Man this game owned. I love silly video game ass video games. Fun movement that takes some time to master, insanely gorgeous art with creative and unique level themes, wonderful and catchy ost, fun level design, and some neat bosses (except for the first Sumo Eddie boss that one was way too easy and kind of nothing lol) overall just a game full of whimsy that makes you happy while you're playing!

More specifically on the gameplay, I found the control to feel a bit awkward at first but once you learn it, it's wonderful! There's a solid selection of moves for Penny to use, and the game makes you feel like you're in total control and you've earned your speed once you get the hang of things. I can see the initial resistance of the control being a turn off for some people but it does a great job of feeling really rewarding if you take the time to learn it. It's helped by some fun level design that facilitates that movement, the StarGlobes especially were a ton of fun and I really wish there were more of those and they were a bit longer. They got pretty wacky with the gimmicks and felt like really satisfying little challenge rooms.

I have a couple of complaints but none of them are much more than small personal things. I didn't love the missions in the levels. They weren't all that interesting and it's like 4/5 mission archetypes they reuse throughout the whole game. I don't think the game would really lose out on much removing these and instead doing 1 baseball glove alternate path per level or adding an extra collectible or two because those were pretty fun to find. It's pretty easy to ignore the missions, and it won't be much of a problem on replays just something I felt could have been omitted entirely. My other big thing is that I feel like they give up on gimmicks a bit too quick and levels within the same world generally blend together a little bit. None of them are bad by any means, like I said before it's solid level design all around but I wish instead of swapping gimmicks around they ramped world gimmicks up more in subsequent levels. It felt like things like the Motorbike or Floating Yo-Yo upgrades had so much more potential than what was used! The StarGlobes do help with this a little bit but again I wish there were more of those and they were a bit long. It's not necessarily a bad thing for my major complaint level design wise being give me more of your fun gimmicks but it feels like a bit of missed potential. On the technical side it ran pretty flawlessly for me but there were a few bugs and minor annoyances. Not being able to pick up powerups by driving into them was annoying, and my yo-yo would just go through powerups when I tried to grab them a few times which was annoying. I also clipped through walls a couple times but it never really led to my death just caught me a bit off guard.

It's wildly impressive to me that this is Evening Star's first project as a new studio, I know it's a lot of experienced people in the gaming space but it's still challenging to start a new studio and make a pretty wildly different game than what they're known for and they killed it! I was super happy to support this game on launch and really can't wait to see what they work on next. I would love a Penny's 2 where they can hone in on what worked and make an even better 3D platformer but as far as this one goes it was a wonderful time and I'm glad my faith in this team wasn't misplaced! Highly recommend!