How Yoku's Island Express Combines Platforming, Pinball, and Exploration

The gameplay of Yoku's Island Express consists mainly of side-scrolling platforming. The player can move Yoku left and right, but unlike most platform games, they can't jump. Instead, the player uses pinball paddles (flippers) placed throughout the map to launch a ball attached to Yoku into the air, pulling Yoku with it.[3] Yoku's Island Express takes place on a Metroidvania-style open-world[3] island with many bumpers, tracks and ramps to utilise the pinball mechanics.[4]

Yoku’s Island Express Game

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Five years later the game is now a lot bigger and a lot more complex than we originally planned. It started to reveal itself as we were working on it, trying out various gameplay mechanics, and as the art started to come into place, it needed time to grow and come into its own. It turns out that building an open world island, filled with colorful characters and sidequests, where you can seamlessly traverse into each area can take a lot of time.

Yoku's Island Express is one of the most unique games that I've ever played. Upon first starting it up, I was delighted by its adorable and undeniably strange world. You play as a dung beetle named Yoku who travels to Mokumana in the hopes of having a fun time. When he arrives, he takes it upon himself to deliver mail to the island's residents but far more nefarious situations are brewing that involve a sleeping god and folks who want to use its power. It's silly stuff and establishes a solid premise for a crazy adventure. v1d30chumz 169-150-203-249

Yoku can go wherever he wants early on in the game, and you can choose to complete objectives in any order you wish. Obviously, some objectives are more difficult than others, and some require special skills that you don't have access to at the beginning of the game, but you're never explicitly told where to go or what to do, and you're free to just explore the island at your own pace. There's dozens of hidden treasures and bonuses to discover in the world, including brand new skills that will help you in other areas of the game, and upgrades that allow you to carry more fruit or offer cosmetic changes. In classic Metroidvania fashion, whenever you come across an area that looks like it has an out of reach treasure, remember it, because chances are you'll later have some sort of skill that will enable you to get to places that you once could not.

Being a Metroidvania game you'll be forced to backtrack at numerous points, having gone as far as you can go with the skills at your disposal, but perhaps having picked up an ability that will allow you to progress further in a place you visited earlier. Backtracking is part and parcel of the genre, but here it can be a little more perplexing than in most games of this ilk because the method of travel is so unpredictable. It's not a huge issue because there's a lot of shortcuts, and after a while you'll unlock an amusing fast travel system that allows you to quickly get to other areas of the map, but there were a few moments where we found ourselves sighing as we realised that the place we needed to be was at the other end of the island and we'd be bouncing off bumpers and flying through the air for the next ten minutes trying to remember how to get there.

The presentation of the game is consistently charming, with the cast of characters you'll meet on your journey proving to be a unique and endearing bunch. The island that Yoku inhabits pops with bright colours and imaginative creatures and locales, and the chilled, jazzy soundtrack works well as a calming influence during trickier pinball puzzles. The whole game is quite laid back, with no enemies to fight, and apparently no way to actually die as we never saw a game over screen during our eight-ish hour journey to the end credits. Figuring out how to get from A to B is the challenge here, and finally discovering how to reach a treasure is constantly rewarding.

Yoku's Island Express is one of the most unique games that I've ever played. Upon first starting it up, I was delighted by its adorable and undeniably strange world. You play as a dung beetle named Yoku who travels to Mokumana in the hopes of having a fun time. When he arrives, he takes it upon himself to deliver mail to the island's residents but far more nefarious situations are brewing that involve a sleeping god and folks who want to use its power. It's silly stuff and establishes a solid premise for a crazy adventure. v1d30chumz 62-197-150-37

As you set off on your adventure, you'll meet a charming cast of characters that really make this beautifully rendered paradise feel alive. Yoku doesn't talk much, but everyone else boasts charming Animal Crossing-style speech. This mixes right in with a smooth soundtrack full of just the type of island tunes you'd expect. A game focusing so much on exploration needs to be inviting, and the developers did a great job of making players feel welcome in their world.

Building up your knowledge of the island's quirks will make navigation a breeze, but coming back after any length of time is a tall order. Having said that, those six hours are good enough that it might be worth playing all over again. The pinball action is enjoyable in and of itself, so going through old areas isn't as bad as it could be. There's a fast travel system (complete with the best music in the game), and dungeons generally deposit you in convenient places when you're through with them.

That's really all there is to Yoku's Island Express. It's not a difficult or complicated game, it just knows what it wants to do and executes with amazing precision. If you're a fan of pinball looking for a unique experience, this is the first game I can recommend unconditionally. For someone who enjoys Metroidvanias, the flipper action provides a great set of mechanics to get you around town. Even if you don't fit into these categories, I'd recommend stopping by Yoku's island and having a look around. It's pretty chill.

The game uses fruit as a sort of currency, though one will never be short on it. Sometimes paddles are locked and unusable unless a certain amount of fruit is pumped into them, while in other cases fruit can be used to purchase upgrades and maps from NPCs. Fruit is also needed to fuel the fast travel system, called the Beeline, which is composed of a series of beehive-like cannons that fire Yoku across the island.

Yoku's Island Express is a bright and colorful adventure game all about Yoku, a pint-sized postman. By using a blend of pinball mechanics, classic platforming, and open world exploration, there's never a dull moment in Yoku's Island Express. Unlock the secrets of Mokumana Island while doing your best to help the locals in their troubles. A tropical island adventure awaits!

The second, more substantive, reason for their existence is that some colors will help you enter into certain areas that are otherwise blocked off. So, if you are looking to master every last inch of this island, you aren't going to be able to do so without wrangling all the different ball colors. Whether you are looking to express yourself, or just trying to progress through the game, the ball color mechanic is an enjoyable aspect that gives Yoku's Island Express a sprinkle of charm.

The secret paths, bumpers, platforms, and other elements that connect the entirety of the map really call to mind the best metroidvania games, sometimes hiding the greatest secrets right under your nose in the early moments of the game. Yoku will be revisiting locations and tables regularly, while also unlocking shortcuts that allow him to zip easily from one side of the island to the other. Various side quests will send Yoku back and forth all over the map, and I never got tired of the different environments that make up Mokumana island.

Hello, and welcome to my guide for Yoku's Island Express! This guide contains a complete, beginning-to-end walkthrough of the game, including how to get each ability and how to defeat each boss. This guide also has an achievements list and a FAQ page for commonly asked questions. In all, I hope that what I've written can expressly help you in Yoku's Island Express! 2ff7e9595c