Curiosity is a cornerstone to exploration, particularly in games. Playing a platforming game and wondering what is up there or can I jump beyond that gap is hardwired into anyone who has spent more than 10 seconds with a d-pad under their thumb. It’s basically second nature, almost a mundane force that helps drive your way forward to that goal flag. But what if it was the lion’s share of your gameplay experience? What if a platforming title was built with the idea of experimentation first and foremost, rather than the simple act of getting to a predetermined location?
This is the essence of what Yoshi and the Mysterious Book is offering. I sat down with Nintendo staff to give the game a burl, expecting a familiar Yoshi-led platforming affair with flutter jumps and egg shooting…before gleefully realising that while that prospect isn’t entirely off the table, this Yoshi adventure is a whole different beast.
My experience started with the Yoshi’s discovering a talking book – an Encyclopaedia that calls himself “Mr. E” – who had seemingly been misplaced from Bowser’s castle. Mr. E’s existence is one of concerning torment, being that he is a container of knowledge but yet cannot directly access it himself. He does know that his vast knowledge is now missing, and enlists Yoshi-kind to help fill his pages. These pages each show a whimsical scene of critters interacting, and your selected Yoshi can take Mr. E’s magnifying glass and scrutinise any active creature to then enter the pages of the book and begin an investigative expedition.
These expeditions (at least on the surface) resemble a traditional platforming level. Yoshi can jump, slam, flutterstep and even slide to get around in different ways – but you are quick to realise that the space on offer is not traditional at all. There is no simple linearity to your path. Instead you are offered a platforming sandbox, with the creature (or creatures) inhabiting the space. To get started with your investigation, the main new tool in Yoshi’s repertoire is the ability to tail-flick a book creature onto their back and take them for a ride. Yoshi can then explore the space and experiment with the critter to uncover its full potential.
A talking book? Is this one of those AUDIO BOOKS people keep talking about?
My first outing was to look a little closer at a flowery friend native to the Wildwoods. Not to be confused with the talking flower from Super Mario Bros. Wonder, this little fella was a great deal quieter and almost resembled a Shy Guy wearing a petaled collar. Diving into the book, the hand drawn pages became a tad more environment-like and I found my floral fellow wandering in some nearby grass, where I then casually whipped him onto my back and he sat with a content smile. Immediately, a note scribbled on the page that I had made a discovery – this little guy was quite content to sit on my back. Mr. E similarly celebrated that I had made a breakthrough, and urged me to explore and see what else I could uncover. I progressed to find another flower friend and accidentally jumped on his head, leaving him dazed. The book again scribbled down this factoid, celebrating another uncovered fact of the flower fellows – they are easily dazed by head trauma.
I felt energised to learn more, and before long I was poking my bulbous Yoshi nose into every far corner of this sandbox-y platforming space – uncovering fun facts like how my floral mate can make flowers bloom (big or small), how they come in different colours and could even sprout into an enormous tree if nurtured correctly. Eventually I had uncovered a big enough breakthrough that I was provided an option to jump back out of the pages and have a chat with Mr. E about what I had witnessed.
At this point, the game offered a very unique opportunity: I could actually NAME my flower friends. Of course, Mr. E was more than willing to offer a suggestion and label the critter with a developer-approved moniker, but given my time–investment I felt I was deserving of giving it a name of my choice. And so, the ‘Jayna Daisy’ was christened as the official title of my petaled pal and his ilk. The game celebrated by listing all of the discovered details of the genus, before quietly hinting at some I had missed to encourage me to jump back in at a later date.
My oh-so floral friend
This forms the core of your Mysterious Book journey, serving as a taxonomist (I admit I only just learned this term) that wants to understand what the heck these goobers are. You’ll identify an organism, tool about with it and learn its secrets, before giving it a name and heading into the next page. Eventually you’ll start to encounter multiple critters on a page, with unique roadblocks and hazards appearing in the level that can be circumvented by leveraging your animal pals’ unique discovered traits. Each expedition is based around discoverable objectives, with at least one larger level-defining one heavily signposted to give you at least some form of defined heading. The rest of the time you can flit and futz about with your own scientific method on the path to making the bigger breakthrough, taking your animal pals on a tour to see what kind of stimulus they might respond to.
It’s a super unique approach to what you’d normally expect from a Nintendo platforming experience – effectively turning the game into a cartoonish Metroidvania driven by ecological scientific discovery. As I was in a room with other players, I couldn’t help but commit the ancient sin of screen-looking to see how other people were experimenting with their animal friends, and how it differed from my own – only to get reciprocal comments from other screen-lookers like “OH I NEVER TOOK THAT GUY NEAR THE WATER” or “HOLD ON, WHY ARE YOUR BUBBLES GOLDEN?”. It’s a bummer that this isn’t an environment you can easily recreate with a retail copy of the game, but I can definitely say that group chats and social media screenshots will be filled with all manner of neat revelations and questions akin to how the heck did you get it to do that?
Don’t let the cuteness fool you, this fluffy organism propagates in a terrifying manner
In an hour of gameplay, I had named four new unique species and done all manner of experimentation ranging from covering creatures with mud, to then washing them clean again, propagating a concerning fluffy fungus to make rocks brittle, and tongue lashing a strange pig’s arse through a narrow rocky gap. My method of discovery was every bit as haphazard and freeform as I’d have expected – but there was no denying that it was unbelievably fun. The game wanted me to screw around, and I did so gleefully.
I was then afforded the opportunity to load up a later save game, showcasing the fourth chapter of the book and throwing me into the deep end of animal investigation. This space had me fighting flying watermelons, hula-hooping birds and even identifying some Mario series staples like the humble Shy Guy and Little Mousers. It all culminated in a far more dynamic level where I encountered the hog-beast from the first world (none the worse for wear from my tongue lashing) and had the tables turn when I found myself riding on its back instead of the other way round.
A wider story did start to manifest by the appearance of both Bowser Jr. and Kamek, with my Yoshi helping them out of a bind on one page and then later engaging in a boss fight with a newly discovered DrillHog on another. The narrative will clearly suit as a more traditional line of motivation alongside the overt sciencing going on, but in my game time I barely got a glimpse of it so all I can say is: Seems like another fun and familiar Nintendo outing.
Nintendo has an almost vice-like grip on the platforming genre. From the earliest days of the Super Mario Bros, to Mario 64 effectively defining how 3D platforming should work, all the way to the modern renaissance of modern 2D platforming offerings on both the Nintendo Switch and the Nintendo Switch 2, you feel pretty comfortable with the idea of sitting down to play a big “N” platformer and getting both a good time, and a familiar one. In the case of Mysterious Book, the focus on experimentation is so offbeat and fresh that I had to keep reminding myself that I was technically playing another big “N” platformer – not some experimental indie thing. The freedom to just stuff around and see what happens was refreshing and nurturing in a way you don’t often encounter in a traditional game, where goal flags and checkpoints beckon you to keep pushing ever forward.
Take a moment. Breathe. Observe. Maybe shoot your tongue into a strange creature’s backside. It’s all science in the end. Weird, weird Yoshi science.
Yoshi and the Mysterious Book is scheduled for release in Australia on May 21, 2026
