This game is great, but it has some design problems and missed opportunities

[DaemonX_HUN]

Yoku's Island Express really surprised me with its level of polish and overall quality, I absolutely love it, there are so many things done right in the game (art design, soundtrack, characters, world design, general gameplay, etc.).

But the game also has some problems that could have been fixed with a little more attention/care from the developers. These are the following:

• There's a travelling system that lets me travel faster using hanging cannons. But the problem with these is that I can only jump into some specific cannons in order to start travelling between them. So even if there's a cannon next to me, there's a high chance that I can't jump into it and I need to make my way towards a cannon much further away that lets me directly hop into it from the ground. This gives me the feeling that the game doesn't respect my time and it wants to artificially extend the gameplay length this way. There's already a lot backtracking in this game and because there's no combat or any similar environmental interaction in this game, once you get through an area once, going through it again will be pretty boring and eventless... and things like this cannon travelling system just extends the amount of backtracking that I need to do instead of decreasing it.
  
  
• There's a quest involving Wondrous Willo and Umbaba which centres around the idea that Umbaba somehow managed to learn to teleport and if I solve all puzzle pieces, I'll get a great reward. This was the longest side-quest out of all (involving many different locations), so I was pretty disappointed when I completed it and I found out that my reward was so meaningless - something that lets me swim faster... Based on what was the quest's story about, I pretty much 100% thought that I'll get some kind of teleportation ability/device that will let me fast travel to the points I've already visited, this way making it easier to gather the remaining collectibles.
  
  
• Maybe this game works differently on a TV screen, but I used my PS4 to play the game on my monitor and most of the time I had a hard time seeing anything on the map because I wasn't able to actually zoom-in as much as I wanted. There's a zoom in option in the game, but it only zooms in by a limited amount and it doesn't really make anything easier.
  
  
• Multiple times the great sense of flow/progression of the game got broken when I found bumpers that required X amount of fruits from me to activate (to be able to go to the next area). Locking gameplay progression behind collectables/currencies in a game like this is one of the dumbest design decisions I've seen recently, especially because once I collected fruits in an area, they didn't respawn. So every time this happened I needed to backtrack a lot in order to find a pinball table and grind out fruits one by one most of the time to get enough in order to be able to progress to the next area. This was very annoying. It seems like the devs didn't really know how to make proper use of the currency because aside from spending it on unlocking bumpers, the only thing I could spend them on were treasure maps... and those were only necessary because of the inability to properly zoom in and out of the main map. If I would have had the ability to zoom in the map greatly, I would have been able to see the collectibles in the areas I've already explored without a treasure map as well. The only thing that a treasure map basically does is it enlarges the treasure icons (from tiny to barely noticable size).

[MAT]

Good points. This is a great game, but after finishing the (too short) main campaign, the game becomes a bit boring and tedious (I'm only at 61% completion). This game needs a sequel with these things fixed.

[DJDiceZ]

Fair points aside from claiming that the cannons extend the ammount of backtracking. There would obviously be more backtracking without them.

[Yodzilla]

Can't speak to the third point but the other three are all definitely valid points. Still a very nice and clever game!

[DKShadow_Team17]

Thanks for the detailed feedback, it's much appreciated!

[Lowlight]

I agree with this person's feedback. This game kept frustrating me. I imagine a lot of people played it awhile and put it down after reaching some obtuse or poorly signaled part. This isn't Dark Souls, yet I often found myself wondering what I was supposed to be doing next and the game was little help.

The best games, both video and pinball tell the player what is expected next, be it a quest goal or a ramp shot. This game was happy to let me wallow in the gang territory for hours with no clue as to how I should proceed.

[OppaErich]

Originally posted by DaemonX_HUN:

...

• Maybe this game works differently on a TV screen, but I used my PS4 to play the game on my monitor and most of the time I had a hard time seeing anything on the map because I wasn't able to actually zoom-in as much as I wanted. There's a zoom in option in the game, but it only zooms in by a limited amount and it doesn't really make anything easier.
  
  ...

I've played this on XBONE using an 32" TV about 6ft away. The map was pretty much useless this way. Adjustable zoom level would help a lot here.

And I wasted a lot of time just looking for the path. I do get annoyed quickly when progression gets stuck though... A hint system would be cool. But this would require some mechanic to select an "active mission".

And a minor bug: The login screen is using the default green colour, it does not pick the custom colour. Really no biggy but...

[CrimsonJD]

Disagree. I really like the way the game handled almost everything.
You can beat the main plot of the game without really figuring out anything too hard. 100%ing is more difficult, but you don't really _need_ to do that if you don't want. I almost never 100% games, but I did do it for this game because I was having a lot of fun. Also, it really wasn't that difficult. I'm not especially good at figuring these kinda things out, and I was able to get 99.9% of it totally on my own, and only had to look up some vague hints for like one or two things.

The only important thing I couldn't figure out on my own, somehow, was that when the slugs explode you shoot in the opposite direction from where the slug is facing. It sounds obvious now but it just seemed kinda random until I saw someone mention that in a forum. :) You don't need to know that to beat the main game, just to get a couple "extra" things. Maybe some character could have mentioned it to you in dialogue somewhere...

I really liked that there's no way you can miss anything or get locked out of anything. That seems to happen in a lot of games I've played recently, but in Yoku you can come back and do literally anything at any time later, so you don't have to worry about missing something or doing it in the wrong order.

[OppaErich]

I'm at 96% now and quit. I'm missing like 1 or 2 chests and 15 of these little ones. It's just too frustrating to look for a way to get to stuff I can see on the map. And I'm bad with this 'slingshot' mechanic, makes me rage :)

[MaxBedlam]

Originally posted by OppaErich:

I'm at 96% now and quit. I'm missing like 1 or 2 chests and 15 of these little ones. It's just too frustrating to look for a way to get to stuff I can see on the map. And I'm bad with this 'slingshot' mechanic, makes me rage :)

The slingshot is absolutely ridiculous, it's way too fast and I hate it so much. The only thing that's worse is having to use slugs to jump to reach certain things because they're very unreliable.

I'm trying to get one wickerling with slug jump and it's just impossible. I even checked out on youtube video how to do it and even though I position myself and do everything the same as in the video it throws me off in different way every time.

This game went from amusing and fun experience to tedious bull$hit.

[xWinG 驫麤]

2nd point: yea fast dive fish is not that great, also when get out of the water it is often way to fast. but if done while the main quest it is a really short sidequest, because everything is on your way.

3rd point: no issues on PC/Switch for me

4th point: fruits are a problem if you rush the game. in speedruns its most of the time: the better you are, the less fruits you have, because if you clear pinball areas very fast you dont get fruits out of it. if you then open flipper that cost 80 fruit and gives you nothing, because you have not the ability its sad. but hey there are so many scarabs and stuff where you can get easy fruits. in casual i never had problems and in speedruns we only open the important things and only grab the fruits on the way.

now to the first point:
the travel system is awesome!
you can go out whereevery you want, also with some strats you can even ajust the very specific spots, like get on treeks tree without the 80cost:
https://​/​clips.​twitch.​tv/​MagnificentYummyOctopusOSkomodo

most people think you have to enter at a certain point (end of the lines) but speedrunner found out about hijacks and other entrys into beelines, with those you dont even need to unlock the beeline:

- Hijack: https://​/​clips.​twitch.​tv/​TangibleDoubtfulPeafowlOSkomodo
- Green Hijack: https://​/​clips.​twitch.​tv/​KawaiiEvilDumplingsChocolateRain
- Yellow Hijack: https://​/​clips.​twitch.​tv/​NimbleAntediluvianMouseChefFrank
- Underdark Hijack: https://​/​clips.​twitch.​tv/​UninterestedConfidentCiderOhMyDog
- Leash-Thief-Drop: https://​/​clips.​twitch.​tv/​TameMagnificentKaleKappa

there are like 4 more i don't find the links atm.

also even without beelines: the game is not that big and you can just walk from a single point to the other... or well fall of ways:

just a few examples:
- Fountain-Skip: https://​/​clips.​twitch.​tv/​MildFurtiveZucchiniSaltBae
- Dipper-sin: https://​/​clips.​twitch.​tv/​CredulousBlitheOilDendiFace
- Townskip: https://​/​clips.​twitch.​tv/​PoisedArborealPoxHumbleLife

[MaxBedlam]

Wing none of those clips work, Twitch says: "Whoops. Something went wrong. We couldn't find that clip."

Anyway travel system sucks and it takes too long to get from one part of the map to the other. It's partly why I'm on the edge of dropping the game, but won't because I'm close to being done and I enjoy it except for the travel system and those stupid slingshot plants.

It would be much better if you could access beeline from more areas.