Penny’s Big Breakaway

dogshít videogame

This game is flying very close to not being easily recommendable to people. In short, it feels unfinished when it comes to both its content and the large lack of polish. However, a lot of fun will still be had playing it and the amount of creativity on display makes it a worthwhile experience still for those who enjoy indie platformers. You play as Penny, a yo-yo performer who uses her yo-yo to move around in flashy ways. Your yo-yo is made sentient and magical and so is able to do a lot of interesting actions. The game is about playing through linear platforming levels while finding opportunities to gain and maintain your speed/flow all throughout. Your base movement speed and moveset without the yo-yo is not very fast or useful, so you are tasked with earning the ability to get through the level efficiently. How much fun you'll get out of the great gameplay here is dependent on your skill level. If you don't want to get too risky, then you'll generally engage with most of the plat...

The campaign is 12 hours long and my playtime is incorrect from playing offline on Steam Deck. This game can be really fun and flow-y, story is nothing special, character designs are cute, music is fantastic, but the game itself should have been better. I couldn't get over the poor depth perception persisting throughout the game. Precise jumps are always miserable from the vibrant composition of the worlds and I found them to be the absolute worst part of the game. Controls suck, especially on some of the abilities. Maybe that's intentional, but I never got used to them, especially the pepper ability. The acrobatic bars also have awful controls and I hated using them since they killed the flow of the game. This game also suffers from a lot of bugs, especially on the scripted sequences. I've had penny fly up into sky a few times during the first boss. Other times, nothing would happen or a key-trigger would be missing. Other times I clipped into terrain and had to restart ...

I cannot express how much I loathe this game. I reject it every cell of my body. But I finished it. I completed the main story campaign. It was miserable to play. I did not like it. And it frankly went on too long. This isn't much I can say other than that i did not enjoy this game but I will say the penguins were so pointless. I really don't know why the game needed such a silly gimmick. The controls were a pain. the Platforming was ridiculous. The WORST part were the scoring challenges where you you couldn't stop performing tricks or whatever. I had zero interest in completely those or many other challenges. So would I recommend this game? No. A resounding NO.

This is an awesome platformer and I hope more people give it a chance even with the big scary “mixed reviews” tag. It doesn’t play like most other jumpy games but that’s what makes it fun- the controls are real satisfying in a way that kinda likens to Mario Odyssey. It’s got a really great rhythm to it’s movements and trying to speedrun stages and find as many skips feels super rewarding without ever devolving into janky bullshit. And ofc Tee Lopes on the music means some of the tunes won’t get out of your head (shoutouts to the ice world’s theme that shit is good)

TL;DR: All of the makings for a break out platform, with none of the execution. The art style and music are great, the range of movies are engaging in theory, but none of them work together. This game gives the impression of speed and momentum via timers and time based challenges, as well as combos and combo based challenge, but none of the moves interact with each other well and are counterproductive to the perceived intention. Layer this with the fact that none of the level designs actually make good, cohesive use of the moveset.

It is unfortunately very unpolished, almost like an uncooked meal. The ingredients are there, but they're only room-temp so far. For what it is, it can be a bit of fun. Flipping and dashing around can feel good when you get the hang of it, and yet, I felt there were many things lacking in the moveset to make it work well. I could never consistently get the Ride function to work after performing a dash, which made going for big tricks tough and frustrating. Before getting into the bugs, I have one more personal issue, and that is clarity. The camera works by showing predetermined angles set in the levels, which can be fine, but it leaves a lot to be desired, such as being able to see where you're truly going. Unfortunately fixing a problem like this would be challenging since it seems the levels secrets are designed with being hidden by the camera in mind. I also feel like it should be much easier to tell where you'll land, as it's resulted in very annoying failures. The right stick c...

insanely fun platformer that emphasizes risk for reward. it's not perfect - the game's performance can occasionally dip, it has a few wall collision glitches, the story isn't very fleshed out (but that's not really the selling point of this game anyways), but it offers so much content in exchange to mitigate those issues. from the charming artstyle, graphics, momentum-based physics, movement and fun challenge courses, it's very clear that a lot of thought and passion was put out into Evening Star's debut game. I really hope to see a lot more amazing games from them extremely solid 8/10

Despite being fairly unpolished, this is one of the most fun games I've played in a while. It was frustrating to occasionally clip through a wall, or miss a jump because the camera was positioned awkwardly, or restart a level because I got stuck looping an animation, but while these bugs were certainly prevalent enough to test my patience, the core platforming mechanics are great. It turns out that a yo-yo can facilitate a really clever, unique, and satisfying moveset, and the level design demands its mastery. I don't think the game fully realized its potential for engaging and creative level hazards, but it succeeded as a platformer. It did not succeed with combat. Although its minimal, the moveset was designed for platforming, so boss fights were mundane or exceedingly easy for me. I also didn't know that I was going to fight one until I was already in the level, and I didn't even know who it would be. But this is not a technical problem with the fights, just the story. This also isn...

A short and sweet 3D platformer. As a big fan of the genre, I thoroughly enjoyed my time swinging around these big, open maps. Mastering Penny's mechanics, provides massive satisfaction, as she can go ridiculously fast if you earn that speed. The music is pretty solid and usually had me enjoying it as I bounced around the levels. Penny's Big Breakaway has collectibles, a scoring system, and little side-quests in each level. I believe it's really important to interact with these at your own pace, if at all. For example I completely ignored the scoring system, and the mini side-quests in each level, which the game doesn't punish you for, thankfully. Essentially, I'd just recommend not letting a sense of completionism entirely affect your first run through these levels. Overall, I'd say it's an 8/10. If you enjoy 3D platformers, I think you'll like it. Simple as that.