After eating an enemy, Yoshi will produce a small puff of air instead of making eggs.

At the time of its release, most critics thought of Yoshi's Universal Gravitation as a mediocre title.

1UP.com's Jeremy Parish called the tilt controls "graceless and clumsy" and the character animations "choppy", concluding that it was a "mediocre" and "boring" game.

GameSpot's Justin Calvert thought the tilting worked alright and enjoyed the graphics and difficulty curve, but overall found the game to be "repetitive and disappointingly short".

Game Informer enjoyed the tilt sensing, calling it a "neat" and "inventive" mechanic that "breathe[d] new life into the [platformer] genre", but was disappointed by the level designs, which were mostly "pretty standard fare.