Yoku’s Island Express Free On Epic

Monday, I wanted to go fishing without calling for Huey across Moonglow Bay, and Christian rounded up the HCAA winners. Tuesday, David did a rundown of the latest WoW patch, 9.1.5. Wednesday, I went through the treasure trove made of poo, otherwise known as this month’s Prime Gaming offerings, and TOEM, the game about taking pretty black and white pictures, finally got a release date for consoles and PC. Also on Wednesday, strange dungeon-crawler, ●LIVE IN DUNGEON, finally got an English translation.

On to the free game for this week with the Epic Games Store. It is a single game this week and by Jove, it is a good one: Yoku’s Island Express. A cross between pinball and platforming, you play as a little bug (dung beetle?) attached to a white ball of what I assume to be dung. It seems obvious to say, but that sounds rather simple by modern game development standards, and you’d be right. I think that’s why I like Yoku’s Island Express. It is unafraid to be a simple game and it allows the main mechanic, the pinball platforming, to be as satisfying and frustrating as sounds.

Was that possibly a backhanded compliment? Maybe, as you can (if you are stupid like me) get stuck in little loops of frustration trying to avoid traps that will take away your fruit. Fruit is how you unlock more and more paddles to bat your beetle around. Also, fruit is what you are collecting a majority of the time. However, it is only frustrating because so much of the pinball mechanics are based on momentum: Go slowly and you’ll not be flung as far when batted away, go quickly and you’ll go flying. The same can be said with how close you are to the edge of the paddle, making it a little more precise to solve some puzzles. It is not just straightforward platforming either, there are puzzles to solve.

Generally, I quite enjoy the child-friendly and just downright lovely feeling surrounding it. Well worth picking up and playing with a controller, not that PC controls are bad, I just didn’t bother with them because it makes sense to only use a controller. A majority of the time is spent using RT and LT, so it is a little more comfortable to play like that. Maybe not overly complicated, as I said before, but endlessly satisfying when you get into the swing of things. Though I did poo myself when the jumpscare in the prologue came up.

All this week, you can pick up Yoku’s Island Express on the Epic Games Store until the morning of the 9th of September. Next week is once again a single game week, and hopefully for me another week of doing only one article a day all week (fingers crossed). Anyway, Sheltered is another game that appeared on Prime a while back and it is a somewhat Sim-Tower mixed with survival management, akin to This War of Mine. It is a little more pixel-based and by the cover art slightly taking from Battle Royale though. The film that is, not the game genre, with what appears to be teens trying to survive. Here is hoping I don’t kick it to death as I already don’t like survival management games as is.