Yoku's Island Express

So glad this made it to GOG, this game is a gem. A ball rolling adventure, slash, pinball game with a coat of metroidvania on top of it. Exquisitely crafted, vibrant, , lively, interconnected world with tons of hidden things to find, collect and do. You'll spend some of your time manually rolling your ball around completing objectives, running errands for the islands inhabitants, trying to reach hidden items and other times you'll seamlessly enter self-contained pinball-like areas that play a lot like a traditional pinball game where, most often, you're working towards helping an NPC overcome a problem in exchange for something they'll give you to unlock areas of the map you previously couldn't get to... these areas are all uniquely made with mini-challenges and mechanics within, making every single one of them a blast that you'll look forward to playing. My only gripe is (and some people may not agree or vote this down), but I was sad to see this didn't launch here with Achievements because this is the type of game you want them in for that extra bit of challenge and/or replayability the devs bake in, but doesn't warrant taking stars away from the actual game rating... can't wait for a sequel!

I'm kind of at a loss for what to say, because this game is kind of flawless. It knows exactly what it wants to be - a metroidvania-inspired action-adventure game with pinball as its core mechanic - and goes on to execute it better than one could reasonably expect exploratory pinball to be. The mechanics are very simple - movement keys make you, a dung-beetle postmaster with a ball of usually-not-dung, roll your ball on low-grade surfaces or across water (the ball floats). If you encounter blue/yellow paddles and springboards, one of the Shift keys will spring them, letting you use special passages or enter "tables" where you can play a game of pinball for fruit (currency) or to open a new way forward. There's a few upgrades you can unlock, such as a fish that lets you dive underwater, or a kazoo that lets you summon people out of their houses/break things nearby. It does have a metroidvania feel to it without feeling too restrictive regarding where you can go. And it's fun! It's really, really fun. They really did an amazing job of polishing the gameplay to a shine, and the graphics and characters really feel part of the experience. The story is... cliche, but that makes it easier to abandon the story entirely and go hunt down the people with delayed parcels. The slow pace of walking (you're a beetle, after all) is offset by the exhilarating pinball mechanics and a brilliant fast-travel system. My best one-sentence description is this: Imagine if Rayman Origins was actually a set of pinball tables. Highly recommended at the asking price. Possibly my favorite game of 2018.

YIE is an utterly original genre mashup which I can only hope signifies the birth of "Pinballvania". For the most part, it's a fairly casual romp through a series of pinball-based setpieces in an open world. It looks and sounds beautiful and plays amazingly well, although it's not entirely bug-free and I did manage to get softlocked a few times. The difficulty never gets overwhelming and even the more dramatic moments don't have an explicit failstate, so it's more about the novelty of pinball-based progression than it is about white-knuckle challenge. That is, until you make it to the postgame and try to shoot for 100%. As thoroughly tantalizing as the 100% incentive seems, I would advise against attempting it. The exploration is all well and good but many of the optional trials are more gimmicky than they are clever, involve unreasonable amounts of trial and error, have extremely tight timing windows, and/or rely on flippers that happen to have slightly wonky physics, rendering some of the collectibles borderline impossible to get. In short: great game, would recommend, aggravating for completionists.

PROs: Yoku's Island Express is a great and relaxing little game for the most parts. The visuals, music and atmosphere are amazing. You can't die or lose and there are a lot of checkpoints. I'm not a big fan of pinball games in general, but ended up liking Yoku's pinball adventure a lot for a few hours. CONs: The biggest downside of Yoku is that the further you progress, the more time you'll end up backtracking and looking for things all around the island with only an obscure reference of what you're looking for. The main quest goals are marked in the map, but there are plenty of side quests with no indicators or reminders on what you're looking for or where. There is a fast travel system, but it only covers certain parts of the map, and while you can hop off at many points along the way, you can hop on only from very few points. Kind of like a subway system with 12 stations you can exit from, but you can only enter from either end or the very middle. These issues compound each other: if the fast travel system could be entered from more points (super easy to fix), and had larger coverage, it wouldn't be such a drag traveling around the map looking for things. Or if the game gave you a better indication of what you're looking for and where (e.g. Borderlands 2 style area markers on the map), or at least kept a record of the hints you've received ("what was that area again where someone had left a partner behind in?"), there'd be less need to comb through the whole map multiple times. It'd also be nice if dialogues you've already read could be skipped with the map/inventory close button. There's no way to tell if someone has new dialogue available apart from starting a conversation, and if it's old news you'll have to go through all of it again. A new dialogue indicator would also help. Yoku would easily be 5 stars with less bactracking and obscurity. With them it's a tad below 4,5 stars for me: an absolute delight for a few short hours before the late-game flaws.