Yoshi’s Crafted World (Switch)

With Yoshi’s Woolly World, developer Good-Feel took Yoshi’s platforming adventures to a world made of yarn where the cloth aesthetic provided many fun and unique level gimmicks for the egg-throwing dinosaur to engage with. This time around though, Good-Feel expanded its reach outside of the knitting kit, Yoshi’s Crafted World integrating all kinds of arts and crafts to construct its video game world.

 

Despite the crafted aesthetic, the plot of Yoshi’s Crafted World has no real relation to the world or its creative visuals. Instead, a group of different colored Yoshis are lounging around near the Sundream Stone one day when the evil Baby Bowser and his guardian, the wizard Kamek, come to steal the precious item. With the power to grant one’s wildest dreams, the Sundream Stone could ruin the idyllic life of the Yoshis if stolen, but before it can be used for evil, the five gems that power it are scattered across the island. Now, the Yoshis and Baby Bowser both are racing to collect the jewels, encountering each other along the way and facing off by way of Kamek’s magical powers turning regular enemies and objects into powerful boss enemies. The process of transforming the enemies does embrace the crafted visual style heavily, the game even turning down the frame rate for the transformation process as it tries to make the combination of knickknacks and art tools look more like stop motion than the more fluid digitized look the rest of the game has. Environmentally, it is indeed a crafted world, every object made to look like it was crafted from cardboard, paper, styrofoam, twine, and other materials of that sort, although the characters unfortunately are a bit too well crafted, their plush bodies only looking like they’re made of felt in close-ups. Some enemies do have more interesting textures or designs, one boss being made out of a beach ball for example and some monstrous heads that rise out of the water looking like they’re made of glitter gel. Even if some things like the Piranha Plants look just about the same as they do in a regular 3D Mario game, the backgrounds and environments have interesting constructions, structures being built out of repurposed cups and pails, the underwater area containing fish made from cut up paper plates, and push pins being used almost like decorative flowers. An incredible amount of thought and love went into making sure the levels could be realized through real world materials and tools, and while these are certainly more complex than what a kindergarten class could manage, the effort to look like it could be conceivably crafted by an expert team of craftsmen pays off with constantly intriguing visual design.

It’s a bit odd then how little impact the art style has on the gameplay though. Yoshi carries over most of his mainstay abilities for this platform game, the dinosaur able to spin his legs after a jump for more hang time and elevation, slam down to the ground in a ground pound attack, and most famously consume enemies with his tongue to turn them into eggs he can then throw to hurt other bad guys or interact with objects in the level like hidden clouds containing goodies or objects that need to be hit to be activated. The egg throwing has undergone an important change since his last adventure, the player able to aim the targeting reticle freely about the screen while winding up to pitch an egg. To challenge this more free aiming style, many areas will ask for quick egg throws in little challenges or as part of fights against bosses, not really too demanding in design in order to keep younger players involved but having a small issue due to the inclusion of the ability to aim at objects in the background and foreground. Yoshi’s Crafted World is a 2.5D platformer, meaning that while it mostly restricts itself to a 2D plane, at times you may be able to walk into the background and foreground on strictly defined lanes. This is meant to help you better experience the many crafted environments, weaving into boxy structures or interacting with a multi-layer setpiece, but since your eggs can be aimed into the different layers as well, it can lead to some ambiguity. If an enemy on the same layer as you is near a target in the foreground or background, your reticle might prefer to bean the target with the egg instead of your foe. This isn’t a common annoyance, but some of the tougher egg throwing challenges can run into this, and since the game often contains fun little accoutrements in the backgrounds you can hit for a few coins, some areas do conflict with your aim inadvertently.

 

The egg-throwing awkwardness doesn’t hold the game back at all though. Yoshi’s Crafted World is still delightful and fairly easy throughout save for deliberately difficult endgame content, especially the optional stuff meant to reward experienced players for putting in the extra effort when it comes to collectibles. Each stage has certain goals you can try to meet to make them a bit tougher, such as finding the coins in the level that are secretly red coins, having full health by the end of the stage, or finding the Smiley Flowers that often require some small skillful action to acquire. Smiley Flowers are actually rewarded for completing the side objectives in these stages, mainly because these are important to paying cardboard robots who otherwise block the path to new worlds. Regular coins are useful as well, the player able to get crafted costumes from vending machines that serve as armor in the levels. These come in a vast array of styles, some based on items like food containers and craft tools, others meant to look like enemies, and some just fun ideas like Yoshi wearing a car or train costume. Despite the Yoshis wearing these sometimes cumbersome looking costumes, it doesn’t impact their mobility at all, instead adding some extra health to Yoshi that can almost be too helpful and weaken the challenge of some of the more difficult moments. While these costumes can break in a stage, they can also be healed from damage and reequipped after the stage if they do break.

While the costumes are a bit too good, the collectibles and costume rewards do give plenty to shoot for in Yoshi’s Crafted World to make sure there’s still a lot to do in a stage… but they aren’t the only extras you can collect. Each level contains a Flip Side, where the level is now not only played in reverse, but with the camera flipped. The background is now the foreground in Flip Side stages, giving a behind the scenes look at objects that were crafted mostly to look good from the front. Like standing behind stage props, seeing this angle is a novelty even though the reverse version of these stages is often simpler and not as exciting since the level specific gimmicks were already experienced and exhausted on a first run through. To make up for this though, little puppies are meant to be collected within a time limit, this game mode decent if a bit underdeveloped. The last collectible in the game is just poorly conceived in general though. The same cardboard robots that block your path will later begin asking for you to go on scavenger hunts in levels, asking for you to find an object or objects in the level environments. You can exit the level after you’ve successfully located it to make replaying a level less repetitive, but then the robot will ask for another scavenger hunt item… sometimes in the exact same level you just played. Playing through a level normally is pretty fun, Flip Side might turn out okay depending on how the puppies are placed, but having to go back in the same stage over and over to find an item you could have located just as easily on the previous visit begins to strain the level design. It is an optional objective, but an ill-conceived one that makes going for 100% completion more of a slog than an exciting prospect.

 

Despite asking completionists to replay levels far too much, the design concepts on show in a regular playthrough of a stage often make for fun and interesting platforming challenges. While the crafted aesthetic mostly impacts the look of things rather than how they are interacted with, stages have plenty of different gimmicks to make them stand out. Outrunning a giant animate dinosaur fossil, piloting a Yoshi robot to destroy everything in your path, piloting a solar powered vehicle in a race while avoiding the clouds that will slow it down, and going on an egg-throwing safari where cardboard animals are your targets all make for some of the more diverse designs on offer even if they are often fairly easy, although the level where you ride an airplane feels like its controls could have been done better. The regular levels have some decent ideas as well, such as a climb up the rafters around a rocket launch before finishing the level on low gravity moon surface, a level with clown dolls who come tearing towards you with an axe if they spot you, and a ninja castle with rotating rooms. However, for each creative level comes a great many tame or conceptually simple ideas. One level has traveling between cardboard cities on train as a gimmick but there’s nothing spectacular about them or anything too strong to do aboard the trains and the game features many typical levels where ice and lava are just used as regular hazards instead of interesting mechanics to engage with. While some ideas like autoscrolling stages where you try to jump through as many circus hoops as possible or kill as many moles as possible are different and fun for what they are, they aren’t particularly exceptional. Poochy the odd-looking dog you can ride is also present but not given anything too creative to do as well. What it comes down to is Yoshi’s Crafted World contains many ideas that work for making good platforming levels, some are even incredibly imaginative, but for the most part the game is more interested in how the levels are constructed rather than making them enjoyable platforming stages. They still have the strong fundamentals to be enjoyable and often feature some unique details so that each stage is a fresh experience in some capacity, but since the crafted look doesn’t intersect with the gameplay too often, many levels feel like they’re more about showing how a regular platforming stage idea was realized with the game’s specific brand of art tools than making that design function well as a level.

THE VERDICT: An incredible amount of creativity was put into realizing the world design of Yoshi’s Crafted World, but not as much seems to have gone into how the stages in the world play. Yoshi still has plenty to throw eggs at and many levels will contain a decent gimmick at their core, and some even feature wildly imaginative concepts or play styles that change how the platforming is tackled, but more love was put into the look of things than the play. Unlike Yoshi’s Woolly World, the crafted aesthetic mostly impacts the appearance of things rather than what gimmicks are featured leading to many levels that might go for visual appeal over exciting gameplay, but there are still plenty of stages that are delightful and fun to play even if the game is a bit easy and packed with perhaps too many side activities.

 

And so, I give Yoshi’s Crafted World for Nintendo Switch…

A GOOD rating. When it comes to its commitment to its look, Yoshi’s Crafted World is excellent, only the cases where a character might as well be using typical video game modelling standing out as something where more work could be done. The fact that some crafts look too good is a silly problem though and for the most part, most of the levels in Yoshi’s Crafted World impress with their commitment to theme, even if your interaction with the designs is often straightforward and the gimmicks are mostly tied to enemies, hazards, or gameplay change ups. There are plenty of solid level designs and boss fights to be had, but they only sometimes venture into a design that feels it asks for extra thought from the player or a different approach to completing the level. The crafted art style should have cropped up much more often than little ribbons unfurling into roads and the other minor instances where the world feels like its look is part of the gameplay side of things, but even if the game had been stripped down to a Yoshi title without any artistic approach to the visuals, it would still contain enough diversity in stage design to ensure it’s fun to play. If the costumes were a little less powerful and the egg-throwing less prone to layer issues then Yoshi’s Crafted World wouldn’t have any foundational problems, and besides the scavenger hunt woes, nothing feels like it’s particularly bad. It’s cute, provides a good amount of action and minor exploration for the collectibles, and it does at least keep presenting new level ideas even if they aren’t always the most creative mechanically.

 

Yoshi’s Crafted World is an impressive art project that happens to contain a pretty good game inside it. Good-Feel is like a proud artist eager to show you their many creations, and it is definitely a fun tour even if you don’t get to spend as much time with each one as you’d like. Adorable and breezy, Yoshi’s artsy adventure does sometimes find a shining moment where creativity of game design and visual style go hand in hand, but even when it’s more straightforward and relying on impressive backgrounds to carry the stage, it never really hits a low point. Thanks to the work put into the visuals and a good degree of gameplay variety, Yoshi’s Crafted World is certainly well-crafted overall.