Pinball Spire

• Genre: Pinball
• Spoiler Free Review: Yes.
• Time Played: I don't know, no time on Switch yet, 3-4 hours?
• Too Short/Long: It's fine.
• Did I cry: No.
• Soundtrack: It gets the job done.
• Why I played: I like games where balls bounce around.
• Jank: I think the only real jank is in design, just sometimes it feels like things could have gone smoother and been a little more fun.
• Difficulty: It's not entirely difficulty as there isn't really a way to lose, but it is pinball, so it may take a lot of tries. A lot.
• Something I liked: The power-based progression - and because I'm bad at pinball the very fact you cannot lose and just have to try again and again.
• Pleased/Disappointed: I'm pleased, it wasn't bad.
• Recommend to others: I would probably recommend it to anyone who likes Pinball, but I wouldn't get adventurous outside of that.
  

Whether physical or digital, I am pretty bad at pinball. But I like games where you throw or hit a ball and it goes bouncing around. Marble Blast, Peggle, Breakout, Pong, - I have a entire folder/category on my switch dedicated to such titles that usually catches the interest of anyone browsing my Switch, titled "Ricochet", which sits firmly between the much more traditional genres "Racing" and "Roguelike".

Pinball Spire is certainly that. It's a bit of a pinball adventure game where you progress through one giant pinball table spanning many screens. More like the old NES Pinball Quest. If Yoku's Island Express is a similar game in any way, one that is an adventure that uses pinball as a mechanic, this is a pinball game that uses power ups and mana - it's p. We're not getting too fancy though. Bumping the table to move the ball a little bit at a time. Slow down time and see trajectory, fireball to light lamps, passthrough/destroy multiple enemies and at least one clever "puzzle" use of it, and a dash to suddenly get a burst of speed in your current direction... also to break through special objects.

It does annoy me a little because like Slots & Daggers not really being a roguelike in any real way, this also describes itself as a Pinballvania, which is something I might call Yoku, but definitely not this. This is explicitly linear progression. It has "gating" as the kids like to call it, but the gating is always right before the key. That's just how progression works in... any game? Oh no I have to beat the boss before I can go to the next area. That's "gating", it's a metroidvania, nearly every game is now a metroidvania.

I have a friend who has always hated the terms roguelike and metroidvania, and I'm starting to agree. Anyway, it's a decent game.

Yoku's Island Express

• Genre: Pinball/Metoidvania
• Spoiler Free Review: Not much to spoiler, so yeah.
• Time Played: 11 Hours
• Too Short/Long: It's good.
• Did I cry: Nah
• Soundtrack: It's fine for it's settings but nothing to really jam to.
• Why I played: A lot of "Metroidvania" and Pinball-video game spaces alike mention the game in a rather positive light. Definitely seemed interesting/different, and I like pinball as a mechanic.
• Jank: It's not too bad, but there were some points where things were stuck, not in a broken way, just in a... ugh this shouldn't happen way.
• Difficulty: Mostly it's not too difficult, but there are times when getting your ball exactly where you need it feels more difficult than it should be. You also get an ability later on that is very hard to control precisely, despite many challenges with it requiring very precise control.
• Pleased/Disappointed: Overall I'm pretty pleased, it was fun, and different, and inspired me to play some other pinball-video games.
• Recommend to others: It's an easy recommend for anyone that actually likes pinball plus the exploration aspect of exploratory action platformers, as the "action" is light unless you consider flipping flippers action, and the platforming is... well I mean the whole point is to get the ball onto different platforms in a sense, but it's not exactly the same kind of "platforming". There is no jump button, but obviously you "jump" via flippers and such.
  

Yoku's Island Express isn't necessarily the first attempt at a Pinball-esque adventure game, but it is one of only a few I can think of, and perhaps the only one fitting precisely into it's genre. It's pretty good. Besides a few sections that get a little frustrating for the ball not going exactly where you want, it pretty much meets all expectations. It helps you do have a little direct control over the ball as technically Yoku is a little beetle pushing the ball around. Though, most of the time the ball is yanking Yoku.

I would say I'm a little disappointed at the 100% completion ending(which I don't think you technically can get before the normal ending), as I mostly was there by the end of the game and went back in just to turn in that last bit. I guess it's just a cute little bonus, but for all the work for this whole other aspect of the game - throughout the whole game, I expected a bit more. Overall though, fun and pretty neat and different game.