Beyond the Board: Interview with xWinG and HaraladX

 

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Pikastroff: Hello everybody and welcome back to this new edition of Beyond the Board! It’s been a while but here we are with a brand new edition for Yoku’s Island Express. So here I am, accompanied here by xWinG and HaraladX [pronounces it Haraladee eX]… Wait, did I butcher your name? I probably did. It’s actually better if I just let you guys introduce yourselves!

 

xWinG: Hello I am xWinG, speedrunner and designer of the randomizer and I also created the first bingo goals that are from Yoku’s Island Express.

 

HaraladX: Yeah, I am Haralad, I play a lot of Yoku’s Island Express and also speedrun it and play the bingos a lot, especially randomizer. I worked on the randomizer a little bit.

 

Pikastroff Alright, thank you for that initial introduction! So, what was your introduction to Yoku’s Island speedrunning then?

 

xWinG: I bought the game like 2 weeks after release, after watching a short video – I stopped the video like 2-3 minutes in and I was like “Yeah, I have to play this!”. I finished it on the same day and the day after I just wanted to keep playing and I started running… and yeah! That’s the story basically.

 

HaraladX: For me, we later found out it was the same video as xWinG watched – I saw the same video and I also just liked the game, I bought it, I never really played through it… Then after like 2 years or something I kind of just felt it was a good idea to speedrun this game because I for some reason started liking this game.

 

Pikastroff: Nice! What video was it, that you both watched?

 

xWinG: Just the Let’s Play from Zombey, a german famous YouTuber.

 

Pikastroff: Nice! I wonder how probable it was… What were the chances that you two would end up getting into Yoku’s Island thanks to the same video? I find that interesting.

 

With that said, so, what is your favourite aspect of playing Yoku’s Island Express then, and why is that?

 

xWinG: Hmm… The gameplay mechanics! It’s not just pinball, you always have control of Yoku, the dung beetle, and you can just arrange yourself in the pinball machines… How the abilities work and everything…

 

HaraladX: Yeah, I mean I’ve played other games too and one thing that you have with many games that you don’t have with Yoku’s Island Express really is that once you fail at doing something you kind of have to repeat what you’ve already done. So in other games, you kind of have a respawn from a checkpoint, but in Yoku, you really just go one loop in the flipper table and you only repeat this one shot that you failed. It’s not like you reset by a crazy amount, sometimes.

 

xWinG: Yeah, the game is pretty forgivable about your mistakes.

 

Pikastroff: Yeah, I reckon that would make the flow when running much better, doesn’t it?

 

xWinG: Yes, definitely.

 

Pikastroff: Nice! So in that case, stemming off from speedrunning the game itself, how did you guys get into bingos? You already mentioned xWinG that you made the initial goals so what about you Haralad?

 

HaraladX: When I started speedrunning I kind of got in contact with xWinG and at some point he recommended that we play a bingo and I didn’t even know that existed up to that point. We played one and it was a lot of fun, and we kept playing bingos!

 

Pikastroff: Nice! So actually, xWinG, how was that process of making bingo goals then for you?

 

xWinG: Uuuuuh… Very sloppy in the beginning! The first goals were not really good. Just imagine you have 14 or 15 80-cost-flippers [editor’s note: flipper paddles to unlock for 80 fruits] to unlock in the entire game, and one of the goals will need 12 to unlock. That’s like… Yeah, you have to invest so many fruits, that goal is like almost doing 80% of the game or so. 

 

After the years we found what is a good solution for some goals and stuff like that, and we cut down the goals to a good point, like half of what you can get in the entire game.

 

Pikastroff: I see. Yeah, I guess the process of making a bingo card is never really linear and you do end up having to go through a lot of trial and error in order to get something that’s well balanced.

 

xWinG: Exactly, yeah.

 

Pikastroff: With that said, especially with the current version of the bingo card there is, what is it that you think makes bingos fun within the game? Especially because you know, there’s a distinction between the vanilla game and the randomizer so is there much of a difference in how the bingos are? Or is it similar?

 

HaraladX: What I like about this bingo is that you kind of see a lot of different parts of the game, you have to do stuff everywhere. The difference between vanilla and randomizer bingos is actually pretty large I would say because in vanilla you can really well plan out where you’re going, what to do and in what order. In the randomizer you always have to adapt to which items you get, so you can’t really predict what’s going to happen and so you always have to dynamically change your route, and I think that’s a lot of fun honestly.

 

xWinG: Yeah, the work-in-progress in the randomizer is way more fun than the vanilla bingo in my opinion as well. You have to study throughout the entire run… You get the Noisemaker and then you can get the Noisemaker goals, and if you don’t get it you have to find something else.

 

Pikastroff: That’s a good way to look at it! It actually partially answers my next question which would be about, you know, what is it that you think is the most engaging aspect of doing Yoku’s Island Express bingos? Is it routing, execution, or anything else? But from what I can gather, at least for the case of the randomizer, at least routing is very fun due to that adaptability that you have to go through. But what about the execution? Are there any other aspects that you think are really fun, that are well emphasized in bingo?

 

HaraladX: We have some bingo goals that allow for some stuff you wouldn’t do in normal speedruns, especially in the randomizer. You have certain routes that you don’t really need in runs where you just go for all bosses or something, if you have some of these bingo goals you might have to go away where you wouldn’t usually go and so it also takes, I would say, skill to maybe use new skips for new routes or something.

 

For example, we have one beeline hijack where you can enter the fast-travel system without actually unlocking it which I would say we usually don’t use in a normal randomizer run, but definitely I use all the time in bingos.

 

xWinG: Yeah, and the execution… Doesn’t matter what you play in Yoku’s Island Express, you’ll always get better. So, playing bingo will make you better at playing speedruns, or just playing the game casually. You’re always going to get better at every run.

 

Pikastroff: Nice! You know, it’s very interesting to think about the idea that there are stuff that are useful in bingos that’s not seen in normal speedruns. I wonder if that leads to conversations whenever something new is discovered in the game, you realize “oh wait actually it’s not useful for normal speedruns”, but then you realize “oh wait, it can still be used for bingo so it not’s entirely useless!”. Does that happen often?

 

xWinG: It happened from time to time, but most skips we can adapt in some randomizers, but not as often as in bingos.

 

HaraladX: Yeah, in normal randomizer runs we have just a couple fixed goals and you don’t always need every route. Also in the bingo there’s certain goals that are usually useless inside the game, so you do stuff that doesn’t really serve a purpose in the game but for the bingo you sometimes do stuff that you wouldn’t actually need for a run.

 

Pikastroff: Alright, I see! Yeah, I’ve been thinking about that because I’ve had a few conversations in the past where it does happen that – especially for really, REALLY optimized speedgames – old skips become irrelevant but stay relevant in bingo so it allows them to ‘stay alive’ so-to-speak. It’s always an interesting element to think about.

 

But with that said, let’s talk a bit about the goals themselves. In the context of Yoku’s Island Express, what is it for you that constitutes a fun and engaging goal, versus one that needs some rebalancing?

 

HaraladX: There’s some goals on our bingo card which are usually more annoying, where you need very specific items that are maybe even unique. Those are sometimes annoying, so you don’t want to have too many of those because then your bingo will just be: you get all the goals and then you just kind of have to find this one item, or maybe even multiple specific items. Those are a little bit annoying. 

 

Also, you really don’t want goals where you need to do too much, like the one we had before where you have to have 12 flippers out of 14 or 15, and that’s quite a lot so you don’t want to have goals where you spend too much time on. I think it’s also good that we tried to adapt to that in the last update, to have some easier goals so you can kind of do stuff in the beginning as well because otherwise your run will be in two halves: the first half you’re looking for good items and then you’ll start picking up speed and kind of getting goals done.

 

xWinG: Yeah, in the vanilla bingo I don’t think there are any real bad goals because I tried to make them all kind of even. I mean, if you get a board with all 3 bosses, like 3 goals and each of the goals is defeat a boss, it gets a bit harder of course but then there are goals that you can easily do as well so that’s a good arrangement of easy and harder goals, and the average is pretty nice in my opinion. And of course, in vanilla you know where the items are so those difficult goals in randomizer are not as hard in vanilla. That’s the difference between vanilla and randomizer.

 

Pikastroff: That makes sense! I guess with randomizer, goals which require specific items are definitely going to be trickier by definition of being a randomizer. I guess there’s not really that much you can do except I guess trying to balance the ‘weight’ it has on the bingo card, if that makes sense… But really, I guess it’s a given that those kinds of goals will be challenging, so that really makes having balanced cards for randomizer that much more difficult, I imagine.

 

So, on that note, do you have any particular favourite goals that you love having, or any ones you hate – other than specific items in randomizer?

 

xWinG: Actually, I like to do the Juicery, for which Haralad I don’t think so?

 

HaraladX: I don’t like doing the Juicery! [laughs]

 

xWinG: And paying Skeeper always is for me a free goal that you can do even if you know what to do early. You can do it of course, he gives you an item normally, but if you have hundreds of fruits you can give them hundreds of fruits for free basically. You can do that whenever in the run and he is basically in the middle of the map, so always approachable.

 

HaraladX: Yeah, I like goals that require some items but not specific items, so doing stuff that’s kind of all over the map and then you need certain items to get to some of those goals but not all of them. It’s not like you have to search for a very specific item in the randomizer for example but there’s different ways to approach those goals.

 

xWinG: Yeah, like make glow moths hatch. There’s a place where glow moths are and you just have to reach that point, but you can reach that point in three different ways, or even four different ways if you use glitches, so that’s a pretty unique and really good goal. I believe that’s the one you’re talking about, right?

 

HaraladX: Exactly, yes.

 

Pikastroff: Hmm, yes, so goals that can require a variety of items but not very specific, I can see why that could be good. They really would require you to just explore the map to its fullest and let you just play around with it which I guess would really be a positive element about it, wouldn’t it?

 

HaraladX: Yeah, it’s also not only nice in the randomizer it’s also nice for vanilla because you have more freedom in the way you are routing, so that’s not only about not having to find specific items in the randomizer but also it just gives you a lot of freedom about the goal.

 

Pikastroff: Hmm, that makes sense.

 

xWinG: Yeah, definitely.

 

Pikastroff: So, since you’ve been speaking about the freedom aspect of routing this makes me think that therefore, when we’re talking about routing, are there aspects of it that most people usually do not think of? And as an extension to that question, are there any mistakes in the thought process behind routing that can damage one’s potential, that beginners or even more experienced players can have, does that make sense?

 

HaraladX: I very often find myself using the quick-travel system too much. In many cases, the quick-travel system isn’t actually the fastest route but I always use it because it’s very comfortable to use so that’s a routing mistake I often do!

 

xWinG: And I guess for beginners, it is if they don’t know all the skips. Like, there are 50 or 60 skips in the game that you can use but in speedruns you only use about 20 of them or so. In bingo of course you can use all of them and if you forget or if you don’t know a specific skip, it takes you way longer to get to a certain area and do one of the goals. So that could be a little problem for newcomers.

 

HaraladX: Yeah, skips really open up new routes, for where skips apply.

 

Pikastroff: It does make sense indeed.

 

xWinG: Because it’s an open-world game, if we know all the tricks including the hardest tricks that we know that are not in the logic of the randomizer, we can go to like 75% or 80% of the map without any items. So that opens up what we’re thinking of using with skips.

 

Pikastroff: I am interested in hearing about what Haralad mentioned about using the fast travel system which can actually be bad for not being the fastest. Would you like to elaborate on that?

 

HaraladX: Yeah, there’s a Beeline system where you can kind of go along this linear path really quickly. The problem is that often it kind of goes in curves and maybe there’s a great way to your goal basically for example.

 

I don’t do this anymore, but I used to use two different beelines instead of going the direct path by taking a dive at the waterfall, and it’s a lot faster honestly but for some reason I thought for a long time that it’s faster to use beelines because I guess they’re the fast-travel system. But they’re good only for certain routes and in many cases there are faster ways to reach your destination, because they don’t reach everything. Just the most important areas.

 

xWinG: Two things I noticed in speedrunning is when you are done with Screech – since we’re just talking about the fast-travel system – you either have the chance to go to the left, unlock the Beeline system, take a left curve with the Beeline and then curve to the right, there’s a loopty-loop where you stay in one screen for like 3 or 5 seconds and you end up in the village. Or, you can just go to the right and walk all the way and it’s actually faster to go up there.

 

The other one is if you are at the very top of the island, you also have a Beeline which goes all across to the left and all across to the right, a little bit below also in the middle of the map to the village. We have a skip called Town Skip which is a bit below the Beeline entrance and if you use that you take like half of the time, I would assume.

 

HaraladX: Yeah, it’s much faster. You can just drop into the village right away.

 

Pikastroff: Nice, okay! Additionally, do you think there’s sometimes possibilities that by using that system you might potentially skip over progress on potential goals, if that question makes any sense?

 

HaraladX: I mean, it has happened to me that I forgot spores in the randomizer for example because I use the quick-travel system instead of going the normal route but other than that I am not sure, actually.

 

xWinG: Yeah, what happened often to me lately, like 3 times in the last month I believe, is that there are 3 packages to deliver and if you have one of the packages with you, the Treek Package, the green one, you cannot talk to Harry in a specific area to get the spore from him. Lately it happened often to me that I have that package on me when I come to him. I don’t know how and why I keep doing it. It’s like, I pickup the Treek Package because it’s the best package, it gives you immediately a spore if you reach Treek, and then I’m thinking “hey, I can do this and I can do that” and I get off-route and I’m ending up in the intro area and I’m at Harry, and yeah, I cannot talk to him… Well, mistake was done!

 

Pikastroff: Yeah, I guess that sometimes there are some factors like that that you have to remember and sometimes when you’re in the heat of the action you just kind of forget about it. That happens!

 

xWinG: There are also things that a beginner might not know, like if you’ve never played randomizer before you definitely don’t know this fact that you need the Noisemaker to colour your ball. So, there are like 4 things where you need a specific colour on your ball and you are only able to colour it if you have the Noisemaker. That’s one of the biggest things that are mind blowing for new Yoku gamers!

 

Pikastroff: I see! So, when you’re looking at the goals on your card when you start a run, you’ve just got your bingo card in front of you… What are the kind of factors that make you think about which goals you want to go for and determine your route? I guess that answer could differ depending on whether you’re playing vanilla or randomizer. But yeah, what is that thought process, really?

 

HaraladX: Yeah I mean in the randomizer it’s really important not to pick goals where you need very specific items because then you can be stuck for really long. On vanilla, you know where all the items are so that’s not really affected, you just want to have the goals that don’t require much effort to finish, so you don’t want to have boss fights for example because they take long and they’re quite far across the map. That’s more the question on vanilla but on the randomizer it’s really a lot about not wanting to need a lot of items.

 

xWinG: When I get started with a vanilla bingo, I go through the entire board and mark what easier goals there are with a star. Then I have like twenty marks and from those I can make like my three best possible routes, depending on what to go for. Or if I go for a blackout I can do a better routing and stuff like that.

 

In randomizer I just mark while I’m playing all the time what is possible to do. It is possible in the beginning that I cannot mark anything because everything requires something but most of the time it’s like 3 or 5 goals that are for free, or something a bit more. If I get a minute  I might just mark the goals that are possible then. I then can approach to whatever I get in the randomizer.

 

Pikastroff: Nice! Ok, so something I’m curious to know about is regarding the bingo types in Yoku’s Island Express. In past Bingothons I believe there’s been like triple, there’s been blackout as well… And so, what do you think is the most fun type of bingo to play for Yoku’s Island Express? And are there any that you’d like to try out that you haven’t tried yet, perhaps?

 

xWinG: Blackout and Lockout for randomizer, definitely. I would not even think of a single or a triple bingo in randomizer because it’s so random which goals you can do. It can just happen that it takes forever, that you get your first bingo like one and a half hours or so into it. And yeah, blackout is always an average of like two hours or so, so you see the difference, 1h30 for a single and you finish the entire board in 2 hours!

 

Lockout is just fun if you play the game against someone else and you are doing different routes, like one is going to the Dive Cave and gets the glow moths hatched and the other one is trying something else at that time.

 

In vanilla, you can just play anything I believe because you know where everything is. I like to play more single bingo and triple bingos in vanilla but actually I don’t like to play vanilla Yoku so much… Probably once a month or twice a month!

 

HaraladX: Yeah, I think vanilla is a kind of once in a while thing, but definitely for vanilla the goals are very predictable I guess so you can really go for certain rows or columns and I’d say on vanilla you can really play anything and it will be fun! But in the randomizer, the problem is it’s really hard to predict which goals you are going to get in what order and so you can’t really say “ok, I’m going for this row specifically” and the single bingo or something just doesn’t really that much sense in the randomizer, so as xWing said usually single bingo is not even that much faster than a blackout. Obviously it is quite a lot faster but it is surprisingly closer if you look at the overall time and I say blackout is a good choice for randomizer or just a lockout where you just have to reach the 13 goals, that’s also definitely really nice.

 

Pikastroff: That makes sense, yeah! The unpredictability of randomizer would limit the opportunities for certain categories, it wouldn’t even make sense. Obviously since most Bingothon runs so far have been one-player runs we haven’t seen much lockout, but I’d be curious to see a lockout match for it, that must be quite interesting!

 

xWinG: We’ll get that one time, in Bingothon, don’t worry! I always ask when Bingothon is coming in the speedrun and randomizer Discord and sadly most of the time people don’t have the time at that point.

 

HaraladX: Yeah, it’s a bit hard to predict when I have time for me. I really would like to play one, definitely!

 

Pikastroff: Alright, hopefully some time in the future then, there will be an opportunity for it!

 

xWinG: We’ll get it done, don’t worry!

 

Pikastroff: Nice! So, up next, that’s a topic you already kind of covered so I guess it will be kind of a recap and if you want to have any more points about it you can also go ahead and speak about them, but what would you say is the barrier for entry for people who are interested in picking up Yoku’s Island Express bingos? Have you got any advice for them? You already mentioned learning skips for example is definitely an important point, are there any other things you’d like to talk about?

 

xWinG: We have a list of all the goals on the Discord where we explain all the goals so that should help. If there are any other questions, just ask us! I mean, we made our goals, we know how they work and how you can trigger them as fast as possible.

 

HaraladX: We also have two different modes on the Bingosync website, one is with a little bit more elaborated titles and one is really short names with one or maybe three word bingo goals, so you can really quickly scan that one, but we also still have the easier version so it’s not too hard to understand.

 

xWinG: In the normal version you find on Bingosync it says like “Open 10 chests”, “Complete the Juicery” or “Open the Green Chest”, “Deliver Treek’s Package”, and it’s basically for the beginners to get into the goals because they explain in certain words what to do. In the simplified version we just cut it down to one or two words like “10 chests”, “Juicery”, “Sin”, “Quinbe”, “Treek”, so definitely go for the normal version if you are new to Yoku bingo.

 

Pikastroff: It’s a good idea actually to have multiple versions of the board where one has clearer definitions of the goals if that makes sense, which can help for those that may just be starting out. Because cards can be so small, you do want to generally have as least words as possible, but that can then make them harder to understand if you’re not familiar, but keeping that normal version as well as shortened version can indeed be a good help for beginners, that’s a cool idea!

 

xWinG: Yeah, and for people who already know the goals it’s way faster. Like, if you have to read “Complete the Juicery” it takes you obviously more time to read and understand what you have to do than if you just read “Juicery”. Yeah, I know, Juicery, damn! So that’s why we came up with the simplified version for the more advanced people.

 

Pikastroff: Yeah, that makes the whole thing more efficient!

 

So, do you think that ‘normal speedrunners’ could benefit from doing bingos in some way? I suppose that’s a topic that in a way already has been covered to some extent, but what do you think regarding runners who just don’t play bingo, is there anything they could learn from it?

 

HaraladX: Definitely if you compare normal vanilla speedruns for example it has more diverse gameplay, I guess, so it’s probably good for your mechanic skills so to say. I guess as xWinG already said no matter what you play in this game you’re always going to improve. Even if you’re having a break from speedrunning, if you just want to have some fun, it’s going to keep you skilled I guess, so you don’t lose your skill.

 

xWinG: Also, if you are going to play vanilla speedrunning – we have both vanilla and randomizer speedrunning – if you want to make your own route, you can adapt to what you learn in a bingo because a lot of skips are new and I believe there are only two or three other people that are trying to do longer runs, and they are using their own route, and they definitely learnt from the bingo.

 

Pikastroff: That’s always something interesting to think about. Something that I’ve often heard when talking about this particular topic is that bingos can help you for example learn backup strats when doing speedruns. You mentioned at the very beginning of this interview that this game was quite forgiving in general. So how much does that apply, then?

 

xWinG: In general, it’s always very forgiving. The most time you can lose to something is if you miss a skip and you lose like half a minute or a minute depending on which skip it is. If I misfire in a speedrun, I would lose like a minute or one and a half minutes depending on how fast I can make the backup. But most of the time, if you are in a pinball section and you miss a shot, you can just redo it in like 2 or 5 seconds.

 

HaraladX: I would say you need less backups than in other games. There’s obviously some parts where having a backup when something goes wrong is definitely good but usually in Yoku it’s less important than usual.

 

Pikastroff: Alright, so it’s still an element that’s present but not to the same extent than other games, then.

 

xWinG: Yes.

 

Pikastroff: Alright. So, how do you think the community can further support bingos?

 

HaraladX: We can always use feedback, obviously. I think the bingo is already really good but the best would probably be to just play the bingos. There’s not too many people who play the bingos and obviously if more people play them, more people can give opinions on the goals. I think there’s still a lot to improve so I think if people were to play bingos more we’d know more about what is good and what is bad.

 

xWinG: Yeah, back in the days I was the only one who played bingos. Then one or two people came and played them as well and gave some thoughts about what good goals are and what bad goals are. We came up with new goals and designed other goals differently. It developed every time a new bingo runner came, and then another left again because they have other things to do of course, and every time new people came and played the bingo we came up with new ideas. Haralad made like 15 new goals a few months ago which are really good in my opinion.

 

HaraladX: I haven’t been there since the beginning of bingos obviously and I’ve been working on the bingos definitely, and I think it can happen with other people too, that they just start working on the bingo.

 

xWinG: They are coming and just playing the bingo, and if they have a problem or a thought of a bingo, they tell us and we can adapt to that and change a bingo if we also have the same mind. If they tell us that a goal is bad, we think about that twice of course if it’s not a bad goal or stuff like that, but if they tell us the truth and we are also thinking it’s something bad we might change things.

 

Pikastroff: Yeah, that makes sense, just bringing in more external, newer perspectives from other people. That’s always something that can develop it further.

 

Have you guys got community events involving bingo?

 

xWinG: We could… We have not so far. I was thinking about a tournament, but a tournament with bingo would also be nice. We have just a few people, like 5,6, 7 people that are playing Yoku at the moment so it’s not that familiar for most people. If we get more players I’m definitely gonna go for a tournament.

 

Pikastroff: Alright so just with a few more people those things could happen?

 

HaraladX: Exactly.

 

Pikastroff: Alright, we’re soon going to arrive to the end but before we get to that, are there any anecdotes you’d like to share? It can just really be anything you feel like sharing, just any anecdotes that you feel is worth sharing really.

 

HaraladX: Yeah, there’s one story I remember. It’s really from the beginning when I started getting really invested into this game. I played, I think it was blackout in a randomizer bingo against xWinG, and I was really not that good back then so I didn’t really stand a chance to be honest. So I came up with a creative move, I guess… You could call it stupid because I went for a certain spore that’s really hard to get and it’s so hard that you usually save it up until the end. You really don’t want to do it and I went for that and it turned out to be really useful actually, I got quite ahead and in the end I was stuck at 23 or 24 bingo goals, and xWinG won anyway! It was one of the last spore he checked. He was so far behind but he came back and as I said I wasn’t really good back then, and he really did win in the end, I think that was quite funny! Also a good laugh when he got that one spore that’s really difficult and he realized what I had done. It was quite funny.

 

xWinG: Yeah, something like that happened quite a lot to me also back in the days when I started running overall. We made the bingo goals after one or two months after starting speedrunning, I played with Flintler and I played before and I cut off my run because it was bad. Then we started a race and somehow I got the title screen glitch. It’s a glitch where you use the file from before, that we know now but back in the days we did not know how it worked. I got that glitch and skipped by accident two spots, and one of the spots was the Noisemaker, the most important item in the game! I did not find the entire time because I skipped on accident the title screen and yeah, it took me forever to find it and I believe Flintler won that back in the days.

 

Another one with the mail was that in the end boss fight, we had to travel around the entire island again to fill all mailboxes! That was quite annoying and fun but yeah!

 

Also, I will mention that Haralad, me and Warsheep are in the credits of the game on the PC version because of the randomizer design!

 

Pikastroff: Actually, didn’t you show that off once? I remember in one of the Bingothon events I recall you had shown it off, now that I think about it.

 

xWinG: I think I did, yeah, but I really wanted to mention that!

 

Pikastroff: Yes indeed! It’s the time to show off! [Laughs] But yes, that is actually really cool. But yeah, nothing better than accidental skips, I love that one!

 

Do you guys have anything more you want to say before we move on to the end?

 

xWinG: Not from me.

 

HaraladX: I guess play more Yoku! [Laughs]

 

xWinG: Yeah, same for me!

 

HaraladX: We need more players! [Laughs]

 

xWinG: Only if Yoku gets more played can we get Yoku 2 someday!

 

HaraladX: Exactly!

 

Pikastroff: Alright, sounds good then! So, I was going to ask now do you have any final words, but I would assume those would be your final words?

 

xWinG: Also, you can join the Discord that you can find on Speedrun.com in the Yoku section. [Editor’s note: There is also a Yoku’s Island Express Randomizer-focused SRC page as well]

 

HaraladX: Yeah exactly. Join the Discord! Tell us what you have to tell and speedrun the game more! [Laughs]

 

xWinG: I’m always glad to help if there are any problems or if you want to learn something.

 

Pikastroff: Alright, well thank you so much to you both for participating in this interview! 

 

Do remember that if you are interested in participating yourself in a Beyond the Board you can contact either me or Floha258.

 

Thank you so much once again for this interview and we’ll be seeing you on the next Beyond the Board! Cheers!

 

xWinG: Bye!

 

—

 

And that is it for this month’s Beyond the Board! Do make sure to give a follow to both xWinG and HaraladX if you want to see more Yoku’s Island Express content, and of course, if you are interested in being featured on a future Beyond the Board, do be sure to contact either Pikastroff or Floha258 on our Discord server!

Thank you once again, we wish a happy Christmas to those that celebrate it, a Happy New Year a bit in advance, and we will see you later on another Beyond the Board!