I like metroidvania/exploration-focused games, but it’s hard to deny that a lot of them try to follow the best examples (like Super Metroid or Symphony of the Night) a bit too closely and, as a result, feeling a bit disappointing. No matter how amazing they are, there might be a sense of familiarity to the point of games becoming predictable. So when a game like Knytt Underground, Treasure Adventure World, Toki Tori 2 or this title, Yoku’s Island Express, appear, it’s always refreshing and exciting to check them out. Even if they might turn out not as amazing as you hope.
The main “gimmick” for Yoku’s Island Express is pinball. You heard that right, not just ball physics like Knytt Underground, but actual pinball tables built into levels with two trigger buttons representing the flippers at all points of the game. And it’s quite surprising how well it often works together. While there is, of course, barely any sense of “challenge” and a lot of “difficulty” rather comes from luck, while mistakes lead to time waste, which isn’t good, more often than not, it’s actually pretty fun to figure out ways to progress while thinking about the character (or, technically, the ball they are carrying) as a pinball ball. It’s not the only way of traversal, since you can walk and later get few more abilities, but they are far less interesting compared to this weird mix of platforming exploration and pinball.
Sadly, the time waste and luck factor become rather frustrating as game goes on, even if you are not playing this exploration focused game for exploration. The two biggest offenders are the boss battles (which just take way too much time and lucky precision), except for the actually fun final boss fight, and the swinging mechanics. I’ve seen some weird swinging mechanics in my time, but this one is the worst, as both visual and sound based details about it aren’t cues, but rather make it harder to aim each swing. If you had issues with Bionic Commando, you will hate it here, though, luckily, these are required only in few areas.
It’s somewhat easy to excuse those, eventually, given the novelty of the game idea and actually well designed levels. And for the cute visual style and music as well, along with all the little NPC stories you can follow on the island. Backtracking in some areas can be annoying, but at the same time, it is possible to grab most of the things on the first go to each area and you can continue the game even after the final boss fight to finish all the unfinished “quests”.
What is somewhat bewildering is the settings of the game, which don’t have a proper resolution selection and instead have a choice between 720, 1080 or “Desktop”. And no less strange is the fact that there are few items in the game that seem to be not saved on the checkpoint, unlike pretty much every other action you do in the game. I haven’t seen anything game breaking or soft locking the progress, but perhaps I was just lucky.
Overall, Yoku’s Island Express is novel, cute and mostly fun to explore, but lacks the ingenuity of Toki Tori 2, the sense of adventure like Treasure Adventure World or really deep stories like Knytt Underground. It’s just a pinball metroidvania that’s worth checking out, but don’t expect to fall in love with it.