Status - World 3-2 out of 6
What the box says - Join Yarn Yoshi (and Poochy!) on a journey through a wonderful world of wool!
What I say - 3DS port of a Wii U game (with Poochy!) which seems to be a wool-based successor to the much better classic Yoshi's Island - Super Mario Bros. 2 on the SNES.
Genre - yarn platforming collectathon.
Rage quitting / stress levels - low
Price paid - AUD 29 from Cashies
Metacritic - 77/100
I'm a bit over 1/3rd through P&YWW and it is very much "Yoshi's Island" but with a "yarn" style art style which sometimes is integrated into the gameplay.
For those who aren't familiar with Yoshi's Island - it was a "late SNES cycle" platformer sequel of Super Mario Bros (SNES) with a pre-rendered "children's book" art style which fitted the plot/theme (controlling Yoshi and protecting Baby Mario through various platforming levels. For me YI is one of the all time classic platformers (my favourite Mario game). You run, jump, lay eggs and shoot enemies whilst trying to carry/save Baby Mario. I didn't have a SNES back in the day (I was a total Sega fanboy) and didn't get introduced to YI until I figured out how to emulate in the late 90s.
P&YWW seems to be a "yarn" art style photocopy of YI with the same style of gameplay (e.g.: run, jump, eat or spit enemies, lay eggs and shoot things) with a few yarn-specific mechanics (e.g.: unthreading the yarn scenery to reveal secret paths, tying up enemies with yarn) as well as a heavier focus on exploration and finding collectables (in the form of "yarns" as well as the YI sunflowers). If you collect all 5 yarns in a level - you'll unlock one of Yoshi's yarn friends.
The game is broken up into six worlds with 8 sub-worlds each (2 of which includes the mid and final world boss) and an unlockable stage (depending if you meet certain criteria). Unlike YI - there are no "lifes" so you don't have to worry too much about failing a stage as you'll respawn back at the previous checklist. This takes a bit of the "stress/frustration" levels away. You'll have a bunch of "hearts" but these are completely plentiful (with opportunities to refill your empty hearts at a checkpoint or through secret cloud-box things to unlock).
I only feel "kind of OK" with this game. While the gameplay is pretty tight, there aren't that many innovations (when you compare the great innovation and differences between YI to SPM). The sub-worlds don't seem very "connected" as you bounce around various themes and new ideas and it feels a bit "scatterbrain". The bosses don't feel very challenging and seem to all have the same basic patterns to solve (which aren't hard to figure out).
The difficulty seems to be getting a little higher (towards the end of the 2nd world and start of 3rd world) but nothing insurmountable.
I think this game has "Ambio" functionality but I really don't care for Ambios (don't own any, not into that sort of geek culture and don't want more clutter around the house).
Given I'm about 1/3rd way through - I have only encountered one level with Poochy who seemed a bit painful rather than helpful (e.g.: had to shoot things at him (or her?) to make it run in a certain direction. There were other levels that had a similar gimmick (e.g.: shooting a chomper to tie it in a ball and then use it as a boulder to navigate over obstacles (e.g.: insta-death spikes) or place onto switches.
Overall - I think the metacritic and feedback on the game seems to be on the money (eg.: a 3 out of 5 star game). It's good at what it does but doesn't seem to gel between levels/ideas as well as not enough innovation from previous Yoshi games.
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