Yoku's Island Express Reviews
The unique blend of Metroid and pinball makes Yoku's Island Express as entertaining as it is charming.
Yoku's Island Express perfectly blends Metroidvania platformer with pinball game, and it's incredibly smooth and fun.
Review in Chinese | Read full review
A mash-up of genres whose flaws can be overlooked thanks to a huge dollop of charm.
Yoku’s Island Express is an incredibly fun and exceptionally beautiful game that somehow makes pinball fun. It offers a large variety of locations and has plenty of collectibles that will keep you occupied for a good amount of time.
Unusual pinball adventure in Yoku's open world with nice level design for players who love physics-based platformers and metroidvania.
Review in Slovak | Read full review
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 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.
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Yoku's Island Express is the best indie game that I've played this year so far.
Yoku's Island Express is a delight, plain and simple.It's gorgeous, plays beautifully, and I hope it's the start of a new franchise, because I want to play a lot more of this.
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.
For the most part though, Yoku's Island Express is a lot of wholesome, whimsical fun. It manages to make the hybrid of two disparate genres work in some inspired ways, and the result is a unique game full of surprises that is sure to delight players.
A strangely successful mix of genres that plays both a mean pinball and a highly competent game of Metroidvania, and all wrapped up in some utterly charming presentation.
Yoku's Island Express is the open-world pinball adventure you never knew you wanted, but that you desperately need to play. The vibrant art, expansive world, and fun story come together with the best elements of metroidvania and pinball games to create a new experience unlike anything else out there.
I never expected to be so enamored with a pinball adventure game, but here we are! Yoku’s Island Express combines fantastic visuals, sublime audio, and addicting gameplay mechanics to create a truly spectacular Switch experience. Pick this one up – it’s something special!
Yoku's Island Express is one of those titles to be valued without reserve, hoping to send a message to the market and the development team, and to have an ecosystem populated by less approved and braver projects.
All said, Yoku's Island Express is a breath of fresh and creative air on the Switch and just what this jaded gamer needed to get out of a pretty serious "more of the same" funk. As a life-long fan of pinball I'm thrilled with the result and enjoyed the many ways mechanical concepts from physical machines managed to get integrated into this adventure-style format. Even if you're more of a pinball novice, in general the controls are pretty friendly and approachable, you'll just need to develop a sense of timing and pay attention to certain patterns to determine what you'll need to do to progress. If you're down for something with boatloads of charm and heart mixed with a style of play you've likely never experienced before it is well worth picking up.
Yoku's Island Express surprised me from start to finish. It has taken the core pinball mechanics and blended it with a wonderful story, memorable characters, and natural progression system that you would see in a platforming game. The mechanics work exceptionally well, and it is a joy to play from start to finish. If you love pinball and want to see it in a refreshing way, then you owe it to yourself to check out Yoku's Island Express.
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.
Yoku's Island Express is a genuine breath of fresh air, combining pinball and Metroidvania mechanics in a way that feels truly inspired. Add in one of the most appealing fantasy worlds you'll find on the eShop, and you have yourself an instant left-field classic.