1. Yoshi's Crafted World Switch
2. Yoshi's Crafted World Axe Clown
3. Yoshi's Crafted World Ign

Not quite Yoshi’s Island beater, but closer than he’s come in a long time

Yoshis Crafted World is rated 4.7 out of 5 by 1665. Rated 5 out of 5 by from Check out Yoshi! The visuals are stunning, the controls are effortless, the music is adorable and the game encourages exploration in a way that ensures you'll never be bored. Nintendo There's depth to 'Yoshi's Crafted World,' and I mean that literally — the game's path occasionally offers an option for Yoshi to traverse into the background or foreground of a given level. Mar 27, 2019  Yoshi’s Crafted World is a real joy to play. While it’s monotonous during the flip side levels, its masterful platform design makes up for it in droves. And as Nintendo proved last year, cardboard boxes, bits of string, fuzzy felt and plastic cups can be used.

Not quite Yoshi’s Island beater, but closer than he’s come in a long time.

• A playful parade of level concepts
• Mountains of collectibles to keep you occupied
• Homemade aesthetic is a treat to unpick
• Co-op mode is a chaotic mess

Yoshi’s Crafted World feels like a game Nintendo found rattling around in the back of a kitchen drawer. It’s an ode to the things you ought to throw away: the empty battery, a broken straw, the Blu Tack turned Dirty Brown Tack.

Its levels are built from everyday domestic detritus, bodged together with sticky tape and string, like the Frankensteined horror shows kids bring home from playgroup and expect you to enshrine on the mantelpiece. To call it a ‘crafted world’ is overselling the workmanship, and underselling the charm.

Yoshi's Crafted World Switch

And what better playground for Yoshi, the closest thing Nintendo has to the shiny penny it lost down the back of the sofa. A hero farmed out to third parties for a series of ever-worsening outings that made you question why Yoshi was ever elevated in the first place. And it was an elevation. It’s easy to forget that Mario’s dinosaur pal was the power-up that got lucky: going from simple steed in Super Mario World to Nintendo mainstay in the course of one game. One terrific game, admittedly – the sublime Yoshi’s Island – but why him and not, say, Kuribo’s Shoe or Starman?

It’s up for debate if Yoshi’s less-than-stellar career could be pinned on the dino himself. Arguably he’s the least appealing plaything in the Nintendo pantheon. His vague flutter jump lacks Mario’s acrobatic accuracy and his reliance on thrown eggs makes him a bit of a bystander in his own games. 50% of the action is lobbing eggs at enemies or winged clouds, the other 50% is trying to harvest enough eggs so you don’t have to impotently jog past these hovering prizes. Not to mention the sinister soundtrack of constipated ‘hynnnggs’ that accompany these moves.

This is true of Yoshi’s Crafted World, too. The twist is an ability to throw eggs into the back- and foreground, turning pretty backdrops into target galleries, and giving level designers more places to hide collectibles. Considering so much of Yoshi’s challenge stems from ammunition management – ensuring you have an egg for every occasion – the sheer number of bobbing targets adds noise that makes the completionist’s work that bit harder. Yoshi’s aiming reticule does light up any item he can interact with, but there’s still a lot of red herrings designed to sap your egg supplies.

On the strength of this alone, Yoshi’s Crafted World could have so easily been another of his post-Island failures. The meat of the adventure is hunting for collectibles, which sometimes slips into trial and error. Designers have a mean habit of using invisible items that only appear when Yoshi passes near them. Forcing you to scour every corner of the screen is more like busywork than clever deduction. But it becomes less noticeable as the game goes on and you begin to spot these ‘notably empty’ spaces a mile off, like Neo finally seeing the code of the Matrix.

The collectible hunt is more enjoyable when they introduce proper puzzles. Using Yoshi’s weight to seesaw giant mobiles to reach hidden heights, say, or throwing magnets against tin cans to build makeshift staircases to distant prizes. Other pick-ups are tied to bursts of arcade fun – winged clouds that trigger timed shooting challenges or litter levels with blue coins to be grabbed against the clock. It’s even better when combined with other mechanics: bounding Yoshi’s pet Poochy through a slalom of blue coins is a particular pleasure. Any challenge that gives you just one shot, and injects a bit of urgency as a result, is to be welcomed in an otherwise gentle trot from start to finish.

“What prevents Crafted World adding to his stinker of a CV is a sense of playful experimentation missing from his games since Yoshi’s Island”

What prevents Crafted World adding to his stinker of a CV is a sense of playful experimentation missing from his games since Yoshi’s Island. With Yoshi being a more physically limited hero, the levels have to do heavier lifting than they do for Mario or Kirby.

And like Island, Crafted World has no fear in introducing ideas for a five-minute level and then binning them off, no matter how strong the execution or the potential for further play. One second it’s magnetised weight puzzles, the next you’re on the roof of a runaway train or vapourising buildings with giant robot fists.

And while some ideas are less welcome – jumping across birds reminds you how imprecise that flutter jump can be – the ingenuity steadily ramps up as the game unfolds. There’s a tremendous solar-powered racetrack, where you try to nudge your competitors into the shadows to slow their progress. And a stage where axe-wielding clown maniacs attempt to kill Yoshi when he leaves the light is weirdly unnerving; almost like a Nintendo take on Five Nights At Freddy’s. It’s perhaps misplaced in a game that’s about as infant-friendly as they come, but it adds to the satisfying sense that you never know what you’re going to get when you press A to start.

This creative whiplash also pushes the game in exciting visual directions, as space rockets built from washing up bottles make way for a level played in silhouette behind sliding Japanese doors. The nerdiest twist – quite literally – is the option to replay levels from a 180 degree perspective flip. It’s a timed dash from the finish line, but played behind the scenes so you can see how the elaborate designs you explore on your first trip are actually constructed.

As a whole, Crafted World feels conceptually clever rather than pretty – there’s nothing here to rival the papercraft beauty of PlayStation’s Tearaway, for example – but seeing stages in a practical light injects does inject an ironic dose of magic. Someone went to great lengths to work out how these places could work for real, and wants you to appreciate it. And you will.

“Crafted World feels conceptually clever rather than pretty, but seeing stages in a practical light injects does inject an ironic dose of magic.”

Crafted World’s other attempts to pad out the world are less successful. The co-op mode is diabolically bad, hindered by a tight camera perspective that sees two heroes colliding and cursing. This is clearly a world made for one. If you are concerned about a younger player struggling alone, there’s a mellow mode offering infinite jumps, more health, more eggs and none of those irritating invisible winged clouds. It’s an exemplary easy mode.

A vast collection of unlockable costumes also makes a strong case for less being more – emptying coins into a gacha machine to unlock a reskinned box is not everyone’s idea of a good time, unless the idea of Yoshi dressed as a boat is a dream come true for you.

But maybe that’s the magic of Crafted World: a ticket to simpler times, when Pritt Stick and glitter equalled art, and not something that you were going to be hoovering off the car seats for months to come. And it reminds us of a time when Yoshi was deserving of his own games; not a Yoshi’s Island beater, but closer than he’s come in a long time. Nintendo should search around those kitchen drawers more often.

Not quite Yoshi’s Island beater, but closer than he’s come in a long time.

• A playful parade of level concepts
• Mountains of collectibles to keep you occupied
• Homemade aesthetic is a treat to unpick
• Co-op mode is a chaotic mess

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http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/VideoGame/YoshisCraftedWorld

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First announced in 2017 and released on March 29th, 2019, Yoshi's Crafted World is a game in the Yoshi's Island series for Nintendo Switch. Developed by Good-Feel, the game is a sequel to Yoshi's Woolly World as well as a Spiritual Successor to the company's earlier game Kirby's Epic Yarn.

In Yoshi's Island, there is a mystical artifact called the Sundream Stone that can make one's wishes come true. But one day, Kamek and Baby Bowser found about the Sundream Stone and tried to make off with it. Unfortunately, a struggle with the Yoshis and Kamek get into a battle that causes the Sundream Stone and its five jewels to be scattered across the island.

The game stars Yoshi who appears to be made out of crafted fabric rather than felt. He is able to throw eggs in a three dimensional plane for the first time.

Tropes found in this game include:

• Amusement Park: Cardstock Carnival. Includes Ferris wheels, roller coasters, carousels, and Bullet Bills (fireworks, perhaps).
• Antepiece: The game frequently eases the player into each level's mechanics through safe environments. Sometimes, an entire level basically trains the player for an upcoming boss fight.
• Art Course: In a game already based on arts and crafts, this game has one in the form of 'Stitched Together', which actually reuses assets and aesthetics of the previous game, making it unique in a game that utilizes a different style of art. This also technically counts as a Nostalgia Level, in a way.
• Art Shift: Yoshi's Woolly World had mostly a yarn aesthetic, whereas Yoshi's Crafted World evokes what is essentially what happens when you ask a group of children to make dioramas with anything on hand, including paper plates, cans, cardboard boxes, drinking straws and so much more.
• Attack Its Weak Point: Typically represented by an X-shaped patch of tape. Some bosses weak to this include:

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  • Tin-Can Condor, whose weak point is under his crown.
  • Gator Train, whose weak point is in its mouth.
  • Burt the Ball, whose weak point is his crotch.
• Big Boo's Haunt: Haunted Maker Mansion. Enemies in this stage include Zombie Shy Guys, Chompagobblers, and Shy Guy Reapers.
• Bonus Boss: Kamek himself.
• Bonus Dungeon: Hidden Hills, which only can be accessed after beating the final boss.
• Boss Arena Idiocy: Tin-Can Condor is the only major boss who isn't a Tactical Suicide Boss, but it does have the misfortune of fighting Yoshi in an area where Mousers keep bringing in magnets Yoshi can use to weigh it down.
• Boss-Only Level: If there's a level with a Dream Gem icon, it's this. It's also the first game where Yoshi doesn't have to go through a castle level of sorts. However, the Bonus Boss doesn't have a gem.
• Boss Subtitles: Every major boss is shown to have a title after Kamek creates the boss from resources such as Burt the Ball.
• Defeat by Modesty: In grand tradition, Burt the Ball (who is still rather bashful) wears pants that lower as he takes damage, with the fight ending once his pants are gone completely.
• Dem Bones: One level consists of a pursuit by Skelesaurus which appears to be a giant fossil-skeleton dinosaur. Also doubles as an Advancing Wall of Doom.
• Depth Perplexion: Sometimes it can be difficult for the game to tell what you're aiming at, especially if it's in the background.
• Dismantled MacGuffin: The Sundream Stone has five jewels that got scattered across the island.
• Eternal Engine: Mr. Geary's Factory, which has a few Lethal Lava Land elements, and ends with a battle against Mr. Geary himself.
• Fetch Quest: The Blockafeller quests have you replaying levels from the world in search of 'crafts', objects that can be found in the foreground and background of levels.
• Final-Exam Boss: The True Final Boss, Kamek Kerfuffle, involves fighting harder, Kamek-themed versions of Tin-Can Condor, Gator Train, and Baby Bowser's mecha, along with controlling Go-Go Yoshi one more time during the final phase.
• Five-Second Foreshadowing: One of the Message Boxes in 'Be Afraid of the Dark' simply reads 'He'll come from behind.' Cue axe-wielding doll bursting through the wall behind Yoshi.
• Groin Attack: Burt the Ball needs to be Ground Pounded right between his stubby feet after being knocked into the water.
• Ground Pound: Considering Yoshi's Island is the Trope Namer, this comes with the territory. It can be used to bash in stakes and defeat tougher enemies who can shrug off a typical stomp, tongue or egg to the face. Uniquely, the left shoulder buttons are also mapped to Ground Pound, in addition to the classic method of pressing down.
• Humongous Mecha:
  • Go-Go Yoshi is a giant Yoshi mecha made out of cardboard.
  • In the first phase of the final boss fight, Baby Bowser pilots a giant mecha.
• Instructive Level Design: The game makes minimal use of Hint Blocks by letting the level design itself teach the player how everything works. For example, Mine-Cart Cave teaches the player that the Action Bomb enemies can be used to blow up rocks by placing one of them in front of some rocks that blow up when it tries to attack.
• Jungle Japes: Rumble Jungle.
• Level Ate: 'Poochy's Sweet Run', where bridges are made of sandwich crackers and bounce pads are macarons.
• Level in Reverse: Each course has a 'Flip Side' where you play the level backwards, with the perspective flipped to match, and try to find and escort Poochy Pups to the goal.
• Levels Take Flight: 'Altitude Adjustment' involves Yoshi standing on a flying plane, whilst collecting coins, battling Shy Guys (including those on enemy planes) and popping balloons. The plane will fly lower if Yoshi stands on the front end, and it will fly higher if he stands on the rear end.
• Lily-Pad Platform: In the level 'Ride the River', Yoshi travels on a river riding of lilypads (made out of sponge, to fit the crafting theme of the game).
• Locomotive Level:
  • 'Rail-Yard Run' (part of Sunshine Station) involves Kamek disassembling a steam engine, and Yoshi must find the three missing pieces to reassemble it. When he does, the train will take him to the goal.
  • 'Whistlestop Rails' from Big Paper Peak is another locomotive level, this time with the better part of the level spent riding trains through fields and caves and dodging Fangs.
  • 'Jungle Tour Challenge' from Rumble Jungle involves Yoshi riding on a train as he shoots eggs at the animal targets.
  • 'Gator Train Attacks!' is a Traintop Battle against the titular Gator Train, which rides on rails parallel to Yoshi's.
• Make My Monster Grow: Averted this time. Rather than enlarging an enemy, Kamek gather resources from the scene for example, he used a tin can as the body base for Tin-Can Condor or acorns and sweet gum balls for Spike the Piranha's vines However it's played straight as per Yoshi game where he enlarges Baby Bowser for the second part of the final fight and the final phase of the Bonus Boss where Kamek himself grows giant.
• Monster Clown: The ragdolls in 'Be Afraid of the Dark' are clowns who make demonic screeches and charge at Yoshi with axes.
• Monster Is a Mommy: Done in the first stage of Rumble Jungle. You're chased by much of the stage by an angry, aggressive Rhinono. At the end, you see that she's worried because her baby is stranded on the other side of a broken bridge. When you fix the bridge, she and her baby team up to break one last obstacle for you before they stop chasing you.
• Musical Nod: Some of the music, particularly in the world contain elements from the main theme in Yoshi's Story.
• Musical Spoiler: Upon completing the level 'Many Fish in the Sea', you can view its song in the Scrapbook. Said song is entitled 'A Teeny, Tiny Universe'.
• Mythology Gag: Some of the fake food cartons that the levels are made out of reference other Mario series, including:
  • Moo Moo Meadows milk.
  • Yo'sterCookies.
  • Starbeans Coffee cans and bottles.
• Non-Lethal Bottomless Pits: Falling into a bottomless pit just deals some damage and makes Yoshi lose his eggs before turning into a winged egg and flying to the last solid ground he was on. Falling into a bottomless pit in the Hidden Hill levels or the True Final Boss is instant death, though.
• Nostalgia Level: 'Stitched Together' is done in the style of Woolly World, with most of the level being made out of yarn. In addition, a lot of its setpieces are inspired by iconic ones from Woolly World, such as the windmills and mobiles.
• Painful Pointy Pufferfish: In the Yarrctopus Docks level 'Many Fish in the Sea', Yoshi has to ride on a variety of papercraft fishes, which serve as platforms. Some of the fishes are pufferfishes, which Yoshi has to avoid unless he wants to get damage.
• Patchwork Map: Literally and figuratively. The 'worlds' only consist of 2-3 levels this time and they all have very different themes, like the Space Zone being right after the Jungle Japes, yet those settings connected by simple paper trails guarded by cardboard robots.
• Pixel Hunt: The myriad Fetch Quests can often result in checking the background and foreground obsessively.
• Plot Coupon That Does Something: Smiley Flowers help make unhappy characters happy.
• Power-Up Mount: Poochy returns as a mount for Yoshi to ride on, and retains his invincibility to enemies and hazards.
• Puzzle Boss: The Shogun is different from other bosses in that the point of his battle is to navigate a maze of moving rooms and spike walls until you reach his chambers, at which point he is completely defenseless.
• Racing Minigame: 'Solar Zoom' involves Yoshi riding a solar-powered car, and racing against Shy Guys in their own race cars. The car gains speed in sunlight and loses speed in the shadows, and running to the left or the right sides of the solar panels changes lanes.
• Recursive Ammo: The newly-introduced Blue/Teal Eggs (made by ricocheting a red egg) give the player 3 more eggs if used to defeat an enemy.
• Rhino Rampage: Several aggressive rhinos appear in the Rumble Jungle. They ram on Yoshi on sight and are very persistent. This can prove useful, as they can be tricked into destroying obstacles Yoshi would otherwise be unable to pass.
• Ring-Out Boss: Burt the Ball has limited ways to harm Yoshi, and mostly just tries to knock him into the water with Bumpties and beach balls, and by tilting the arena. Spitting Bumpties at Burt allows Yoshi to turn the tide against him (figuratively and literally) and expose his weak point.
• Rise to the Challenge: At one point in Mr. Geary's Factory, Yoshi must climb to the top of a vat as the lava inside it rises.
• River of Insanity: 'Ride the River', especially with the Lunge Fish that try to eat Yoshi. One of which serves as an Advancing Wall of Doom near the end of the stage.
• Scenery Porn: This game is absolutely gorgeous and one of the gimmicks is to play in both the front and back halves of the stages!
• Shielded Core Boss: The Tin Can Condor is normally immune to your eggs or any form of damage, due to being plated in a coat of armor made of tin cans. However, Little Mousers periodically run across the screen with magnets, which you can then spit at him, dragging the feather armor off his head and exposing the weak point.
• Space Zone: Outer Orbit.
• Spiritual Successor: This game is even closer to Yoshi's Story than Woolly World was, both gameplay (free-aiming eggs and tridimensional paths) and aesthetic-wise, with a bigger emphasis on exploring and collecting. Even most of the music consists of arrangements of a single theme.
• Stalactite Spite: Several falling icicles appear in Slip-Slide Isle.
• Stop Motion:
  • Whenever Kamek uses his wand to assemble a boss or when the Sundream Stone grants the wishes to make something for whatever one desires, it happens in what seems to be Stop Motion for the inanimate objects.
  • The costume capsule dispensers have jerky, low frame rate animations. Given how realistic the material objects are made of can look in this game, it gives a very convincing stop-animation feel.
• Surprise Creepy: The majority of the game is bright and cheerful, as per usual for Yoshi. Then you meet 'Be Afraid of the Dark' and start to wonder why there are murderous axe-wieldingdolls in this cutesy, colorful game. This is despite 'Haunted Maker Mansion', the other spooky level, mostly being cute.

Yoshi's Crafted World Axe Clown

• Suspiciously Similar Substitute:
  • Spike the Piranha is basically the land version of Naval Piranha.
  • Burt the Ball has new attacks involving Bumpties and beach balls, but otherwise, he's just Burt the Bashful with a different name.
• Tactical Suicide Boss: Overall, a lot of the bosses would be invincible if they didn't keep summoning enemies Yoshi can throw or spit back at them.
  • Spike the Piranha would be invincible if it didn't keep spitting out containers above it that can be hit to drop spike balls on it.
  • Burt the Ball would be unbeatable if he didn't summon those Bumpties that Yoshi can spit at him.
  • Gator Train is invincible, but when he tries to bite Yoshi, he exposes the soda can in his mouth, his weak point, as dictated by the tape over it.
  • Baby Bowser would be unstoppable if he didn't keep summoning enemies Yoshi can use against him. His second phase would likewise be unbeatable if he didn't keep pulling out weapons Yoshi can use against him.
  • Kamek keeps exposing himself to make his attacks more powerful, even though he'd be invincible if he just stayed hidden the whole time.
• Theme-and-Variations Soundtrack: Nearly all of the music consists of remixes of the game's main theme. The only exceptions are the map theme, boss theme, and final boss theme.
• Towering Flower: The Origami Gardens are filled with various flowers several times bigger that Yoshi and the local fauna alike.
• Traintop Battle: Gator Train is train fought by Yoshi on a train of his own.
• Unspoken Plan Guarantee: After the Yoshis gather four of the five Dream Stones, Kamek and Baby Bowser have an unspoken plan on what to do next. Turns out the plan was to just let the Yoshis get the last Dream Stone and reassemble the Sundream Stone so they can swipe it for themselves.
• Wake-Up Call Boss: Spike the Piranha will likely give one a tough time if they were off guard from the cakewalks that were Yarrctopus and Tin Can Condor, mainly due to his very hectic bullet patterns.
• Weakened by the Light: The dolls in 'Be Afraid of the Dark' get stopped by spotlights and will not chase Yoshi through them.
• Wintry Auroral Sky: Slip-Slide Isle, which takes place on a frozen island, has blue auroras shimmering in its nighttime sky.
• Wutai: All of the Ninjarama world is set in some kind of Japanese landscape;
  • 'Deceptive Doors' takes place at a dojo at night with Shy Guys throwing paper stars and green straws emulating bamboo stalks.
  • 'Behind the Shoji' is an autoscroller with the twist that portions of the level are hidden behind the titular sheet.
  • 'The Shogun's Castle' is a Big Fancy Castle guarded by yogurt-cup swordsmen and featuring puzzles involving elevators.

Yoshi's Crafted World Ign