Yoshi's Woolly World devs discuss their approach to visuals

Coming from an EDGE interview with Nintendo producer Takashi Tezuka and executive producer Etsunobu Ebisu from Good-Feel...

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. With those previous titles, it was just that – an aesthetic – and didn’t really have much influence on the gameplay itself. - Tezuka

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! - Ebisu