Yoku’s Island Express Review: A Breath of Fresh Air
Yoku's Island Express: Pinball and Metroidvania go very well together!While video games seem to have scoured the world for the past few decades, we are sometimes still surprised by preposterous ideas that are more free-spirited than average. Some of these concepts die in the bud, while others provide us with a fresh and unique experience that we enjoy with pleasure. Yoku’s Island Express clearly falls into this second category.
In Yoku’s Island Express, you play a postman dung beetle that must save a fantastic island in a mixture of Metroidvania and pinball. In one sentence, you have surely understood that the title of the Swedish studio Villa Gorilla intended to be original. Immediately, we discover a singular universe, populated by cute and strange creatures transposed to the screen by an artistic direction close to the tale. It's fluffy and sweet in all circumstances, with a few onomatopoeias to accompany the dialogues. The pictures speak for themselves, let's focus on the gameplay.
FLIPPERING IS ALWAYS FASHIONABLE.
Yoku's Island Express: Pinball and Metroidvania go very well together!Metroidvania and pinball aren't meant to be a good mix. The first is characterized by an open world while the principle of pinball is to take place in a closed environment. However, the designers behind Yoku’s Island Express have done an incredible job of bringing about a new experience. If we can move Yoku and his ball as we see fit, it is blue and yellow snowshoes that can be activated via the triggers on the controller that will really help us travel. Take height, jump over precipices, break walls: just press with the right timing and the rest is done by itself. It may sound simple, but it takes a certain amount of ingenuity to create a coherent level design in such a context, and that is precisely what the team at Villa Gorilla has managed to do. Walking in this enchanting world is fun and funny, amused that we are to discover the different mechanics of movement.
Yoku's Island Express: Pinball and Metroidvania go very well together!
Besides the exploration, the title gives us real closed passages worthy of pinballs in which we often have to open a passage, or even fight a boss. We must for example recover runes to break walls, rotate swinging panels to see fruit appear or recover explosive slugs in order to destroy rocks and thus discover new areas. With several rackets in each pinball, the whole thing is complex enough to grab our minds, Yoku being propelled at high speeds. The most surprising thing is that the title manages to offer a little challenge without ever being frustrating. You have to be precise and sometimes try to do it several times in order to send Yoku to the right place, but losing the ball between the two main rackets only causes a few fruits (game currency) to be lost among the hundreds that you will have recovered. Basically, you will not die playing Yoku’s Island Express, which would have been of no real interest.AN OPEN WORLD ON A CLOSED CIRCUIT
Yoku's Island Express: Pinball and Metroidvania go very well together!We still have to understand how the Metroidvania aspect works. Indeed, you often revisit areas by discovering new paths there thanks to the powers that you have recovered, like diving under water for example. In fact, if we travel very quickly across the island horizontally, Yoku’s Island Express then explores vertically, making us enjoy its depths and skies. An exotic journey which owes its interest to the gameplay, of course, but also to the round and harmonious soundscape. We quickly opened up the Apiligne route, a transport system that covers large areas in an instant. As with the absence of death, the exploration is intended without frustration despite, it is true, the lack of precision of the world map. The title of the Villa Gorilla studio is also full of secrets, with false walls, hidden chests and a lot of things to do outside of the main quest. If finishing the game will only take you three hours, the side missions will keep you going, especially if you plan to collect the 80 Wickerlings. Believe us, the game is well worth the effort…
The notes
+ Positive points
Metroidvania with a real personal touch
A fun pinball game
Successful universe, a kind of tale
Cute full
Not frustrating
The original boss fights
Collecting "collectibles" has a real interest
-Negative points
Map that lacks clarity
Some uninteresting pinball machines
Few indications for quests
The open side of a Metroidvania and the closed aspect of a pinball machine can't work together? No! Yoku’s Island Express is an unexpected success, which hides under its sweet universe an original gameplay in a mixture of surprising genres. Here is a typical example of a game made with love, which is played with a certain pleasure, without frustration, to the point that we would have liked it to last longer.
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