Yoshi becomes the Charles Darwin of the Mushroom Kingdom in Yoshi and the Mysterious Book

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, aka The Super Mario Galaxy Movie, 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.

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.  And so, I come to Yoshi and the Mysterious Book wondering if it’s time for Yoshi to find his own thing.

Yoshi’s new groove

Thanks to Mr E, it really is Yoshi’s year.

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.

Booksmarts

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?

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.

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.

Animal magnetism

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. A lot of the joy in this game is going to come from figuring out creature combinations.

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’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!