Yoshi's Crafted World Demo - First Impressions
In today’s Nintendo Direct, Nintendo revealed that a playable Yoshi’s Crafted World demo is available to download. This demo included the first level of the game so that players can get a feel for it. We played through the entirety of this demo, scouring for anything hidden and getting a full sense of the game and if you don’t have time to play it for yourself (or you want to know what we thought), then you’re in the right place!
First off, the game is absolutely beautiful! We’ve been able to see this from the trailers that have come out before, but this cannot be emphasised enough. The art direction is fantastic, with amazing attention to detail with its craft aesthetics. The use of the foreground and background makes the world pop in ways that haven’t been done in a 2D platformer before, using some nice focus effects to emphasise the position of Yoshi and the environments around him. In addition to being able to throw eggs as sideways, you can now throw them into the foreground/background, allowing for some new and innovative gameplay. The first level introduces you to this mechanic slowly, letting you throw an egg at a present in order to open it and collect the prize inside. This is also a way to uncover hidden secrets, which is essential if you plan on 100%ing this game.
The gameplay is super easy, however that’s to be expected from the first level. That being said, recent Yoshi games are notorious for being super easy (especially if you turn on Mellow Mode which gives Yoshi wings), however the challenge is there for those who search for it. Finding every collectible and uncovering every nook and cranny of Yoshi’s Crafted World is where the challenge really is, which is a perfect way to adjust the game’s difficulty organically.
Just like in any Yoshi game, you can collect five Flowers, 20 Red Coins and more hearts to fill up your health meter that circles Yoshi. But what’s new about Yoshi’s Crafted World is that once you finish a level, you can play it again backwards, allowing you to see the other side of the stage. This part just shows the love and care that has gone into this game, going that extra mile to turn this game from a flat 2D platformer that has been done to death into a 3D gem.
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When the stage is flipped, your task is to find the three Poochies that have run away and are hiding within the level. You are also being timed, so you want to do this as fast as you can. Once I completed both sides of the level, an NPC in the overworld asked me to collect him five cows in the level for souvenirs. This then let me re-enter the level for the third time and take down the cows in the background with Yoshi’s eggs, something I never thought to do when playing through it initially.
The Yoshi’s Crafted World demo shows that this game has some incredible potential, breathing new life into a series that was growing stale. Yoshi’s Woolly World on Wii U and Nintendo 3DS made good attempts at mixing up the formula a little bit, but it always felt like an aesthetic change rather than a twist to the gameplay.
The Yoshi’s Crafted World demo is available to download right now and the full retail release is on March 29.
What are your thoughts on the demo? Will you be picking up Yoshi’s Crafted World? Let us know in the Comments section below.