This game is, now bear with me, a pinball metroidvania adventure game set on an island where you’re an ant who also happens to be the new postman, and you collect fruit whilst taped to a ball. As soon as you arrive on the island, the god creature that oversees it is attacked and it’s up to you to find all the tribal elders who together can heal the god. Oh yes, and you’re armed with a party horn, and hoover up exploding slugs, and wear a little fish in order to swim.
So generally standard game stuff, really.
It’s a pretty looking 2D affair, with exploration broken up by caves and caverns that amazingly resemble pinball tables, and strangely convenient “flippers” dotted around the island to assist in getting you about by flicking you up trees and mountains and so on. I mean, it’s hardly a believable world, not least that all this pinball infrastructure only seems to benefit you and not the majority of the rabbits, rats, fish and various other creatures that you chat with.
It plays like a metroidvania game through out of reach areas becoming available due to abilities you unlock as the game progresses, which let you blow up certain rocks, swim, or fling yourself around buds, as appropriate.
Yoku’s Island Express is a relatively short game with a compact map, but you criss-cross it many times through various routes and shortcuts so it feels quite a bit bigger. It’s not especially difficult, not least because it appears to be impossible to die (it is possible to get stuck and have to restart from a – thankfully frequently placed – restart point though). Some of the trickier “shots” are frustrating however, and the knack for sucking up exploding slugs seems a little random and so a minor annoyance, but aside from that the only real difficulty is figuring how to get to the points marked on the map.
It’s fun while it lasts, and once completed there’s still a multitude of things to collect and deliveries to make (you’re a postman, remember), so completists will get even more value from this already cheap title. Yoku is definitely worth picking up.
Hello deKay! 🙂
I’ve heard good things about Yoku’s Island Express and decided to try it a couple of weeks ago. I really enjoyed the fusion of Metroidvania features and the pinball genre of this title. Moreover, I loved the musical score and the graphics of the game. Like you said, there are still a lot of goodies to collect after finishing the title, which makes it really fun!