Nintendo’s wishing Yoshi’s Woolly World a soft landing on Wii U

Good-Feel is unpicking the platformer stich by stich

Kirby’s Epic Yarn was beguilingly pretty, but its crafty look was all surface sheen. Underneath, nothing much had changed.

“We’ve always felt that Yoshi deserves to have a handcrafted feel to the graphics, and we’ve strived to bring this into games like Yoshi’s Island and Yoshi’s Story,” Nintendo producer Takashi Tezuka tells us. “With those previous titles, though, it was just that – an aesthetic – and didn’t really have much influence on the gameplay itself.

“We decided to use wool in Yoshi’s Woolly World since we felt we’d be able to provide some interesting mechanics and gameplay that we weren’t able to do in previous games. But it was also the toughest challenge we’ve faced!”

Tackling the task demanded some unusual concept art, as you can see on these pages. “Actually making real items using wool to test our representations in the game was obviously necessary, but it took a huge amount of time!” says Good-Feel executive producer Etsunobu Ebisu. “We made these while we were establishing which direction to go with for the graphics, for example.”

Has the painstaking process been worth it? We’ll find out when Yoshi’s Woolly World is released for Wii U on June 26.