Indie Game of the Week 88: Yoku's Island Express

In an unusual twist for Indie Game of the Week, I've chosen to play a game that was actually released this year. Yoku's Island Express, you might recall because it came out four months ago, is a spacewhipper with a pinball affectation. The game's map is split between more conventional tunnels and passageways that criss-cross a large interconnected world, but also has these self-contained arenas that work via pinball physics and mechanics. That is, you're rewarded points (well, fruit) for hitting bumpers and switches along the walls, sliding the ball through tunnels a certain number of times, using the flippers to light up areas on the table, and eventually passing through some sort of exit tunnel to the next area. Most of the game's big set-pieces, like boss fights or the conclusion of a quest, takes place in one or more of these arenas. That said, these pinball areas are rarely all that elaborate and you probably don't need to be Tommy (of The Who's Tommy) to complete them, though it might take a few tries to find the angle it wants. That you can still move around normally to some degree on these tables helps, especially if you need to trap the ball to figure out your next trajectory.

That lack of a serious challenge is all part of the game's easy-going island charm, however. There's no fail states, no health gauges, no real enemies besides inconvenient blockages and exploding slugs (which are as much a help as they are a hindrance once you have a way to pick them up) and the occasional boss fight that you can't "lose" per se. Worst that happens is that you miss the bottom flippers on a table and be forced through the brambles underneath, which only takes a mere handful of the fruit you have on hand. Fruit, meanwhile, is used to unlock launchers around the map that primarily exist as shortcuts or to reach other collectibles, such as these well-hidden "wickerling" mandrake root-looking things, treasure chests, power-ups and upgrades, and quest items. Fruit is one of those resources that's paradoxically valuable and everywhere, and I regularly found myself maxed out even with the multiple wallet upgrades available. They're sort of like the rupees of The Legend of Zelda: there'll be times when you need a lot of them for an expensive purchase, and you might be encouraged to stop exploring and go scrounge up whatever amount you still need, but for the most part you'll usually have enough on hand for anything that might require them.

Like any spacewhipper, most of the game revolves around acquiring upgrades that allow you to access more areas in the place you're in, but also the places you've already been to: a "divefish", for instance, lets you dive underwater, and you start the game on a beach where clearly visible items are under the ocean's surface and out of reach. The game gets the most use out of the first item you acquire: a party noisemaker that ends up having multiple uses, from popping bubbles and shattering nearby crystals/ice to waking NPCs up. That it makes an annoying sound is something the game leans into, including an achievement for 1000 blasts that's simply titled "That's enough". Again, that reflects on the game's easygoing sense of harmless fun that's also made apparent by a certain goofy Rayman quality to both its art direction and character designs, with strange-looking but friendly creatures of all shapes and sizes to be found across the island. Because the title character is nominally the new postmaster of the island, you also have a couple of mail-related quests like stuffing every mailbox you see with random handfuls of envelopes and delivering packages to a handful of remote locales.

I bumped into a few issues playing on the PS4. After an extended session the game stopped being seamless when loading in areas - when adjacent to a loading point, you could see that the next zone was blurry and unfocused like it hadn't been drawn-in yet - and the memory leak of that caused the game to eventually crash. However, it saves frequently and I didn't bump into any more issues while playing. My only other minor reservations are related to my neophyte pinball skills; beyond giving the game a novel twist to its exploration and traversal (though Knytt Underground is another fine game of this genre with a hefty dose of ball physics, and of course the Metroid series would often include stretches spent entirely in Samus's Morph Ball form), it's hard to say who the pinball mechanics are for in this game, as experts might find them the game's "tables" too surface-level while us novices are sending balls through the same channel over and over trying to figure out the timing. All told, however, between its chill personality and great world design there is very little to dislike about the game - it even ticks the boxes of a good spacewhipper by giving you maps to collectibles (for a price), a decent fast travel system, and ensuring that no areas become inaccessible later. One for my GOTY list this year for sure, even if it's looking pretty sparse so far.

Rating: 5 out of 5.

Yay! Glad you really enjoyed Yoku’s Island Express! Such a unique and chill game and it’s in my top 10 games of 2018 for now.