Yoshi’s Woolly World Preview

An adorable tongue twister.

Let’s be honest. Yoshi is too cute. By association, Yoshi’s Woolly World is too cute. And then Nintendo threw yarn Yoshi amiibos in the mix, and I’m just dying from cuteness over here. So I jumped on the opportunity to play his new game at E3 2015, and I’m still inundated with perpetual cuteness. Although the game doesn’t come out until October 16, it’s already in really good shape and an absolute charm.

The guy working the booth played the two-player mode with me, which initially irked me, seeing how I normally like playing games alone. But I had a lot of fun with all the kooky antics that ensued. First, I was really taken with the scenery. Whereas Kirby’s Epic Yarn may have been a visual delight on the Wii, the Wii U presents this colorful knitted world with spectacular color and fidelity. When it comes to visual, I tend to be more interested in design and texture versus realism, but the wool textures are rendered so well, I got a good taste of all three elements.

Gameplay is rather straight-forward — Yoshi and friend must collect balls of yarn, either from blocks or by swallowing enemies, and throw them around to fill in missing platforms or collect distant objects. For two players, they have the bonus treat of being able to turn each other into yarn when there isn’t any nearby. It’s a fun combination of useful and being a dick that’ll make pairs of friends continually smile and laugh.

The first stage I played with the Nintendo staff was a bright outdoors level with lots of windmills missing their blades. This helped me get accustomed to the controls and the world, and I learned how to seek out hidden secrets, something which has become par for the course when it comes to Nintendo games. Also par for the course is my tendency to just fall into every bottomless pit available because I’m a giant mess when it comes to platformers.

Next, someone from the crowd joined me for an indoor stage with a higher challenge. There were sets of cloth curtains moving left and right, revealing silhouettes of platforms behind them. The only way to navigate this area was to carefully time jumps and movement in sync with these curtains, which was sometimes easier said than done. My partner and I tried our best but were unable to finish the stage. Still, we had a good time and walked away impressed.

In my case, I walked away a little bummed that I don’t own a Wii U to play this when it comes out. Hopefully, one of my kind friends will let me check it out on their system.