Early impressions are definitely positive; the game controls very nicely, and the gameplay seems simple and fun so far. In the first part of the stage, you draw platforms to navigate Baby Mario to the surface without losing all of his balloons. You draw circles around enemies to turn them into coins which you can then drag into Mario's path, and you basically try to pick up as many coins as you can on the way down. Once you're down, Yoshi nabs Mario and it turns into an auto-scrolling side-scroller, with a similar goal of guiding Yoshi through the stage. Here you make paths and encircle enemies as well, but you can also jump (tap Yoshi), hover (tap him again mid-jump) and hurl eggs anywhere on the screen (simply tap the screen in the direction you want to throw). Yoshi has a limited number of eggs (my stock was 25 last I checked), but you can replenish them by eating pieces of fruit scattered along the way.
I haven't read the manual yet, but it seems like the two main gameplay modes are "Score Attack," where you gather points from beating enemies and collecting coins to go for a high score, and "Endless," where the goal is to get as far as you can without losing a life (think Mr. Driller). I'm not sure how you progress from stage to stage in either mode -- after finishing the first stage in Score Attack, my only option was to replay it or go back to the title screen -- but I suppose we'll figure that out soon enough.
isn't it 3am or 6am by you now?
