Yoku's Island Express Reviews
Yoku's Island Express packs just enough to be a fun and simple 2D platformer with a delightful pinball component to make it standout amidst all the recent incursions of the Metroidvania style. While the game could certainly use a longer lifespan, its marvelous level design, music, gameplay mechanics and fun adventure will keep the players well amused for some time.
Review in Portuguese | Read full review
Yoku's Island Express is a unique genre mix with fun pinball mechanics and great presentation. A lot of fun for pinball fans
Review in German | Read full review
Yoku's Island Express is a great game. Combining Metroidvania exploration with pinball gameplay was an interesting decision that paid off big time. Despite its short length, Yoku's Island Express is still a complete adventure, one that is relaxing and an absolute pleasure to take in.
Yoku's Island Express is whimsical, charming and a joy to play. It's developed by people who have an obvious love and deep knowledge for both pinball and Metroidvania games, and frequently delights and surprises by taking established genre conventions and quite literally flipping them about.
Beyond its colorful and cartoonesque visuals, Yoku's Island Express delivers a strong Metroidvania experience mixed with flipper mecanics. This generous and smart adventure keeps a balanced challenge from start to finish, and mixes typical flipper challenges with deep exploration gameplay. Despite a binary system of flippers and few bosses, Yoku's Island Express is a good ride with a fresh tone.
Review in French | Read full review
Yoku's Island Express is the perfect mixture of pinball and video games. Taking the best of both worlds and dropping it into a charming setting filled with likable characters makes for a relaxing romp that shouldn't be missed.
A mash-up of genres whose flaws can be overlooked thanks to a huge dollop of charm.
Overall, there's not a lot to dislike about Yoku's Island Express. It's deep, it's fun, and while the main character may not be memorable as a Rayman or a Mario, the gameplay is so well-planned that you aren't in need of a strong lead character to make it all work. Villa Gorilla did one helluva job with this release and it's a game that shouldn't be overlooked.
A cool hybrid of platforming, puzzling and pinball, Yoku's Island Express is a bit of a one-off, and therefore well worth seeking out.
Yoku's Island Express brought something to the table few games, even among those I enjoyed, have managed to recently - a true sense of freshness. It really is unlike most games on the market, and it manages to grow beyond this defining gimmick, nailing almost every other aspect. Between the fantastic gameplay, lovely presentation and endearing characters, minor faults like excessive backtracking and a somewhat flat main storyline are negligible.
Yoku's Island Express combines pinball with exploration in an irresistibly charming and gorgeous adventure game.
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Pinballs are coming back within this title, whose narrative background is not so deep and intense, while its gameplay and tactics features are really well conceived. Colourful, frenetic and catchy, Yoku's Island Express is a good alternative in a AAA-dominated market. Boredom not included.
Review in Italian | Read full review
Yoku's Island Express is the perfect combination of pinball mechanics meets metroidvania, and is not only my favorite indie game so far this year, but my favorite pinball game of all time.
Beautiful to look and gentle at first, but some sections can ramp up the frustration to breaking point
Yoku's Island Express perfectly blends Metroidvania platformer with pinball game, and it's incredibly smooth and fun.
Review in Chinese | Read full review
Yoku's Island Express is wholly unique - a seamless blend of platformer, pinball, and puzzle game that never outstays its welcome our wears out its charming visual style. Highly recommended.
With only a few small niggles to complain about, Yoku's Island Express successfully merges pinball and platforming without ever making the former feel like a gimmick. Its beautiful presentation and fun, engaging exploration blend together to create a truly unique experience.
Yoku's Island Express is a game that you'll encourage others to check out the minute you start playing. Aside from the gorgeous aesthetics, the use of pinball mechanics is inspired, and the execution of the mechanics is done well. It's a relatively short experience, but it feels packed with tons of side-quests if you can deal with the backtracking seeming to go on a little longer than usual due to the pinball mechanics. Overall, Yoku's Island Express is a brilliant game that adventure fans need.
As has become tradition on Nintendo consoles, Yoku's is an indie title that stands on level footing with some premium offerings in the eShop. Don't let this one roll past you as you scroll through the different games on offer for Switch, as it's a genuine delight.