So, I was a SEGA kid. As a toddler Santa gave (and installed!) a SEGA Genesis to me one Christmas morning. Man — Santa was so dope. I played Sonic 2 all morning with my dad. So dope.

Photo Credit: The weirdest depths of the internet.

Anyway, Sonic is all but dead to me (save for a cruel ressurection in 2011’s Sonic: Generations, only to turn back into a shell of his former self). Eventually, Kid-Me was given an N64 and GameCube. Highschool-Me bought himself a Wii, and Adult-Me now owns a Wii U, among other consoles. Since the days since Sonic’s passing, I managed to find love again, in the form of a pudgey Italian plumber in a red hat and overalls who can jump higher and run faster than I would have ever expected out of a guy of his physical build.

The House that Mario Built has, for as long as I can remember, been churning out some of the most fantastic and whimsical games ever made. I can’t remember a game developed by Nintendo that was poorly made. There may have been a few that I didn’t particularly care for, for one reason or another, but all of them had some thought and care put into them. When you play a Nintendo-developed game you can go into it assuming that the mechanics will be fine-tuned and the the levels will be designed intuitively, such that you won’t ever be confused as to where to go, even if getting there is no easy task.

This “small” detail of impeccable level design has become more and more striking, and apparent, to me as I expand my gaming horizons outside of Nintendo-developed games. Playing recent games such as LittleBigPlanet3 and Disney Infinity 2.0/3.0 has really highlighted how great Nintendo is at making video game levels.

The Yoshi franchise has had a rough go of it throughout the decades. 1995’s Super Mario World 2: Yoshi’s Island is a modern classic in any medium, and one of my favorite games of all time. As a kid, I loved the N64’s Yoshi’s Story, but I’m pretty sure that if I went back and played it today I would probably want to stab myself a bunch. I never played 2007’s Yoshi’s Island DS, but it is universally reviled. It’s follow up, 2014’s Yoshi’s New Island, was a decent side scrolling game that took the mechanics of the original and shoved it into a lifeless carcass of itself. It was a fine game from a technical standpoint, but devoid of any heart or soul expended during its development.

Yoshi’s Wooly World is, admittedly, not developed by Nintendo’s in-house teams. Instead, Nintendo “out-sourced” this project to developer Good-Feel — a company that has been making games exclusive to Nintendo consoles since 2007’s “Training Words.” Good-Feel is the team responsible for the terribly adorable Kirby’s Epic Yarn on the Wii, and the theme of “video game characters and world made out of fabric” has spilled over from DreamLand to Yoshi’s Island. This go-around, Yoshi and friends (who are also Yoshis — he’s very homogenous and possibly xenophobic? Didn’t he spend the entirety of the Super Nintendo’s Yoshi’s Island trying to get a human baby the hell away from his home? I digress.) are made of wool, as are their surroundings. It’s heartbreakingly adorable. The visuals are so, so, so fantastic and the sounds Yoshi makes while ground pounding and struggling to fly ellicit emotions from me akin to those I have for my real-life dog, who I real-life love, when he does real-life funny things.

The Level Designs are where the game gets interesting. More often than not I am floored and amazed at just how incredibly well-thought-out, inventive, and mindful the level designs are. No two levels feel the same, each level is imbued, on a microscopic level, with such charm, heart, and soul that it pops right out of the screen and directly into my heart. However, there have been a couple of times (literally like three times in three worlds played so far) where I’ve walked into a seemingly dead end. No obvious place to go next. These have, twice, been situations where I was supposed to jump into a seemingly-solid wall, which actually contained a cavernous path that charted my out way but. Some might say this is my fault for not jumping up and down like some kind of ravenous, idiotic beast. I say, however, that this is a strikingly and uncharacteristic example of terrible level design in an otherwise fabulous game. This design concept is utilized often enough in the game that it wasn’t foreign to me after realizing it, since it’s used to hide secret collectables; however, I disagree that the primary path through a level should be so stupidly hidden from view. The other time this confusion happened, I completely missed a small physical cue indicating to me that I had to peel away a section of wool to advance through the level. I take fault on that one, my eyes aren’t super great (anymore? ever?) and I missed it sitting far away from the TV.

Yoshi messing up a woolen wall. Photo Credit: Nintendo.

These three instances don’t ruin the game — far from it, actually. However, they took me out of the immersion, confused the hell out of me, and forced me out of the game and on to a YouTube video walkthrough to figure this out. It’s poor level design, undoubtedly. It is, however, weird in the context of this game. I have played 24 levels in Wooly World so far, and all but 2 have been fantastically well designed. It doesn’t break the game too badly, and there is far more good in this game than this rant’s cause, but it sticks out as a weirdly Anti-Nintendo game design in an otherwise fantastically designed game.

These issues aside, I absolutely adore this game, and I adore it far more than I expected to. Yoshi’s New Island, and the pedigree (or lack thereof) of the series’s history really dampened my expectations. I expected it to be a fun-enough game with good mechanics that I would enjoy for a few levels and then never play again. I didn’t expect (with rare exceptions) such thoughtful level design and personality.

There is one level in world Three where Yoshi goes around collecting birds, instead of yarn balls, to use as “eggs” to throw around. Throwing a bird leaves a trail of clouds that are used as temporary platforms to navgiate the level. Throwing these birds makes them disappear forever. It’s an adorable level and concept, except that it’s also terrible macabre. I went around bashing these birds’ mothers to death, stealing them, and sacrificing them for my own self-gain. It’s adorable but also I feel like a monster and now I need therapy.

These poor orphan birds will make a great sacrifice for my needs. Photo Credit: Nintendo.

This level design example I just described is completely unique to that level (so far). None of the surrounding levels continue that theme or mechanic. Each level is absolutely charming and totally unique to itself. It’s a stunningly diverse and bleedingly adorable set of levels that I simply cannot wait to go home and play (after this boring ass business law class is finally over).

Despite this deep care put into level design, the boss fights seem neglected. They are all painfully easy, devoid of personality, and generally feel uninspired and stale. Despite that, and the above examples of lacking level design intuiveness, I cannot recommend this game highly enough. Most of the times it’s easy enough to blow through a level quickly. However, to really get the most out of the experience, by collecting various sets of collectables hidden throughout a level, takes a certain set of skill and really ramps up the difficulty to near-DKC-level punishment.

Although I haven’t completed the game yet, this is the first video game since Splatoon (several months ago) that has wedged its way into my busy daily schedule. It’s a generally-well designed game that brings my physical heart pain because of how adorable it is. I can’t recommend it enough. It might not be a perfect game, but you should still go buy it and/or go play it. If you have any sense of heart, you will love it… and then you will hate yourself for killing all those birds and their mothers. You’re a barbarian.