Yoku's Island Express (2018)

An indie metroidvania platformer (another one, yaaawn) that is mixed up with pinball mechanics (wait what?). It sounds kinda weird but it works amazingly well.

I once listened to a game design lecture of sorts by Martin "grapefrukt" Jonasson, whom you might know as the creator of Rymdkapsel and Holedown. He talked about what he calls "juice": the little effects, mostly in indie games, that make the game feel more fun and rich, the dopamine things. Screenshake, particle effects, happy noises, those things. When juice is added without restraint you get Candy Crush (which is why CC is hollow yet can be addictive), but when applied judiciously it can elevate an interesting game to a game that will really hook you.

Yoku's Island Express is a masterclass on juice.

Pinball machines by themselves are kinda made from juice already, with all the little lights and numbers and bumpers and bleeps and boings. YIE understands this, and the pinball sections will dole out ludicrous amounts of currency if you pay attention to the sockets and ramps. But it's not just the pinball. The fast travel is a Donkey Kong style shooting barrel system that occasionally goes through pinball ramps. To cross a waterfall you hop along perfectly aligned pinball bumpers. The main action button blows your party horn! It's just all so satisfying and fun. And with 5 hours for the main play through it doesn't overstay its welcome. I love it.

Played this partially on my Steam Deck, which is a really good fit!

A fun combination of pinball and metroidvania. Great artwork and I enjoyed unlocking new areas of the map. Unfortunately a lot of backtracking is required and I eventually got to a point where I couldn't figure out what else to do to unlock new areas. I would have liked to continue it, but it's not the type of game that lends itself well to a walkthrough.

Works flawlessly on Steamdeck.

I probably never would’ve grabbed this if not for its high praises on r/Metroidvania. The idea of a pinball Metroidvania mashup seems totally bizarre, but it works rather seamlessly. The game is very fun - in both movement and exploration, and traveling through a large map in a pinball fashion is just so novel.

The game also has great artwork, reminiscent of the Ori games. The music is occasionally a bit corny but has some cool moments - it goes from Portishead type trip-hop, to bebop jazz in some parts.

The story is totally boring and the characters are 1 dimensional, but the gameplay is the real draw here. I had a great time with it overall, aside from a couple slow moments in the backtracking. It’s very unique, and I’m glad I took the recommendation!

Yoku's Island Express is a bit of an odd nut - 2D Metroidvania that focuses not so much on combat and platforming but using pinball flippers to navigate the island and solve puzzles/gather goodies in table-shaped sections. It works incredibly well and is absolutely worth trying out.

Yoku, a dung beetle, becomes the postmaster as he arrives at the island of Mokumana. Wrapped up in a plot to defend the island's god against evil, he gets his trusty dung ball ready to roll around the island, send mail, help out inhabitants, and battle evil!

The player has limited movement with Yoku - he can be pushed left/right, but by using buttons for specific paddles (left, right, and some that are activated by either button) the player can launch Yoku all over the island. The player collects fruit (for purchasing unlocks for paddles, fast travel, etc) and special collectibles. Failure is fairly light, with some thorns in tables that drain a handful of fruit. This encourages more fun and exploration than the tense and fast gameplay of pinball usually goes for, but there will still be challenges that require fast reflexes!

The player gets upgrades as well that allow them to explore some richly detailed environments - diving allows them to pour through caves and the ocean depths, and grappling carnivorous flowers allows them to reach the highest snowy peaks. It's a relatively small game by Metroidvania standards but it's all rendered gorgeously, with a delicious tropical soundtrack that equal parts playful and moody.

Yoku is a quick journey but has plenty of secrets that require a fair bit of thinking and exploration, stretching out into a rewarding journey that absolutely has to be played. Where else are you going to get a pinball Metroidvania?

Intro

This is a metroidvania pinball game. You move about a map by walking and moving your character pinball style with launch pads and flippers. You collect fruit to unlock upgrades and locked pads.

The Good

• Really cool idea that works awesomely (at first).
• Cute style.
• Upgrades come quickly.

The Bad

• Pointless currency limit (that can be expanded... for currency).
• For some reason the talking prompt disappears while you're standing in front of a character (instead of to the side).
• You have to manually pick up wood dolls (forgot the name) and upgrades.

The Ugly

The game seemed to be nicely fast-paced and clever, but then it turned out to be a backtrackvania game where you have to walk all the way back between places to deliver items. Ugh. Trying to figure out exactly how you get to places gets pretty annoying due to the pinball mechanics (ironically).

Conclusion

I really liked this game at first but 2D backtracking is the bane of my existence (well, one of them). Pity, it had potential.

I mean it, this is a lovely game. And I don't use that descriptor often. Yoku's Island Express is basically a cross between Metroid and pinball. Somehow, that is a brilliant combination. You play as a tiny beetle that washes up on an island at sea. Somehow he gets recruited into being the island's postman and saviour, as the island's gods have been under attack by an unknown force.

I'm not a huge metroidvania fan, but this is a metroidvania done right, in my opinion. Everything was super streamlined, constantly giving you something to do and making it fairly easy to navigate the map. There are save flowers everywhere, so you never have to worry about losing progress. and you can progress through the game in virtually any order you choose. I loved the beautiful graphics and music that really added to this little island adventure.

I played the demo for this game months ago, and while I was intrigued enough to buy it (on sale), I wasn't sure the pinball mechanic had enough legs to make for compelling gameplay. I was so pleased to be proven wrong. The pinball-style gameplay made travel constantly fun, and they created the map in such a way that you generally only have to do any given straight-up pinball section once. This only ever became a hinderance to travel a few times.

Beating the main story only takes about five hours, but there's another five hours of side quests and secrets, providing a total ten hours of satisfying gameplay. I wouldn't necessarily recommend doing a 100% run; a few of the challenges were more frustrating than entertaining, but again, it's only about ten hours, so it's not so bad if you go for it. That being said, the amount of side quests and challenges offer plenty for the player to dig into while beating the main story. Even if you don't go for 100% completion, you'll constantly have something to do while saving the island.

I have a soft spot for pinball video games, so it was only a matter of time before I picked up the highly-praised Yoku's Island Express. In this game you're a dung beetle pushing around a pinball ball, and you just go around from one area to the other by playing pinball. You can't jump; you have to shoot yourself upward with pinball flippers. It all reminded me of Sonic Spinball, a game I played a lot of as a kid (along with all the other Sonics on Genesis). But this one controls much better, and has a lot more places to explore. I didn't particularly love the art style, but it is a pretty-looking environment.

Ultimately this is a game that is just about exploring, pretty much. You look for stuff and try to get yourself to tricky areas with your pinball skills. There isn't really any penalty for playing poorly. (You might lose some fruit... but you'll get ten times as much fruit within the next minute.) It's just a chill game to play until you get bored, which I did shortly after completing the story. (It's nothing special, don't get too excited.) I didn't care to go for all the collectibles once I had seen all the different areas of the island. But if I'm ever in the mood to just dink around in a pinball world again, I'll roll back over to Yoku's island for a bit.

I love this game! It's a perfect melding of a Metroidvania style exploration platformer and a pinball game a la Sonic Spinball. I would happily have given this 5 stars...but there's a bug that can occur halfway through the game where a bridge that you repaired suddenly doesn't register as repaired and prevents you from accessing a chunk of the map. The devs have been aware of this glitch for over a year, and yet they still haven't fixed it. Their only suggestion is to completely restart your game. Weak.

That complaint aside, this game rocks, and it's one of the few games that I put in the extra effort to 100% complete.

This game really blew me away. It seemed like a fun concept and I've been meaning to play it for a long time. As a huge fan of Metroidvanias and a low key Pinball admirer (as in I always liked it in theory, but never played much of it) this game had my attention from the first time I heard of it. I was a bit concerned that it relied on god-like Pinball skills, but it was not the case. Some of the pinball challenges are a bit tricky, but the game never penalizes you in a brutal way, and it's easy to just keep at it.

The real question here is how well do pinball and 2D adventure platforming blend together? The answer is that they blend shockingly well, at least they do here thanks to some clever game design. I was really happy with my time, it was over before I actually wanted it to be, but thankfully there are quite a bit of secrets and things to do in the post game.

All in all, this is a must play if the concept appeals to you.

Liked:

• A very original concept, that the devs completely pulled off.
• Nice presentation, graphics reminded me a bit of Rayman, or Ori.
• Fun world and story
• Pinball elements fit right into the Metroidvania genre
• Game can be tackled in different order, and you are never guided too heavily, yet I was never really lost and always had plenty to do.
• I want more of it and hope they make a sequel

Disliked

• The music wasn't bad, but it wasn't memorable and it didn't really fit the game for me.
• Some of the rewards for difficult optional challenges felt completely useless and kind of bummed me out.

8.8/10

Playing Yoku's Island Express right after beating Hollow Knight was fascinating. These are two wildly different takes on "Metroidvania" gameplay. Where Hollow Knight is dark and moody, Yoku is bright and cheerful. Where Hollow Knight is precise yet challenging, Yoku's pinball mechanics are loose but forgiving. In spite of these differences, the rhythm you'd come to expect of any game in the genre ("explore, overcome obstacle, get upgrade, re-explore") is still intact.

Yoku's world is rendered in a charming, painterly style, and its score is upbeat and catchy. Navigating the most challenging sections via pinball flippers lends the player a certain distance from the character which, combined with very little consequence for failure, makes this the most relaxing Metroidvania game I've ever played. The game isn't devoid of challenge (especially if you want to get 100% completion), but it never made my palms sweat the way Hollow Knight did.

I have some minor quibbles with the game. Yoku's upgrades and collectibles at times feel arbitrarily quirky... lacking a sense of cohesion with the world and its inhabitants. When some odd object would net me some unrelated ability, my reaction was less surprise or humor and more "Oh. Huh. Okay." The game only offers around 5 or 6 hours of playtime, which makes its usual $20 asking price feel a tad steep in comparison to other indie Metroidvania titles, especially on Switch, where the game's visuals feel less than optimized for a handheld (I had to squint at the map a lot).

Nitpicking aside, I'm glad I bought Yoku's Island Express when it went on sale. It offers most of what I love about its genre, plus pinball, which I didn't know I wanted. And it was a welcome respite from the comparative intensity of Hollow Knight.