Yoku's Island Express

Yoku's Island Express for PS4, PC and etc. constitutes an original mixture of genres, combining elements typical for platformers and metroidvania titles together. The game was developed by Villa Gorilla – a small Swedish studio. The team was inspired by creations of the Ghibli studio.

Plot

Yoku's Island Express is set on Mokumana, which is an island where the player meets the protagonist – a sympathetic beetle. The protagonist aims to become a new postman here, but he soon stumbles on traces of a serious affair – a divine ancient being that had been taking care about this land, got trapped among nightmares, which resulted in different natural disasters, such as earthquakes or storms. Since then, the insect's goal is to find a way to wake up the sleeping guardian in order to bring peace and order back to this land.

Mechanics

Yoku's Island Express for PS4, PC and etc. is played from a side view. Platforming elements constitute the core of the experience – the player explores the environment, jumps across platforms, avoids commonplace traps, eliminates large enemies, and collects valuable items. On their path, the protagonist also completes different quests given by NPCs, requiring the player to feed starving lemurs or to neutralize the threat embodied by exploding snakes.

However, what makes Yoku's Island Express different in comparison to other games of this kind, are mechanics borrowed from pinball. The beetle rolls a ball in front of himself - thanks to that ball, he can bounce off flippers installed in the environment. In so doing, the protagonist can very quickly gain speed or perform high jumps to reach places difficult to access. It is worth noticing, that like in metroidvania titles, the game world has an open structure, but in order to access many locations, the player has to be in possession of adequate items or certain abilities. As a result, the experience is non-linear; as for backtracking, which is usually an undesired feature, it gives an opportunity to acquire some valuable loot.

Technical aspects

Yoku's Island Express for PS4, PC and etc. offers incredibly eye-pleasing, hand-drawn visuals conveyed in a cartoonish graphic style. The colorful in-game locations are inhabited by perfectly animated creatures, and all of this brings the works of the aformentioned, Japanese movie studio into mind.

Last updated on 19 March 2018