- Apr 22, 2019 The game consists of 16 worlds. The smallest world is the first one with only one level. Most worlds have 2 levels. The biggest worlds consist of up to 3 levels and a boss battle.
- Mar 27, 2019 Much like its predecessor, Yoshi’s Woolly World, Yoshi’s Crafted World is a satisfying, if not particularly inventive, take on the Nintendo-style platformer.Don’t go in expecting Super Mario.
Mar 28, 2019 Yoshi's Crafted World is overall a cute and charming platformer. But not every level follows suit. While some later stages get more difficult, one level in particular sticks out as surprisingly creepy. This stage features several deranged clowns who will stop at nothing to hunt you down.
Yoshi’s Crafted World is one of those games that immediately catches your eye. Brimming with an almost offensive amount of colour and charm, it looks like the kind of arts and craft utopia every child dreams of making…..but without all the screaming and mess. It’s an ode to recycling, a celebration of rubbish, a bric-a-brac kitbash. Elastic bands, push pins, curled paper cones and corrugated cardboard replace pixels and polygons, and best of all? The little crocheted creature in the middle of it all is you: surrounded by all these cast-offs, left to discover the joy in everyone else’s trash.
In other words, this time, Nintendo has cast its Willy Wonka magic on garbage, turning the offcuts of a primary school art lesson into a living, breathing world. Something about Yoshi’s Crafted World — realised in 720p on the Switch — imbues Yoshi’s island with more resplendent magic than its 3DS or Wii U predecessors. There’s more soul, more vibrancy, more charm. The secret sauce? This is the first Nintendo first party game to make use of Unreal Engine 4, and it shows.
Yoshi S Crafted World Bonus Levels
Thanks to its mix of vibrant visuals and clever depth of field, this world looks so sweet it’s sickly at times, with billboards for fictional candy and breakfast cereals decorating the horizon, bottle cap boats and foil fish dressing the levels. But for all its creativity — for all the imagination that’s gone into making these Blue Peter diorama levels — unlike most Nintendo platformers, Yoshi’s latest adventure feels hard to love.
Spin a yarn
In many ways, Yoshi’s Crafted World is Nintendo by committee: a cutesy platformer guiding the player down linear paths in themed worlds with a token sprinkling of collectables hidden throughout each 2.5D level.
Thankfully, this crafted world is an incredibly endearing place to be. On your first run through any given zone, you’ll gawk and croon over the gorgeous little touches that make the area feel special. ‘Awh look, the Shy Guys are wearing sailor hats!’ or ‘that’s cute: the Mousers are playing with magnets!’ and it says a lot that this twee take on Mario’s rogue’s gallery never really loses momentum.
The same goes for the puzzling. Throughout the 20 hour run time, you’ll laugh, smile, chuckle and groan at the predictably wholesome puzzles developer Good Feel sends your way. Maybe you’ve got to figure out how to use your body weight to operate a lever, maybe you’ve got to stack swallow-and-spit items on top of each other, maybe you’ve got to find a hidden switch. Keep an eye on the foreground, background and sniff out hidden corners and you’ll breeze through 90% of the game no problem (and the other 10% might require some good timing).
These copy/paste puzzle solutions, on their own, are sort-of entertaining — the kinds of activities you give the kids on a hungover Sunday morning to keep them busy whilst you search for the paracetamol. They take enough low-key brainpower for you to distractedly pluck through, but it’s never enough to really get your head whirring.
The stop/start nature of the game doesn’t help: short levels and unskippable segues create a staccato rhythm that — when paired with shallow puzzling and simple platforming — fails to ever get in your head the way that recent, better platformers have done (Dead Cells, Hollow Knight, Shovel Knight, Celeste and Rayman Legendsyou can all take a bow – you may have ruined Yoshi).
Say it ain’t sew
This game isn’t aimed at mature audiences, though. We know that. It’s easy to be cynical about a game that’s even got a setting that ensures you pretty much can’t die. But even in some of the later levels — you know, where the game is supposed to get hard — Yoshi’s Crafted World fails to glue together a crafty challenge that respects the player’s time investment.
Shunting the game down to the easiest difficulty (Mellow Mode) gives you wings that allow you to float forever, and it feels like Nintendo could have taken advantage of that to let the latter levels spice up the vanilla platforming even a little. Collect-a-thons are all well and good, but even the checkbox structure of a game as wholesome as this becomes tired 20 hours in.
Disappointingly, even in co-op, the game doesn’t really change all that much — it’s just more of the same, but with two people. Some levels might flow better when you’re working together (you can navigate vertical obstacles easier, or take on timed tasks quicker), but other than some incidental hilarity when you swallow each other or nick each other’s eggs… you don’t particularly get much more out of playing with someone else than when playing solo.
Yoshi’s Crafted World tries to jazz up the gameplay muzak by taking you out of the standard levels and dropping you into special ones every now and then. Maybe you’re operating a big vehicular Yoshi, maybe you’re fighting off a boulder-spitting bird, maybe you’re running an infestation of moles out of town. But even at the climax of these boss fights and mini-games, it still feels like you’re riding in the same old elevator and not getting anywhere.
Is Yoshi’s Crafted World any good?
Yoshi’s Crafted World is not a bad game. The ingenuity in how it shows off its world is consistently inspiring, and the way the developers have taken a box of odds and ends and somehow made a living, breathing world out of it cannot be praised enough.
The problem with the green dinosaur’s latest is, it just feels like all the good ideas were spent on the setting — and the developers had checked out creatively by the time it came to designing the levels. It’s a platformer by numbers, and if you strip out those lovely visuals and that inventive packaging it all comes in, it feels much like the colourful pieces that hold together its landscapes — recycled.
Yoshi’s Crafted World hasn’t done much wrong, but held up against the other better (cheaper!) platformers you can currently pick up on Nintendo Switch hardware, it’s hard to recommend. It’s charming, it’s sweet, it’s peddling a message of kinship and harmony… but it does it all so dryly.
Sorry, Yoshi – you’re a good boy, but you’ve got to learn some new tricks.
Yoshi's Crafted World is out now on the Nintendo Switch, and it's another great example of a Nintendo platformer featuring a broad range of challenging and easy content. Depending on your skill and interest level, you can easily breeze through the game without a care in the world, or you can challenge yourself to collect every single hidden item, unlock the hidden levels, and beat every boss. Regardless, Yoshi's Crafted World will give you the tools you need to overcome however difficult a goal you set for yourself.
Whether you're floating by on Mellow Mode or trying to find that last hidden Smiley Flower, here are some tips and tricks for Yoshi's Crafted World that will hopefully help you collect the gems and free the world from Kamek and Baby Bowser once again:
Nintendo Switch Yoshi
Decide how much you want to collect
Yoshi's Crafted World is not especially difficult to beat if your aim is just to get through levels. You can easily slap on Mellow Mode and float on through. But the meat of the game is in its collectibles. Some of those are required to proceed, but not many. The rest are just for fun and exploration. With that in mind, you'll want to decide early on how dedicated you are to collecting them all, then focus your goals in each stage accordingly.
You can get by each level just by grabbing a handful of things. You'll likely want to aim for the easiest Smiley Flowers, which are almost always 100 coins and a few of the more visible flowers within the level. Heart Smiley Flowers can be easy as well, but sometimes they'll trip you up with a hidden ? cloud. Once you get past the first few areas, you can also return and do the level backwards, collecting Poochy Pups for one free Smiley Flower per pup. The pups usually aren't too hard to find, especially if you aren't worried about the time limit.
Keeping expectations low, you'll get through the game fine. However, if you're someone who wants to 100% the game...
Repeat levels
Sorry, but you'll very likely have to repeat some levels multiple times to get everything. You'll miss items almost as a guarantee, but there are also some points in levels that are effectively points of no return (an early example of this is riding the train in the very first level). Once you do something in particular, you won't be able to go back and reach things. Or if you fail something like a blue coin collection challenge, you won't be able to do it again in that run of the level. You'll have to start it over for another shot at it.
There's nothing wrong with redoing a level, as you'll already have collected a great deal of the level's items and can just breeze by them while looking for the one you want. Smiley Flowers in particular are easy to gauge where to look, as they'll appear on your menu in the order they appear in the level. If you've collected the second and fourth Smiley Flower, for instance, you know to look in between those two locations for the third.
Walk everywhere
One of the biggest tricks of Yoshi games is hiding invisible ? clouds in hard-to-reach places, or just off the path where you might not necessarily go. These clouds will become visible if you throw an egg at the spot they're in, or if you touch them with Yoshi. However, when they're tucked away in areas you're not already in or throwing things at, they're easy to miss! And they often contain coins, hearts, or sometimes access to Smiley Flowers you need to 100% a level.
If you're struggling to find something, try walking and jumping Yoshi through any areas of seemingly empty space, or areas that may have enemies but not much else. Little alcoves below platforms, or blank spaces next to walls often hide blocks like this. And if you're still struggling to find that last block, you can always just switch modes...
Switch to Mellow Mode
There's no shame in swapping to Mellow Mode. Seriously! Mellow Mode doesn't just give you infinite flutter jumps and a better ability to take damage. It also will notify you when a Smiley Flower is nearby, and reveal all invisible ? clouds. You can toggle it on and off at any time, so you don't need to play the whole game with it on. Just turn the mode on if you're really having trouble finding a particular collectible, grab it, and move on!
Or, alternatively, play as much of the game as you like with this mode on and enjoy a breezy, untroubled experience. Mellow Mode doesn't just make it easier to find collectibles - it also makes it less of a struggle to overcome enemies, obstacles, and platforming challenges, especially as they amp up the difficulty late in the game.
Play with a friend
Another way to make the game a bit easier on all fronts is to bring a friend along. Yoshi's Crafted World has drop-in/out co-op, so you can play with a second Yoshi in the room at any time. Your friend will have all the same abilities you do, so they can help you defeat enemies, continue even if you're defeated, ensure you have enough eggs with you to find secrets, and help you find hidden areas. Plus, the game's even more fun when you bring someone along with you.
Don costumes
Finally, another simple way to overcome some challenges in Yoshi's Crafted World is to make sure your Yoshi is always wearing a costume. Costumes aren't just adorable, they also help Yoshi be able to handle more damage. If you're struggling with bosses or enemies or falling into pits, a costume is a good way to protect yourself from danger.
Costumes that are rarer can take more damage, and it's very easy to get one. Once you encounter the first gachapon machine, keep returning to it and putting coins in until you have the Super Rare costume within. You'll never get duplicates and your costumes are never permanently destroyed, so you're guaranteed to get the rarest costumes fairly quickly if you just keep trying, especially since the early levels have so many easy to get coins. Then, just make sure you put the costume on before you head into a level, and you'll have an extra layer of cardboard protection against the Shy Guys!
Any questions?
It's hard to get lost or stuck in Yoshi's Crafted World, but if you're struggling to find the best way to play, let me know in the comments and I'll try to help!
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