Yoshi and the Mysterious Book

Genre: Platformer / Puzzle

Players: 1

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Review:

Yoshi and the Mysterious Book, released in 2026 on Nintendo Switch 2, is an odd game, both in the Yoshi series and in general. It starts with the same core gameplay of a typical family-friendly Yoshi series Platformer, but doesn’t use it to give players a typical Platformer experience. Instead, the Platformer elements are more like a delivery system for gameplay surrounding finding the different and unique ways each of this game’s odd animals interacts with you, the environment, and each other.

The presentation here is very good, coming across as a sort of “mixed media” style. Sometimes 2D, sometimes 3D, sometimes in a sketchy hand-drawn style, sometimes in a low-framerate style as if to imitate stop-motion. Overall the effect is quite nice, even if it seems pretty inconsistent, and nothing that couldn’t be done on the original Nintendo Switch with a lower resolution and framerate. This is backed by lighthearted music and joined by various cutesy sound effects like Yoshi’s usual high-pitched mutterings, and various characters using mostly babble-speak. It all works well enough to make this game a visually and auditorily-inviting space.

When it comes to the gameplay, this game removes all of the typical Platforming challenge from the series, which lately hasn’t been terribly-challenging anyway but now that challenge is pretty much gone. You don’t get hurt in any significant way when a hostile creature attacks you, and there aren’t any great perils to avoid. Now, the challenge largely comes from the puzzles.

Though… it may be more fitting if I called them “puzzles”, because they’re not really typical Platformer-style puzzles. It’s more along the lines of mainly “try a bunch of different stuff and see what gets a reaction from this level’s star critter”. How does it interact with Yoshi’s tongue, with water, with mud, with your tossed eggs, with your stomp, with grass… and so on. In other words, there’s a lot of trial and error here, without much direction beyond “just try a bunch of stuff and see what happens.”

I’m of two minds on this. On the one hand, this sorta’ bridges the gap between a young children’s “Activity Center” software that acts as an interactive toy, and a more traditional Platformer, possibly helping youngsters ease into the gap of playing more standard Platformers. On the other hand, this is sure to frustrate and possibly bore players hoping for a game that follows in the footsteps of Yoshi’s Island and Yoshi’s Woolly World. Heck, older players will likely even be happier with a follow-up to Yoshi’s Crafted World.

Instead, what we have here is a family-friendly and more specifically kid-friendly Platformer that younger audiences may find delightful, but that older Nintendo fans will likely view as a frustrating waste of potential. If you’re the former (or more likely, the parent of the former), you’ll probably find Yoshi and the Mysterious Book to be a good choice. But if you’re the latter, you’re probably better off playing Yoshi’s past adventures.

tl;dr – Yoshi and the Mysterious Book is a Platformer with strong Puzzle elements that takes the typical Yoshi gameplay formula, removes any semblance of difficulty, and instead uses the Platforming as a delivery implement for the Puzzle gameplay, which works out to “try a bunch of stuff with this game’s odd creatures and see what happens”. Older players are likely to be frustrated and bored with this game, but youngsters may find it to be a delightfully inventive introduction to the Platformer genre.

Grade: B-

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