Today I encourage my audience to start playing more weird games. Do it, you’ll feel better about yourself. In all seriousness, games centering around weird ideas and mechanics contain a bit of artistic value to them. For such bizarre concepts, something obviously must have been going through the creator’s mind for it to be conceived. Sometimes weird ideas spark inspiration, and this then leads future game developers to toy around and try to improve or expand upon them. This is what we call “innovation.” The number one reason why the game industry is still moving on today even with all the chaos going around. I love seeing games innovate in strange ways, because if you’re me and you are into game design you like to pick apart and see what works. Inscryption is a card game based around sacrificing cards. You may think this slowly narrows down the resources you have, but what this transforms the game into is a struggle to maintain your ground and roll out the strongest creatures in your deck soon as possible. Time loop games like Outer Wilds and The Forgotten City may stress players out for how there’s a ticking counter to death, but they manage to create a balance between urgency and taking your time so that you know what happens next.
Experimenting with weird ideas will always lead to great outcomes. Are they always executed to utter perfection? No, because a flaw or problem will always arise during the design process that you have to work around. However, this leads to having to learn what to do and through learning you will improve as a game developer. One of the weirder games I’ve played recently is possibly one of more creative metroidvanias made in recent memory. It came out around five years ago back in 2018 and was developed within a year. The creators, Jens Anderson and Mattias Syngg, sat themselves down at a table and questioned what type of game they wanted to make. They then asked, “What if we made a game about a ball?” I’m not joking, that is literally what the two asked themselves. They thought the idea was silly at first and one of the few reasons why they chose such a simple concept was because they lacked an animator at the time. Someone who could help them draft their idea, world, characters, and see what they could make of it. With time they realized there was potential to make a game about a ball bouncing around, and this led them to the world of pinball. You know those machines where the more the ball bounces around and hits objects the more points it scores. That is what they decided to base their new game on.
They began working on their new project, managed to get an animator and composer during the process, and soon they put together what was a colorful, weird idea. Yoku’s Island Express, the new side-scrolling open world pinball game made by Villa Gorilla. They didn’t expect the game to blow up during release, but what they were expecting were players to be surprised with what they had to offer. That’s exactly what they got as critical reception for Island Express was fairly positive. People really liked their game and it was one of more well acclaimed indie games back in 2018. Almost five years later, does Yoku’s Island Express still hold up? I think this game holds up incredibly well. It’s not my favorite metroidvania nor is it my favorite indie game from 2018, but there’s a lot to love and appreciate during this joyful journey. Yoku’s Island Express is special and does enough to slap a big old smile on your face. Today we’ll be talking about why I love Yoku’s Island Express and why it deserves your attention. Time for a grand delivery.
Story
We follow an adorable little beetle by the name of Yoku as he sails towards a tropical island for his first day on the job. All is going well until the ocean waves start crashing about and the island begins to shake. Yoku ends up washed up on the shore, but conveniently he ends up meeting the previous mailman who is a pterodactyl. The previous mailman states that trouble is brewing on the island and he’s not going to stick around to figure out what it is. He packs his belongings and flies off, saying to Yoku that it’s now his job to run around delivering mail and help the denizens of the island. Yoku makes it to the postal office, picks up his hat and bag, and begins delivering mail to those who are in need of it. However, when he gets to the main village of the island he notices a large creature sitting in the middle. He’s tired, injured, and is clearly in pain. Yoku is told that the giant ominous creature is the island’s guardian and that if the guardian is not fully healed then all the island’s inhabitants may suffer or even worse, perish. Yoku must head to three regions of the land where he’ll get three tribal leaders. By bringing the three leaders together they can perform a ritual that’ll heal the guardian back to shape. Yoku will be assisted by many colorful characters along his journey as they'll help him complete his journey, save the island, and deliver the mail.
The story isn’t all that much, but at the same time it didn’t need to be. Island Express is targeted towards younger audiences and its setting is one you can’t really build an expansive universe on. It’s simplistic and easy to understand. What Island Express is focused on instead is delivering a fun experience focused around its core gameplay loop. The developers traded storytelling in for a heavy gameplay focus, but unlike certain games here it benefits because you’re offered a lot of variety during your adventure and no section lasts longer than it shou;d. Just a bright experience full of personality, charm, and gameplay that is expanded overtime using unique mechanics
Gameplay
Metroidvania, okay. You know I’m crazy for these genres of games and recently we just covered a hardcore soulslike metroidvania by the name of Moonscars, but Yoku’s Island Express is far more different than the typical metroidvanias I enjoy covering for this site. It has a more linear focus and progression is not driven by the character upgrades and power ups you accumulate but rather how good you are at pinball. The developers really did follow their dreams in making an open world pinball game, and made it so that once you go through the first area you have a choice on what one of three regions you want to venture to first. Some regions can’t be fully explored until you pick up certain items, that’s the small pit of metroidvania here, but once you do pick these items up you have ultimate freedom. Each region is basically their own course of challenges. Bounce around each room set up like a pinball machine, fulfill requirements and challenges to move forward, collect fruit, and progress onto the next section.
Fruit is an important currency in the world of Island Express. You use it to activate bumpers and access areas that may be locked off. Most of these areas are optional, but a few may give you more fruit or even open up shortcuts to cut down the amount of backtracking you have to do. Soon the game will start introducing gimmicks for you to play around with. Maybe there’s a wall that blocks the way forward, and the only way to move forward is to smash glowing gemstones scattered throughout the room which releases a purple energy to open the door. Sometimes there are these crystal balls and you’ll have to hit them enough times to smash them open and open the way. You’ll get these explosive slugs which can latch onto your ball once you obtain the suction ability, and charging into certain surfaces will cause the slug to explode and break them right open. These holes in the wall for when you get into them they’ll launch you to another hole or place in the room. There’s bumpers to hit, bonus panels, buttons, and much more and triggering certain contraptions and items will cause more fruit to flood the screen and collect. You do have a maximum wallet capacity for fruit and you can lose it if you touch thorns, but you only lose a couple pieces of fruit for when you hit thorns and you’ll always be provided a ton of fruit as you bounce around and hit contraptions.
Besides that there’s nothing else much to say about Yoku’s Island Express. It’s as simple as it gets and luckily the core gameplay loop works really well. Fun, addicting, and doesn’t overstay its welcome thanks to new ideas being introduced every so often and the game’s short runtime. Let’s hope Yoku can find the three leaders, save the island guardian, and stuff unnecessary piles of letters into every mailbox.
Thoughts
This review has been rather short. In fact, a lot of my recent reviews have been getting shorter and part of the reason why is because I’m trying to keep them more focused, narrow, and straight to the point. The few occasions where the review is long is either I have a lot to complain about or there’s a lot of ground to cover with the subject on hand. In the case of Yoku’s Island Express it’s simple, so we’ll keep it simple. Island Express is just great and I easily recommend it to any gamer who wants pure fun. This is the most pure fun you can have with a game and it’s pretty accessible despite being pinball. Sure it can take a bit of time to get used to and sometimes you’ll have those moments where you are just bouncing Yoku back and forth trying to shoot him down the path that leads forward. However, the game never reached a point where it felt frustrating or unfair. This is a well polished experience with good level and world design, challenges, and wacky scenarios to push your pinball techniques to the test.
You never lose too much fruit when taking damage. If you accidentally fall into a lower part of a level it’s easy to get back to where you need to be. Backtracking is minimal, unlocked shortcuts are generous, and I think the game uses color and objects in such a way where it helps guide the player. It’s fun to get caught up in crazy pinball fun, and the only sections of the game that are boring are sections where you aren’t bouncing around. These moments are short though, and the game has good pacing. Now one of the weaknesses Yoku has is that it doesn’t have traditional upgrades or power ups like your typical metroidvania. Any upgrades or expansion of your skills aren’t much or are only used a couple of times in the level you unlock them in. There’s not health or stamina upgrades, because Yoku can’t die. There’s no upgrades which improve the efficiency of your tools, and the only upgrade I can speak of is your wallet upgrade. Fruit is hard to come by during the first hour of the game where there’s tons of bumpers that need to be unlocked and you can only carry one hundred pieces of fruit at once, but eventually the game just dumps piece after piece of fruit onto you and you unlock everything that was locked off from the beginning. Upgrades and skills are just keys forward, which is not what you want in a metroidvania.
However, Yoku didn’t need its skills to be expansive or complex. Its gameplay loop is simplistic enough and if they were to expand it further or add in ideas that contradicted the pinball focus then it wouldn’t be fun anymore. What’s pinball if Yoku can jump or wall climb around every problem or scenario? There are occasionally bosses, but these aren’t hard either and it’s difficult to screw these sections up. The world is vast and interconnected, but it never felt confusing to navigate. I never had a point where I was lost and when you’re far off into the world and deep in one of the three regions, once you’re done you don’t really have many reasons to go back and see what you missed. These are one and done areas, and that’s fine as well because it helps with the pacing. I have a few more compliments for Island Express. I love the artstyle . It’s colorful, every single surface was laced with a brush, and above all it’s cute. Every character is cute and even the more fierce creatures have this goofy and charismatic look to them. The island is beautifully painted and the tropical soundtrack helps make this a positive vibe experience. The only thing they did wrong is that besides Yoku everything has this weird and rigid animation to them. They did that thing where they design the characters and limbs, and rather than naturally animate them they rotate the limbs. This isn’t too much of a problem though, because the game looks great.
Yoku’s Island Express is a game that you’ll easily fall in love with, and any complaints I have are either nitpicks that are gone after getting used to how the game plays or minor. Yoku usually goes for around twenty dollars and even cheaper if you wait for a sale like me. I bought the game for three dollars and it was an absolute steal! However, with the amount of content you get from this game and the low replayability rate that twenty dollar price tag is hard to justify. There’s plenty of other metroidvanias out there which cost about the same amount or five dollars less, and they have more content and replayability than what Yoku offers. As I said earlier, this is not one of my favorite metroidvanias out there and there’s plenty of others I would choose over it. Those are my only complaints. Yoku’s Island Express gets a strong recommendation from me and I suggest picking it up at some point. In the end I give Yoku’s Island Express a 9/10 for excellence at best. Man, I love the metroidvania genre and what it brings.
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