique creature, Mr E tasks the Yoshis with exploring his pages to remove the pest, while at the same time studying the creatures within to fill his sheets with as many encyclopaedic discoveries as possible. What’s a book without some ink, after all?

It’s a simple set up and an easy-to-understand gameplay loop, but it’s delivered with the charm and creative flair you’d expect from Nintendo’s main efforts, and we were pretty instantly hooked in.

Off the bat, it’s worth noting that this adventure is quite clearly aimed at kids first and foremost - difficulty doesn’t spike anywhere and there’s no fail state to be seen. You can fall off a cliff and the game will just rewind Yoshi back to where he jumped off. Even in the handful of boss battles you’ll encounter, there’s no way to die, you just either finish the task quickly or take a little longer.

We don’t bring this up as a negative at all, but more to set the expectation that this Yoshi adventure is one about fun exploration and not your usual platforming skill test.

In fact, in our time with it we felt that it has surprisingly more in common with Tony Hawks Pro Skater than previous Yoshi games.

That feeling of starting a level and trying to tick off a list of tricks and collectibles in as smooth a run as possible was something we thought about often.

Each page is essentially its own mini world, and within it you’ll jump into specific habitats for each creature, serving as levels. These range in size from short trips left to right with lots of height to explore and vice versa, to longer more sprawling areas - but each has a unique twist thanks to the local creature which you’ll need to test to their limits.

For example, one creature that looks like a slug but can be thrown like a boomerang was useful for cutting grass, but not smashing rocks, unless you happen to dodge it flying back so it could build up power. It did not however taste very nice and bees would not attack it - how do we know this? Through purely scientific methods, of course.

The same methods helped us discover egg-shaped penguins can’t be eaten but will follow you and act like projectiles when the time calls for it, and that singing birds aren’t fans of chilli peppers and will bounce around in pain should you feed them any.

Did this stop us feeding them copious amounts so these living breathing trampolines would move to a more prime position for our coin hunting needs? Of course. For science! (and those coins we mentioned).

In many ways this is almost a cosy game if you like, you pick a lush world, look for an interesting creature and with no pressure just run around experimenting and trying any idea that comes to mind, which more often than not leads to a discovery.

Once marked in the book, you’ll be given some stars based on how important that discovery may be, which in turn unlock more pages as you build up your bounty.

Each area has a manor-sized creature to discover, but rather than fighting them, you’ll almost always team up with them and use their innate ability to tackle Bowser Jr and stop him stealing some of their children or some other useful resource from the wild. These are simple enough but fun encounters, from attacking a rapidly-crafted UFO with some sort of Drill-faced lion that can leap great distances to riding a water creature that can split into hundreds of minions or grow to the size of a tower and eat Bowser's iconic clown copter.

Yoshi and the Mysterious Book Encourages replays, not just for you to go back and find all the discoveries you missed, but as you move forward and unlock new creatures, they’ll start appearing in previous pages and interacting with other creatures in some interesting ways.

Now, you’re probably wondering why we keep referring to them as creatures. This is because once you’ve finished a habitat for the first time, you’ll be given the chance to name them…

Of course Mr E can offer a more official name, but we went for a more specific naming convention. That of the ‘Butt’. Yes, we will forever remember the tale of FlappyButt being attacked by a swarm of BuzzyButt’s as WetButt looked on in horror. DrillButt was standing by on the sidelines though as ShyButt hid in a hut, with a flock of GulButt’s lining the sky as it happened.

Ultimately, there’s a lot to offer from Yoshi and the Mysterious Book if you’re down for some relaxed mucking around in fun mini zones that have all the hallmarks of a classic Yoshi and Mario adventure – with plenty of end game content after you complete the story to give you a reason to dive back into Mr E’s pages and torment some daft creatures in the name of science and discovery.

Yoshi and the Mysterious Book launches 21 May for Nintendo Switch 2. You can order your copy now.

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