Yoshi’s Woolly World reviewed: A warm, woolly platforming hug

With Yoshi's Woolly World finally being released in the US, we are rerunning this Ars Technica UK review from June.

Don't let the cutesy visuals deceive you: Yoshi's Woolly World is as challenging a platformer as anything to have come from Nintendo. This is a game that unashamedly plays on nostalgia, almost tricking you into thinking that maybe, just maybe, there's not a lot new to see or do within its delightfully bright and fluffy world. And sure, some occasionally obtuse level design and frustrating checkpoints mean that it doesn't quite reach the glorious heights of its genre-defining forebears. But even with its problems, Yoshi's Woolly World is so cute, and so mechanically refined—in that way only Nintendo platformers can be—that it's so very hard not to be taken in by its charms.

And hey, who wouldn't be charmed by a small green dinosaur that squeaks like a puppy and eats and poops balls of wool? Yes, Yoshi's Woolly World is what the kids call "totes adorbs," a striking mass of billowing fabrics and fluffy wool that's been stitched together to create a bright and colourful world. This aesthetic isn't new to Nintendo, debuting in the Wii platformer Kirby's Epic Yarn, but here it's been refined, the HD power of the Wii U rendering each intricate thread with startling clarity. It's an absolute joy to look at, and the Yoshis themselves (yes, there's more than one of them) are unbearably cute, leaping around the screen with a yelp and a flutter of their tiny woolly legs.