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Yoshi and the Mysterious Book Tricked Me, and I'm Not Even Mad

 

Look, I'll be honest. When I first saw Yoshi and the Mysterious Book announced for Switch 2, I did what any reasonable person would do. I saw Yoshi on the cover, saw some colorful levels, and thought "oh cool, another Yoshi platformer." You know the drill. Flutter jump. Eat enemies. Turn them into eggs. Throw eggs at stuff. Good times.

So I bought it. Booted it up. Started the first level.

And then I got very, very confused. Because I kept trying to jump over gaps that I clearly wasn't supposed to jump over. I kept looking for the "run" button. I kept waiting for the classic Yoshi platforming loop to kick in. And it just... didn't. At least, not the way I expected.Turns out, Yoshi and the Mysterious Book isn't a platformer at all. It's a puzzle game. And after the initial shock wore off? It easily became my favorite game of this year.

 

What You're Actually Doing

 

Here's the setup. Yoshi finds this weird old book. He gets pulled inside. Now he's navigating these pages that look like hand drawn storybooks, and each page is a self contained puzzle room. You're not running to the right and jumping on things. You're looking at a scene, figuring out how to manipulate it, and unlocking the way forward.

The core mechanic is flipping. You can flip pages forward and backward, which changes the environment. Maybe on page one, there's a bridge. Flip to page two, the bridge is gone but a seesaw appears. Flip back, the bridge returns but now there's an enemy on it. You have to bounce between pages to solve each room.

It's genius. It's also deeply humbling when you spend ten minutes stuck on what turns out to be a very simple solution that you overlooked because your brain was still in platformer mode.

 

Yoshi Still Feels Like Yoshi

 

The good news is that even though the genre is different, the soul is still there. Yoshi flutter jumps. Yoshi eats things. Yoshi makes eggs. All of that matters, just in a different way. You might need to eat a specific item on page one, carry it to page two, and spit it out to activate a switch. The eggs are still useful for hitting targets that are out of reach.

And the presentation is gorgeous. The whole game looks like a pop up storybook. Pages curl when you flip them. The art style is soft and warm and makes you want to just hang out in each level. It's easily one of the best looking games on Switch 2, which surprised me given how low key the marketing was.

 

Why It Became My Favorite

 

I wasn't expecting to love this game. I went in skeptical, honestly. A Yoshi puzzle game? That's not what I signed up for. But the puzzles are clever without being frustrating. The difficulty curve is gentle but rewarding. Every time I solved a room, I felt genuinely smart instead of just relieved.

And there's something nice about a game that doesn't demand twitch reflexes. I can play this on the couch after a long day. I can hand it to my kid and watch her figure things out at her own pace. It's chill in a way that most platformers aren't, even the easy ones.

 

The music is also stuck in my head. Whimsical little accordion and xylophone tunes that somehow never get annoying.

A Few Small Complaints

I should mention that the game is on the shorter side. I finished the main story in about eight hours. There's post game content and collectibles that push it closer to fifteen, but if you're looking for a massive epic, this isn't it.

Also, some puzzles reuse the same trick more than once. I would have liked a few more completely fresh ideas in the back half.

 

But honestly? Those are nitpicks. For what this game is trying to be, it nails it.

 

Final Verdict

 

If you go into Yoshi and the Mysterious Book expecting a traditional Yoshi platformer, you're going to be confused for a while. I sure was. But once you reset your expectations and accept that this is a puzzle game wearing a cute green dinosaur costume, something special clicks into place.

It's clever. It's beautiful. It's relaxing in the best way. And it snuck up on me and became my favorite game of the year without me even seeing it coming.

Yoshi is back. Just not in the way anyone expected. And honestly? That's fine by me.