ddgd

A place for me to post my thoughts on games, mostly digital ones.


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Yoku's Island Express

Yoku’s Island Express

Official site

In Yoku’s Island Express, you play a dung beetle who has just arrived on the eponymous island to serve as its replacement postmaster. Needless to say, further complications soon arise, but the theme of going everywhere to deliver your messages (and help solve all kinds of problems along the way) remains strong throughout.

Some of the games I had the most fun with in the beginning of my gaming life were pinball tables, and later pinball games on the PC. However, since then I’d somewhat fallen out of love with the genre, feeling I’d seen it all. Similarly, the common system in games popularised by the Metroid and Castlevania series (commonly abbreviated as metroidvania) where you encounter inaccessible places early in the game that you later can access through an ability you gain as the game processes mostly leaves me cold these days. So it came as some surprise that this game which is essentially a straight combination of these two things was so enjoyable to me. I think being positively surprised by almost every aspect of this game which I picked up essentially on a whim helped a lot. The unique combination of such disparate elements in such a successful manner also made it hard to remain critical.

A large amount of my enjoyment simply came from the game’s incredibly charming presentation. Cheerful, vaguely Carribean tunes by master game composer Jesse Harlin (Mafia, Star Wars) accompany a trip across a tropical island. From the very first moment the game put a smile on my face (I recommend giving the soundtrack a listen). Yokus’ Island Express’s pacing suited me well, alternating increasingly complex enclosed pinball “table” segments with more free-form exploration. When your dung beetle’s ball is not being flippered around the little fellow just pushes it around, letting you also navigate without being propelled. Revisiting areas always yielded a little extra nook and cranny to explore. My only knock on this aspect is that in spite of some fast travel options, getting across the island started to feel like a bit of a chore towards the end.

The island’s various characters are all rendered in a cute low-detail style that reminded me a bit of the Kodama and similar low-key nature spirits from various Japanese media.

I didn’t enjoy all the tables as much as the rest of the game; their often violent, antagonistic nature didn’t really suit the laid-back form of the rest of the game. Similarly aspects of the apocalyptic plot felt a bit dissonant at times, but the contrast with the overall cheerfulness did serve to emphasise that there were some actual stakes. Still, these are small quibbles about an overall extremely successful game which is all the more impressive for feeling like its idea should never work, but somehow does.

Written on January 7, 2019