As cute and good and nice as you expected
Yarn Yoshi is a pretty good name. Yoshi’s Woolly World is an okay name.
Yoshi’s Yarn is a better name and what the game should’ve been called for the sake of alliteration and Yoshi’s Story symmetry (a yarn is like a story!!!). I’m going to keep writing Yoshi’s Woolly World as Yoshi’s Yarn. Sorry.
I walked out a Sony appointment with not enough time (before my next appointment) to go back to the E3 press room, but enough time to play a game. “Is there anything here I want to play?” I wondered. Smash? Okay, Smash. I haven’t held a GameCube controller in like five days. I need my fix. But everyone was playing Smash so I went and played Yarn Yoshi.
Yarn Yoshi is as delightful as it looks. The way yarn platforms give slightly under the weight of your jumps gives off such a peaceful fluidity, like a long string of yarn undulating in sin waves. Hitting a knitted basket to knock out a bunch of yarn ball eggs was cute. Accidentally tonguing my co-op partner and turning them into a red yarn ball egg with eyes was a double entendre laden mistake.
While it’s a platformer, exploration and collection — unraveling secret yarn paths and wrapping up platforms with yarn to gain access to further areas — are a big part of Yarn Yoshi. You’ll sometimes find yourself stuck, with no way to continue. In this case, you can start tossing yarn eggs around and try to uncover hidden items to help you continue.
The level I played seemed rather accommodating and not too tough, though with the added flurry of a co-op partner also running around and doing things I did find myself dangerously low on hearts towards the end. It also might just be that they wanted something easy for public showing (the trailer had some more challenging seeming levels).
Yoshi’s Yarn goes as all out with the yarn aesthetic as Tearaway did with papercraft. The result is cute as hell. Yoshi’s little yarn feet turn into little wheels when he runs fast. I could die. Keep making games out of strange materials, Nintendo.
