Yoshi and the Mysterious Book Review

Solving the Mr E.

It’s been a long time between drinks for ol’ Yoshi, who hasn’t headlined a game since 2019’s Yoshi’s Crafted World on the original Switch. Always one who’s happy to experiment, everyone’s favourite dino-mount has tried many formulas for his games over the years. He’s been illustrated, crafted and woollen, and messed around with tilt controls and touch screens.

Not one to disappoint, this year’s Yoshi and the Mysterious Book sees the little guy bust back on to the scene to reinvent himself once more, like the Lady Gaga of the Mushroom Kingdom.The core conceit of Mysterious Book is a bit of a twist compared to past Yoshi titles. Here, a book arrives on Yoshi Island – a mysterious one, you could even say – with almost nothing written in its pages. Identifying themselves as Mr. E, the book asks the rainbow-hued Yoshi crew to help fill his empty pages with information about the strange critters shown in his illustrations.

In an odd way, the game plays out like Animal Planet for the Yoshi world – you take on the role of David Attenborough, investigating the worlds within Mr. E’s pages and noting down your findings. With a mixture of existing creatures from past Yoshi games as well as all-new additions, you’ll spend your time in Mysterious Book seeing what you can learn about these critters in their natural habitats. How do they react to you, or each other? Do they have any special abilities you can make use of? And most important of all, what do they TASTE like?

What follows is a tight, but very varied loop for each of Mr. E’s chapters; spot a new creature hiding in the illustration for the chapter, and then enter the book to investigate until you have enough information to give them a suitable name. In a fun twist, you can either go with Mr. E’s suggestion (the official name), or come up with your own title instead.

Over time you’ll also see different creatures showing up in each other’s habitats, triggering new discoveries as they co-mingle to continue filling out their pages even as you move on to the next little weirdo. Unlike prior Yoshi titles, you’re not completing levels here; instead, you’re exploring a bunch of little spaces full of mini-puzzles for you to solve. Find the major discoveries for each creature and you can name them and move on – but each of these little puzzle rooms contains far more to discover beyond that.

To be fair, Mr. E’s pun-tastic names for all these guys are mostly great! I’m a sucker for even a bad pun so I was happy to keep them for the most part, but Yoshi and the Mysterious Book lets you freely change their names back and forth if you change your mind. It’s oddly satisfying to browse the pages of discoveries and see your chosen name reflected the whole way through, as well as the new illustrations reflecting the colour of Yoshi you were playing as at the time. It all works in harmony to really make the pages feel like they’re full of YOUR discoveries of the world, not just a fill-in-the-blanks list that you’re working to complete.

That said, all the various discoveries to be made about each creature can start to get a little obtuse to find for completionists. Each time you exit a page you’ll be given a hint for one discovery you’ve missed, but only one – so if you’re stumped on THAT mystery, the game won’t offer any others to chase instead. Some of these little puzzles can be quite obtuse to figure out, or just require a level of skill or quick reactions that I found kind of surprising.

Between the picture book-styled visuals and simple storytelling that Yoshi and the Mysterious Book employs, you’d be forgiven for thinking this is aimed specifically at a younger audience. If kids playing this today have the fine motor skills required for some of Mr. E’s tougher challenges, they’re doing a lot better than I was at that age.

As much fun as I had with Yoshi and the Mysterious Book, it can be a relatively short play – if you’re not too worried about 100% investigating every creature, you could breeze through Mr. E’s initial six chapters and what opens up beyond that relatively quickly. Doing so would be missing the point – and the tempo – of this game entirely, though.

Yoshi and the Mysterious Book is built to be explored in smaller chunks, something you can pick up and explore for as long as you’re curious. While there’s a lot to remember about all the critters you can engage and team up with, the whole idea is to build your own reference library as you go! It’s excited to show you all the cool ways you can play with its toys, so why not pick a chapter and check it out?

Yoshi and the Mysterious Book was reviewed using a promotional code on Switch 2, as provided by the publisher. Click here to learn more about Stevivor’s scoring scale.