The game Yoshi and the Mysterious Book shows that Nintendo is at its best when trying something new.
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In most platform games, you're fighting against the world around you. You're trying to get through a level, complete a seemingly impossible series of jumps, or defeat a powerful boss. But while Yoshi and the Mysterious Book uses familiar gameplay — you traverse the world by jumping, climbing, and eating — it reframes your objective to focus on exploration rather than competition.
In this way, it reinvents the classic side-scrolling platformer as something that feels refreshingly new: relaxed, playful, and full of ideas.
The new Yoshi game feels like a storybook, and that's because it's set inside one. At the beginning, you meet a living book named Mr. E who has a bit of a memory problem: He can't remember much of what's on its pages. So, as Yoshi, your goal is to explore its pages and learn about each creature that lives within.
It's a bit like a Mushroom Kingdom of a zoological study. Right away, the game's structure becomes different from other Mario games. You don't go through a series of levels to beat, but rather you enter a series of habitats to explore. In each chapter, you use a magnifying glass on an animated image to search for creatures. Once you find one, you jump into its habitat to discover more.
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While the structure is unique, at its most basic level, Mysterious Book is a traditional side-scrolling platformer. Yoshi has his standard set of abilities: He can jump, hover in the air for extended periods, and use his long tongue to swallow creatures and turn them into eggs, which he can then use as projectiles. He also has a tail move that allows creatures to ride on Yoshi's back. What's different is what the game wants you to do with those abilities.
The goal in each level isn't to reach the end or defeat enemies, but to gather as much information as possible about a particular creature. You do this by experimenting and seeing what happens. You might learn a new fact by testing an insect, jumping on it, or carrying it on your back.
What makes it work is the sheer number of strange, playful creatures you'll encounter. At first, they're relatively simple. Frogs that will sing a tune when you jump on them, or a frog that's kind of like a bubble wand. There are giant fish, birds that hula-hoop, and creatures that have evolved to mimic everything from an umbrella to a skateboard.
At some point, you encounter what looks like a bubblegum version of Kirby. Wildlife is diverse, but each creature shares two things in common: They're utterly adorable, and their abilities have multiple uses, many of which aren't immediately obvious. The only way to figure things out is to try them out and see what happens.
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Each level is its own sandbox and the act of progressing through the game is pure play.
