Yoku's Island Express Reviews
Yoku's Island Express is one of the most surprising games of 2018. The combination of pinball and Metroidvania is, on paper at least, a little like dipping your French fries into your milkshake; as good as the two elements are separately, they shouldn't really work together. But thanks to an array of smart design choices, a wonderful art style, and some genuinely inventive puzzles, Yoku's Island Express is a game that only rarely frustrates – and frequently delights.
Like a unique cocktail, Yoku's Island Express mixes with taste, and in intelligent way, the typical elements from metroidvania adventures with pinball's game mechanics, giving as a result a very enjoyable and adictive game that feels unique and it's very fun. A game that those who are tired from the same formulas will enjoy the most.
Review in Spanish | Read full review
For as many great, engaging or immersive outings we've already been treated to in the past few years with this genre, Yoku's Island Express can now be added to that same list of essential efforts with an identity that is all its own.
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
It's rare a game is as endlessly joyous as Yoku's Island Express.
Villa Gorilla mixes genres and manages to deliver a great game that brings huge doses of fun and entertainment. Yoku's Island Express is a true experience that should be played.
Review in Spanish | Read full review
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.
Yoku's Island Express is a beauteous, aurally delightful treat that riffs off the Metroidvania template and pinball tables in a smart and playful manner. It's somewhat tempered by the dual frustrations of the pinball mechanic's need for constant precision and a lacklustre fast-travel system that leaves you having to cover the same ground over and over, ultimately taking what could have been an amazing game, and making it a good one.
The beautifully drawn and wonderfully composed Yoku's Island Express is another nice addition to the Xbox One's library of platformers.
To think, Sonic Spinball was onto something all of those years ago. Yoku's Island Express is delightful and fun from start to finish
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.
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 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.
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 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.
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 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.
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.
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.
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.