A whistlestop tour of Yoku's Island Express
Yoku's Island Express already has a bunch of genres attached to it - it's been called a pinball game, a platformer, an adventure. After an hour with the game's final version, I'd like to helpfully add a few more - it's a bit of a Metroidvania, a bit of a puzzler. It's consistently charming and often wonderfully surprising. I can't really think of a lot else like it.
There are times when it is just one of the above, when the action slows to a single screen and you stay a while, your controller's trigger buttons acting as pinball flippers as you send Yoku, your little dungbeetle postman, flying around the screen. You control him while he pushes his suspiciously white ball, and off he goes, careering around cave tunnels and spilling colourful fruit all over the area. You're often looking to trigger certain things around the environment by collecting a certain number of items in one place, or shooting into a wall enough times to smash through.
And then the action is flowing again, through the game's open world which is there to explore with a surprising amount of freedom. Within the first hour of the game you're introduced to several areas in Mokumana Island, and three objectives to pursue. The path I took led me into an area where I acquired a Slug Vaccum, an item which let me suck up explosive gastropods to use as fuel. It's a way of adding another layer of skill to those pinball sections - where you need to pass by a slug, accurately suck up the poor invertebrate, then precisely aim yourself at something you need to blow up in order to detonate it and progress on.
Post a Comment