Review: [DEMO] Yoshi’s Crafted World
Yoshi’s Crafted World is an upcoming Nintendo Switch exclusive that’s a soft spin off of Yoshi’s Woolly World, which is a soft spin off of Kirby’s Epic Yarn. All three of these games use real world objects, with the former, relying heavily on wool creations and properties, to create a world that feels like something an adult (or a kid who is extremely good with crafts) can make in their study or bedroom. A demo for Yoshi’s Crafted World was released shortly after the newest (at the time of this article) Nintendo Direct - and I’ve finally had the time to sit down and give it a proper go.
Yoshi’s Crafted World starts off by introducing you to it’s incredible ascetic, because under that shiny coat of paint in a standard Yoshi game. Not only can you explore the plain of ground you’re on, but you can also go into the foreground and background at certain points and shoot eggs in to either if there’s a target to hit, but the base game remains the same. The usual objectives of collecting a certain amount of coins, hunting red coins, exploring the level to find hidden flowers and keeping Yoshi’s health over a certain point remain the same, though new objectives unlock after your fist completion of the level. One example given in this demo include going through the level backwards- which shows more of the creation of the objects over their nicely painted “in character” front-sides, chasing down the Poochy Pups and making it to the end (which was originally the start) of the level under a certain time.
But that’s not all, new objectives include a mini mission in which you replay a level hunting certain objects - In this demo, it was cows in the background that you needed to shoot with your eggs. The mechanics and play-style may at first seem untouched, however, I found the controls a bit finicky. During my playtime, I occasionally had trouble controlling the pointer with the thumbstick and gave up all together and resorted to using the D-Pad for egg aiming. I also found that the input of buttons occasionally stopped working for a second - and delayed my actions. Not a terrible thing to happen in this slow paced game, but rather frustrating none the less. These problems may be linked to my controller having a slight signal or connectivity issue, but we won’t know until the final game comes out, or if anyone else seems to have trouble - and I don't seem to have any trouble of this sort in any other game.
The demo is sadly quite short, with about 40-50 minutes of playtime all up, less if you’re a veteran player - and so far, the difficulty is laughably easy on Classic Mode (with an even easier Mellow Mode as an option, that I strongly avoided) but I’m sure the challenge will increase as you play through the game, as it always does in these classic type of Nintendo games. Yoshi’s Crafted World is being released on March 29th, 2019 and if you’re interested in giving it a go yourself, you can download the demo on the Nintendo Switch eShop right now. Though I might have seemed a bit harsh on the controls and play-style of this game, I have a soft spot for first party Nintendo (and especially the Yoshi Series) and will be picking this game up on day one and I highly recommend you do the same, or at least try out the demo with the mindset of a greater challenge being implemented through later levels in the full retail release.
