For anyone plugged into the zeitgeist around video games, it should come as no surprise that even “simple” games take a long time to make. Things are releasing all the time, but specific games are the culmination of years of hard work to make a cohesive whole. Such is the case with Yoshi and the Mysterious Book, the laidback platformer released for Nintendo Switch 2 earlier this year. In a rather extensive new interview with Famitsu, the developers at Good-Feel have detailed how they spent roughly one month each creating individual creatures and roughly three years making one of the game’s full chapters.
Speaking with different members of the development team, Famitsu asked a range of questions regarding the challenges faced in bringing this new vision of Yoshi to life. The game’s director, Masahiro Yamamoto, told the outlet, “After creating creatures based on their actions, we delve deeper into what kind of creatures they are, how they reproduce, and what they taste like. However, this process requires a considerable amount of time to develop the depth of the creatures, so we spent at least a month on each aspect.”
Hisashi Nogami, the game’s producer, added, “I want to delve into it until I’m completely satisfied with the explanation.” Yamamoto then details how he would discuss with his team about characteristics of real-life creatures he thought would make for interesting enemy designs, then had them do research to accurately nail those aspects. To him, researching real-world ecosystems often gives a better spark of creativity than simply imagining a fictional creature just because he’s making a video game.
Further on in the interview, Yamamoto and Nogami explain how the climax of chapter six featuring the Bewilder Bird took around three years to create. Due to the complexity of the creature, which can transform into almost anything, the developers had to account for more creatures in the closing segment. “I wanted the knowledge accumulated through such proactive research to become a source of strength, and the ability of the Bewilder Bird was created to express that,” Yamamoto said.
“I think the production of the Bewilder Bird alone probably took about three years,” Yamamoto stated. Producer Nobuo Matsumiya added, “When we first created the Bewilder Bird course, there weren’t that many corresponding creatures. But the number really kept increasing, so I thought, ‘This is going to be a big problem later on!’” All the extra creatures in Yoshi and the Mysterious Book corresponded to a lengthy development cycle, but the team seems happy with the final outcome.
There are a ton of tidbits about Yoshi’s latest game in this interview, though we’d be here forever if all of them were included in this article. You can check out the interview on Famitsu’s website, though you will need to use some kind of translation software to read it if you aren’t fluent in Japanese.
Check out more Yoshi content
Yoshi and the Mysterious Book devs explain how Switch 2’s extra power helped realize their vision
Miyamoto confirms that The Super Mario Galaxy Movie was responsible for new Yoshi and Star Fox games
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Written by Peter Glagowski
Peter has been a freelance gaming and film critic for over seven years. His passion for Nintendo is only matched by the size of his collection.
