Yoshi and the Mysterious Book finds a brand-new identity for Nintendo's sidelined platformer mascot

Yoshi is having a bit of a moment right now beyond the imminent arrival of Yoshi and the Mysterious Book. He's appearing in 2026's biggest film, which means he's also all over toy-store shelves and popcorn buckets and every other possible merchandising opportunity. And yet it's somehow been seven years since he last headlined his own videogame.

Since Yoshi's Crafted World in 2019, he's been stuck at the back of the queue while Kirby, Donkey Kong, Princess Peach and the Jumpman himself have all taken their turn to star in platforming games of one kind or another. I come to my first hands-on with Yoshi and the Mysterious Book wondering if that leaves any room for our little green dino.

It's a crowded roster, and with Mario the undisputed king of the genre, every other platforming mascot has to specialise in some way. They have to find their thing. Kirby, and latterly Peach, have cornered the market on transformations, while DK has recently pivoted into an extreme form of landscape gardening. So what exactly is Yoshi's thing?

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You might point to the very particular set of moves he's been packing since 1995: the floaty jump, ground-pound, and gobbling of enemies. But, well, that sounds a lot like Kirby, doesn't it? The two are on similar turf in other ways, too, both being little cuties, both offering a more approachable way into the genre for younger players. I'll admit that, as an alleged "grown-up", I can find the latter a bit offputting – my gaming palate prefers the sophistication of Mario Mario, thank you very much.

OK, how about Yoshi as the art connoisseur of the group? Since the crayon aesthetic of Yoshi's Island, every new game has come with a fresh twist on the handcrafted visual style. And Yoshi and the Mysterious Book continues that tradition: each level exists inside the pages of a book, rendered in a kind of sketchy colored-pencil effect. In play, this actually proves to be a bit of an aesthetic step down from Crafted World's incredible art-supply dioramas – to my eye, it looks more like the watercolor filter you can apply in Donkey Kong Bananza's Photo Mode than a true bespoke visual style.

And yet, having bounced off every previous Yoshi game before the credits rolled, put off by their soft-play approach to platforming, after a couple of hours in Mysterious Book's company I'm convinced things will be different this time. And it's all thanks to Mr E, helping Yoshi to finally find his thing.

Booksmarts

Mr E drops onto Yoshi Island and politely introduces himself by his full name: Mister Encyclopedia. (Yes, 'Mr' is short for 'Mister' and yes I do find that delightful.) With his beady eyes, giant moustache, and monocle, he looks like Mr Monopoly (short, presumably, for 'Mister Monopoly') but try not to hold that against him. He's had a tough time recently, after some of his contents were mysteriously erased, and now it's up to the Yoshis to fill his pages back in.

This begins with Mr E opening up to a cutaway illustration of Wildwoods, a shaded undergrowth habitat that is essentially the first overworld of Mysterious Book. Using Mr E’s monocle as a magnifying glass, you pick one creature from the landscape to zoom in on, and are then transported into a more traditional side-on level.

I say 'traditional' – you don't beat these levels by making it to a finish line a few screens to the right, Mario-style. They're more open-ended, and completed by making a discovery. What exactly that discovery might be… well, if you knew in advance, then it wouldn't really be one, would it?

As you work your way towards this primary objective, you'll come across a lot of smaller discoveries, marked up on screen as you do with a cute little diagram and text description – kind of like if encyclopedias had achievement notifications. Generally, the first discovery you'll make in each level is: what does this critter taste like?

Yoshi still has that same moveset at his disposal, but now each action is a way of prodding at your subject and seeing what happens. Mlem! The tongue goes out, and now you know that this little beastie is bitter or sweet in the mouth. If you then try swallowing it into an egg, or spitting it back out… you might learn something else about the creature, all of which have at least a few interesting properties to be discovered and played around with.

Animal magnetism

There's this one species of beaky creatures with a leaf on their head, like a missing link from the Lotad-Ludicolo Pokémon evolutionary tree. Bounce on their heads and they'll sing a note, moving up the do-re-mi scale based (I think) on their color. One discovery waiting to be unlocked in their introductory level involves getting them to play a simple tune. But, I'll be disappointed if less tone-deaf players haven't got these leafy lads belting out Chappell Roan numbers by the summer.

Another example you might have seen in the Nintendo Direct trailer that revealed Mysterious Book to the world last September: these little dandelion-looking things that scatter into the air when you run through them and take root wherever they land, with different effects depending on what kind of surface it is. Grass causes them to grow huge and yellow, for some reason. Alighting on a boulder, they'll soften the rock up for a ground-pounding. And if you can nudge them into a pond, they'll become absorbent, allowing you to control the water levels depending on how many you plant. Precisely manipulating their movements is a pain – it's like trying to control the wind – and yet even on a tight preview deadline I can't help but persisting until I've tried out every possible combination.

Now, imagine what happens to those combinations once the game starts introducing multiple creatures into a single level. At one point I end up riding a living skateboard across water, with a bubble-blowing frog riding on my back. It's a total accident, and I've no idea if this counts as a discovery, but I can confirm it's the most I've giggled at a videogame in a while.

You might have noticed I've not used actual names for any of these weird little dudes, and that's because Mysterious Book lets you come up with your own. You can take this responsibility very seriously indeed, or else treat it as a Jackbox-style prompt to write a little joke.

There are robust profanity filters in place, naturally, but it's still a surprise to be handed naming rights by a company so infamously protective of its brands. Especially when the creature you're studying is a Shy Guy, but you've decided it should be Maskette or Colin or KaneNLynch instead, and the game just starts referring to them by that name from then on.

The only name I try that does get turned down is 'Yoshi' (my personal justification being that this is the only word in Yoshi's vocabulary). Mr E gently shuts that one down, pointing out that things are going to get confusing. It's a little thing, but I love when a game sees you coming like this, and has something ready in response – the kinds of moments that Yoshi and the Mysterious Book seems poised to deliver to curious players.

There's this lovely quality of experimentation that has long been part of Nintendo's best games, back to the bombable walls and secret exits of NES-era Zelda and Mario, but has really come to the fore since The Legend of Zelda: Breath Of The Wild. And here it is again, albeit on a much smaller scale, presented in a way more approachable to the younger audience that'll no doubt be coming to it straight from The Super Mario Galaxy Movie. But none of that stops me, a jaded old man, from taking the same kind of joy in it, as I poke at things just to see what will happen.

So this is Yoshi’s thing, at least for this one game. He’s a naturalist, leveraging his very particular set of skills to observe exotic lifeforms and record his findings in a book. The Charles Darwin of the Mushroom Kingdom. I can't quite believe how sold I am on that combination, nor just how impatient I am to gobble my way through a Yoshi game. Mark it down: a new discovery!

Take a look at our upcoming Switch 2 games list for more to play!