Yoshi and the Mysterious Book: Good Feel reinvents Yoshi from scratch

Yoshi and the Mysterious Book releases on Nintendo Switch 2. Developed by Good Feel, the studio behind Yoshi's Woolly World and Crafted World. It's neither of those. It's something else, and that's simultaneously its greatest interest and its main limitation.

What it actually is

The game revolves around a magical book called Mr. E, an enchanted encyclopedia recording fantastic creatures. Yoshi explores these creatures' habitats level by level, observes them, interacts with them, and enriches the book with discoveries.

It's not a platformer in the traditional sense. No game over screen. No death. Enemies are rarely obstacles to overcome, they're puzzles to understand. Each level introduces a new creature with its own properties: this slug can be thrown like a boomerang, this plant can be used as a net, this bird reacts differently depending on the temperature of the water on the ground. Understanding a creature unlocks new paths in the level.

What you learn is physically scribbled onto the level's scenery. These notes become a permanent knowledge base that serves later in the game: the creatures you've understood and catalogued allow accessing zones previously inaccessible.

The systemic approach

The comparison that comes to mind is Breath of the Wild applied to side-scrolling. The levels have coherent physics: weight, temperature, water quality are real parameters the creatures account for. Several puzzles have multiple solutions because creatures can interact with each other in unscripted ways. You can solve a challenge through a path the studio didn't anticipate, and it works, because the world's rules are coherent.

Just as you think Good Feel will recycle a mechanic, they introduce a new one. One moment you're fishing with an anthropomorphic character, the next you're flying with a glider, the next you're crossing scenery like a marble in the jaws of a bus-sized creature. The rhythm of idea introduction is that of the best Mario platformers: never time to be bored with one invention before the next arrives.

The art direction

It's the most beautiful game in the series since Woolly World. The hand-drawn style is coherent, detailed, and each level has a distinct visual identity corresponding to its creature's habitat. The book as narrative frame allows visual transitions between worlds that reinforce the impression that each level is a different chapter of the same encyclopedia.

It's the kind of art direction that by itself justifies part of the glowing scores the game receives. VGC gives it 5/5. That score is partly explained by this.

The challenge problem

IGN gives it 6/10. That score is also explained.

Yoshi and the Mysterious Book has no difficulty. The puzzles have satisfying solutions to find, but finding them is never frustrating or genuinely demanding. The levels are exploration sandboxes, not obstacles to overcome. For a player who wants to sit down and decompress, that's an asset. For someone who wants to be challenged by a platformer, it's a real limitation.

The Yoshi series has always leaned toward accessibility, but the best episodes maintained a balance: Yoshi's Island (1995) had a real difficulty curve on its final worlds. Here that balance is absent. The game treats all players as if they're discovering the genre, which isn't the reality of all its potential audience.

The absence of co-op is also a gap noted by several players. For a game aiming for accessibility to younger players that would be ideal to share with a child, the option doesn't exist.

For whom

For a child discovering video games, it's probably one of the best games available on Switch 2: beautiful, inventive, patient, without punishment. For someone who's played Yoshi's Island or Crafted World and wants a platformer with resistance, this isn't it.

For a nostalgic adult who wants a good time without demands: yes, with the same benevolent perspective we take toward Kirby's Epic Yarn, another Good Feel game, another experience without death or challenge, and yet endearing.

Verdict

Yoshi and the Mysterious Book is the most inventive game in the series since the 1995 original. Good Feel built something that doesn't imitate its predecessors and doesn't resemble anything else on the market: a side-scrolling sandbox with coherent physics, an inexhaustible bestiary of ideas, and flawless art direction.

What it isn't: a challenging platformer. What it is: a discovery game for players of all levels, comfortable in its own definition, and better than it looks from a distance.