I went into Yoshi and the Mysterious Book relatively blind. I vaguely remembered its trailer from the September 2025 Nintendo Direct, but all I retained from it was that the game was some kind of 2D platformer. Beyond that, I didn’t know what to expect.
Somehow, though, I don’t think I’d have ever expected this. Yoshi and the Mysterious Book is, more than anything else, a weird, somewhat experimental game. There’s a plot, of course, and some familiar faces that pop up here and there, but if you’re expecting your standard Nintendo 2D platformer (as reductionist as that phrase is), this definitely isn’t that.
Rather, it’s basically a game where Yoshi wanders around fairly small levels and…experiences them, for lack of a better description. Your task is essentially to fill out your field guide to a strange world, and you do that by licking things and jumping on them and swallowing them and pushing them. You figure out ways to make rocks explode and ways to create beautiful harmonies and how to create chain reactions of exploding pink blobs, and then the level ends.
It’s all kind of weird, not least because the tone is so strange. On the one hand, the game feels like it’s gentle and easygoing and aimed at kids – and yet, Yoshi and the Mysterious Book isn’t nearly linear enough for that to be a proper description. It’s a game where Yoshi just is, and it’s your job to figure out what that means.
In this respect, the game is helped by its general vibe. Between the nonsensical language of the Yoshis and the titular book, you have a bunch of random noises that pass for voice acting, and it’s coupled with an art style that feels ethereal and insubstantial, to the point of being dreamlike.
And that, I think, comes closest to the best way to consider Yoshi and the Mysterious Book: as a semi-nonsensical dream. Like any good dream, it’s almost impossible to describe to others, but while you’re in it, it all feels oddly riveting. Is it for everyone? Probably not, but it’s definitely something worth experiencing.
Nintendo provided us with a Yoshi and the Mysterious Book Nintendo Switch 2 code for review purposes.
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