GameTech: Crafted World will put a smile on your face

Yoshi's Crafted World is a cardboard- cutout platformer. Don’t take that the wrong way, though. This is anything but standard fare. Yoshi is the hipster version of Mario. Nintendo first introduced their dinosaur sidekick in Super Mario World, with Mario riding on Yoshi’s back to get extra speed and a flutter jump, while eating berries along the way. Since then, Yoshi has had three games of his own, each one putting a unique slant on the original Mario gameplay.

In Crafted World, Nintendo perform a nice card trick — by placing Yoshi in a landscape made from cardboard cutouts. The result is a beautiful diorama aesthetic, where Yoshi interacts with the enemies and scenery in a variety of clever ways. Both the foreground and background become part of the design, meaning players can ‘spit’ out projectiles at enemies and objects.