Yoshi and the Mysterious Book Has a Game-Breaking Bug — Here’s How to Avoid It

Well, this is the last thing any Switch 2 owner wanted to hear after picking up one of the console’s most charming early releases. Yoshi and the Mysterious Book, the delightful new platformer that launched on May 21, 2026, has a confirmed game-breaking bug — and Nintendo of Japan went public with a warning to let players know exactly what triggers it before more people walk into it blind.

If you’re currently playing through the game or planning to, read this before you get to Chapter 4. The good news is that the bug has a very specific set of steps that trigger it, and as long as you know what to avoid, you should be completely fine. The patch is already in the works.

What Is the Bug and How Does It Happen?

Nintendo’s customer support account on X put out the official warning after receiving a wave of reports from players who found themselves completely unable to progress. Here’s the exact sequence that causes the lockout:

• You reach Chapter 4 and unlock the Index feature inside Mr. E
• You skip Mr. E’s tutorial explanation of the Index
• You then start Bewilder Bird research without completing the Index tutorial first
• You end that research session without making any major discoveries
• You return to the Index

At that point, the game locks you into the Index tutorial screen with no way to leave. You can’t back out, you can’t progress — you’re just stuck. Permanently, until a patch fixes it.

The honest silver lining here is that the bug hits relatively early in the game. Chapter 4 isn’t that deep in, so players who have been hit by this won’t have to retrace dozens of hours of progress if they decide to start fresh rather than wait for the patch. Still, having to restart at all is annoying, especially in a game that’s specifically designed around gradual discovery and building out your encyclopedia research at your own pace.

How to Avoid the Bug Right Now

This one is pretty straightforward — just don’t skip Mr. E’s tutorial explanations. When the game introduces the Index feature in Chapter 4 and Mr. E starts walking you through it, sit through the explanation rather than mashing past it. Once you’ve heard him out and properly gone through the Index tutorial, the bug cannot trigger. Everything after that plays out normally.

It’s also worth holding off on starting any Bewilder Bird research until you’ve fully completed the Index tutorial segment. Don’t jump ahead into research before the game has properly walked you through the mechanic — that’s the combination that causes the crash in the progression system.

Nintendo has specifically recommended that players listen to all of Mr. E’s tutorial explanations as they come up throughout the game, just to avoid running into any similar edge cases while the patch is in development.

What If You’re Already Stuck?

If you’re reading this after already triggering the bug — first of all, rough luck, and Nintendo has apologized for the inconvenience. The company has confirmed that a patch is currently in development and will be released in the near future. Once it’s live, players already impacted will be able to continue their save file normally.

If you genuinely can’t wait and want to keep playing right now, the workaround is creating a secondary user profile on your Switch 2 and starting a brand new game under that profile. Since the bug hits early in Chapter 4 and the game’s opening is relatively quick to replay, most players should be able to get back up to speed without burning too much time. It’s not a perfect solution, but it lets you keep playing instead of staring at a locked menu screen.

Nintendo hasn’t given a specific date for the patch yet, but the company tends to move fairly quickly on fixes for issues this visible, especially when they’re generating a noticeable volume of support tickets.

This Isn’t the First Switch 2 Bug Nintendo Has Had to Deal With

Yoshi and the Mysterious Book joins a short but notable list of Switch 2 titles that have needed emergency attention since the console launched. Super Smash Bros. Ultimate ran into a nasty disconnect issue where players entering online matches under specific conditions involving Mii Fighters and crossplay between the original Switch and Switch 2 would get booted from their sessions — something Nintendo and Bandai Namco scrambled to patch. That one’s been fixed.

There was also Pokémon XD: Gale of Darkness, the Nintendo Switch Online GameCube title, which was crashing frequently on Switch 2 hardware — sometimes right in the middle of long play sessions, sending players back significant distances in their progress. That’s also been resolved since.

None of this is unusual for a console in its early months. New hardware has compatibility quirks, games sometimes ship with edge cases the QA team didn’t catch, and the whole ecosystem is still getting its legs under it. What matters is that Nintendo is responding to these reports quickly and transparently rather than going quiet on them. The public warning about the Yoshi bug, issued directly through the customer support account and giving players the exact steps to reproduce or avoid the issue, is actually pretty responsible handling of the situation.

What’s the Game Actually Like Otherwise?

It’d be a shame if this bug became the whole conversation around Yoshi and the Mysterious Book, because the game itself has been receiving genuinely warm reviews since launch. The premise is pure Nintendo charm — a sentient encyclopedia named Mr. E falls from the sky onto the Yoshis’ island, and he’s lost all the information about the creatures that live in his pages during the fall. Yoshi literally dives into Mr. E’s pages to find and research these creatures, using their unique traits and abilities to solve puzzles and get through levels.

It’s a laid-back, cozy platformer that sits comfortably in the tradition of Yoshi’s Crafted World and Yoshi’s Woolly World — games that aren’t trying to stress you out, just give you something delightful to spend time with. The research mechanic, which is directly connected to the buggy Index feature, is central to how the game builds out over time, letting you piece together information about each creature you encounter across chapters.

For Switch 2 players who want something to fill the time while waiting on the patch, there’s no shortage of options on the platform right now. And if you’re fully caught up on your gaming backlog, Neverness to Everness is dropping its Version 1.1 update on June 3 with two new characters and a whole new island to explore. Over on the FPS side, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4 just revealed its destructible riot shield ahead of its October launch, and Xbox CEO Asha Sharma issued a public apology over the PS5 logo showcase controversy that had the whole gaming community talking this week. And for mobile players, Pokémon GO’s GO Fest 2026 Mega Mewtwo Unity Attack details are live if you’re prepping for the event.

The Bottom Line

If you haven’t hit Chapter 4 yet in Yoshi and the Mysterious Book — don’t skip Mr. E’s tutorials, don’t start Bewilder Bird research before completing the Index tutorial, and you’ll be completely fine. The bug is very specific in what it needs to trigger, which is probably why it took about a week post-launch before Nintendo’s support inbox filled up enough to prompt a public warning.

If you’re already stuck, hang tight. The patch is coming, and when it does, your save should be recoverable. Nintendo has committed to advising affected players on next steps once the fix is deployed. For a bug this disruptive, a quick turnaround on the patch is the least they can do — and based on how they’ve handled similar issues with this console so far, expect a relatively fast resolution.