Penny’s Big Breakaway is a great game buried under a litany of conflicing design choices. I’m going to get those out of the way first because there’s a lot of originality and fun to be had underneath the lack of polish.
A recurring issue early on in my playthrough was falling off platforms with destructible cans on them. I instinctively mashed Y to break the cans, only to dash off the edge of the platform. That’s because whenever Y is pressed twice in quick succession, Penny will dash. Platforms with cans close to the edge were the only places I consistently dashed off a platform. This was so bad I got into a habit of rhythmically tapping Y to break these cans without dashing, something that could have been avoided if the cans were removed or if the dash had its own button. I’m undecided on which option I would prefer, as it didn’t take me that long to get accustomed to the controls.
What I can say for certain is the control options are antiquated as hell. Only two button layouts, one of which pointlessly removes button actions from the other. The absence of an option to remap actions to different buttons is a HUGE oversight because of how unique Penny’s toolkit is. The fact Evening Star didn’t add more control options, but did spend a month patching in a “performance mode” on Switch that doesn’t even allow for consistent 60 FPS is absolutely inexcusable.
Collision detection can be wonky. I hear it was much worse before patch 1.2, but I still clipped through level geometry over half a dozen times during my playthrough. The camera actually works well when speedrunning these levels, as it always points in the direction you need to go. Occassionally, however, it pulls itself back far enough that judging depth is unnecessarily difficult, which isn’t helped by Penny’s drop shadow only appearing when you’re close to the ground.
Exploring is another mixed bag. If you forget to collect something and want to backtrack, you’ll have to do it without being able to see where you’re going. The d-pad or right stick only allow for about 30° of camera rotation in either direction. Not once did I find a use for these half-assed camera controls. Many levels also have wide-open sections that suggest secrets around every corner, but are revealed to be barren. While this makes sense for a limited camera, I have to wonder why all this extra space was added in the first place? Not being rewarded for your curiosity discourages exploration for the side quest NPCs and hexagon tokens (Star Coins), which isn’t fair because exploration is sometimes required to find them. In fact, if coins had more utility beyond assist items, they could have been placed throughout these open sections to justify their size.
The busker bonuses are stupid. I haven’t met a single person who likes QTEs in a platformer, so why they are here is something I will never understand. Even if you somehow don’t mind these, Evening Star decided to use a diamond icon for the Switch face buttons (A,B,X,Y). If you’re playing with Joy-Cons like me, it’s easy to mistake that with the d-pad buttons since they share the same layout. To make things even more confusing, the d-pad buttons can be used for the analog stick inputs. What they should’ve done instead is specify the face button prompts, or better yet, removed these quick-time events and just gave out a score bonus based on how high you landed on the pedestal. lt wasn’t long before I was intentionally flunking most of these bonuses so I could get a move-on.
That brings me to my final issue of Penny’s Big Breakaway: the awful scoring system. When starting out, I was consistently falling way short of the target score. At first, I chalked this up to poor play. Then I played the third Star Globe level. Near the end I accidentally threw the yo-yo at a nearby obstacle. It split into smaller pieces that proceeded to collide with each other and it generated a huge score bonus. I ended up bombing the busker bonus afterwards, but still came incredibly close to the target score. I tried the level again, this time breaking as many large obstacles as possible, and I ended up annihilating my goal. That got me thinking about how I acquired combo points in previous levels simply by chaining Penny’s moves together. During my playthrough, I wasn’t concerned with finishing the level as quickly as possible because I wanted to complete every side quest and find every hexagon token. I went back to 1-1 to see if I could grind the necessary point amount by simply dashing, swinging, double jumping, and rolling around at the beginning of the level. Once I got to the end and beat the target score, I shook my head in disbelief. To score high in Penny’s Big Breakaway, a momentum-based platformer, you are actually discouraged from building speed in favor of monotonously repeating the same move combos you will be executing throughout the whole game. On top of that, the levels never tell you what the score target is until the ending fanfare. The target score doesn’t even show up on the select screen, even if you have beaten the level. As such, I implore anyone interested in chasing these to Google them ahead of time so you only have to play the levels once. It’s immensely frustrating because the levels actually do allow for high mobility and completing all of the side content in a single run. If they went full Pizza Tower and scored you based on how many tokens collected, side quests completed, and final clear time instead of how many tricks you performed, this would be a fantastic scoring system. All of the puzzle pieces are here, but Evening Star neglected to put them together.
Wow, those are some heavy criticisms, so what exactly makes it worth playing despite all that? I’m glad you asked!
The best part of Penny’s Big Breakaway is the moveset. Penny doesn’t control like other platforming mascots. She can dash, spin in the air, swing on the yo-yo like a grappling hook, and roll forward like a pinball. All of these moves can be used once in the air before landing and preserve forward momentum. Dashing for a quick burst of speed so you can follow it up with a carefully-timed swing to hurl Penny forward, then spin in the air for additional distance, and finally carry all that momentum into a roll should rank among gaming’s best jump combos. You really feel like the trapeze artist Penny is shown to be in the intro cutscene. Undoubtedly the most distinct implementation of physics-based movement in a 3D platformer since Sonic Adventure.
Backing up this movement is extremely solid level design. Outside of a few disruptive gimmicks like pull switches, golf balls, and slippery ice, it’s abundantly clear Evening Star spent a lot of time ensuring that speedrunning these levels would be a blast. I can’t say I recall a lot of levels individually, but neither were there any I outright disliked. One of my favorite aspects of each level is the ramps. Like the classic Sonic games, they create a natural transition between platforming challenges while also providing opportunities for experienced players to gain considerable height for speedrunning and reaching certain secrets. The unlockable Star Globe levels were also fun. These short gauntlets push level gimmicks much further than the main story, to the point I wouldn’t have minded if the whole game was like that. They feel similar to the secret courses in Mario Sunshine. There’s even a few mechanics borrowed from Galaxy to great effect, like the dash pepper, boulder roll, and helicopter spin. The music is also good, though there should have been more of it. I got sick of hearing the same track 3-4 times in a row during most worlds. Tee Lopes’ work on Sonic Mania proves he has great sound sensibilities, so it’s a pity he hardly got to stretch that muscle for this project.
Evening Star appears to have put most of their effort in the places where it matters, as this is a very original product. Expecting this to be similar to Sonic just because the designers got their big break with Mania would be an insult to their talent. The quirky movement and consistent level design is a combo rarely achieved in 3D platformers. It breaks my heart that some design elements feel at odds with one another, which is why I can’t quite place it in the pantheon of all-time greats. Still, this is a well above average game. On top of nailing the most important elements of the genre, it carves out its own niche in the process, in 3D no less! For that, it gets my personal recommendation.
A recurring issue early on in my playthrough was falling off platforms with destructible cans on them. I instinctively mashed Y to break the cans, only to dash off the edge of the platform. That’s because whenever Y is pressed twice in quick succession, Penny will dash. Platforms with cans close to the edge were the only places I consistently dashed off a platform. This was so bad I got into a habit of rhythmically tapping Y to break these cans without dashing, something that could have been avoided if the cans were removed or if the dash had its own button. I’m undecided on which option I would prefer, as it didn’t take me that long to get accustomed to the controls.
What I can say for certain is the control options are antiquated as hell. Only two button layouts, one of which pointlessly removes button actions from the other. The absence of an option to remap actions to different buttons is a HUGE oversight because of how unique Penny’s toolkit is. The fact Evening Star didn’t add more control options, but did spend a month patching in a “performance mode” on Switch that doesn’t even allow for consistent 60 FPS is absolutely inexcusable.
Collision detection can be wonky. I hear it was much worse before patch 1.2, but I still clipped through level geometry over half a dozen times during my playthrough. The camera actually works well when speedrunning these levels, as it always points in the direction you need to go. Occassionally, however, it pulls itself back far enough that judging depth is unnecessarily difficult, which isn’t helped by Penny’s drop shadow only appearing when you’re close to the ground.
Exploring is another mixed bag. If you forget to collect something and want to backtrack, you’ll have to do it without being able to see where you’re going. The d-pad or right stick only allow for about 30° of camera rotation in either direction. Not once did I find a use for these half-assed camera controls. Many levels also have wide-open sections that suggest secrets around every corner, but are revealed to be barren. While this makes sense for a limited camera, I have to wonder why all this extra space was added in the first place? Not being rewarded for your curiosity discourages exploration for the side quest NPCs and hexagon tokens (Star Coins), which isn’t fair because exploration is sometimes required to find them. In fact, if coins had more utility beyond assist items, they could have been placed throughout these open sections to justify their size.
The busker bonuses are stupid. I haven’t met a single person who likes QTEs in a platformer, so why they are here is something I will never understand. Even if you somehow don’t mind these, Evening Star decided to use a diamond icon for the Switch face buttons (A,B,X,Y). If you’re playing with Joy-Cons like me, it’s easy to mistake that with the d-pad buttons since they share the same layout. To make things even more confusing, the d-pad buttons can be used for the analog stick inputs. What they should’ve done instead is specify the face button prompts, or better yet, removed these quick-time events and just gave out a score bonus based on how high you landed on the pedestal. lt wasn’t long before I was intentionally flunking most of these bonuses so I could get a move-on.
That brings me to my final issue of Penny’s Big Breakaway: the awful scoring system. When starting out, I was consistently falling way short of the target score. At first, I chalked this up to poor play. Then I played the third Star Globe level. Near the end I accidentally threw the yo-yo at a nearby obstacle. It split into smaller pieces that proceeded to collide with each other and it generated a huge score bonus. I ended up bombing the busker bonus afterwards, but still came incredibly close to the target score. I tried the level again, this time breaking as many large obstacles as possible, and I ended up annihilating my goal. That got me thinking about how I acquired combo points in previous levels simply by chaining Penny’s moves together. During my playthrough, I wasn’t concerned with finishing the level as quickly as possible because I wanted to complete every side quest and find every hexagon token. I went back to 1-1 to see if I could grind the necessary point amount by simply dashing, swinging, double jumping, and rolling around at the beginning of the level. Once I got to the end and beat the target score, I shook my head in disbelief. To score high in Penny’s Big Breakaway, a momentum-based platformer, you are actually discouraged from building speed in favor of monotonously repeating the same move combos you will be executing throughout the whole game. On top of that, the levels never tell you what the score target is until the ending fanfare. The target score doesn’t even show up on the select screen, even if you have beaten the level. As such, I implore anyone interested in chasing these to Google them ahead of time so you only have to play the levels once. It’s immensely frustrating because the levels actually do allow for high mobility and completing all of the side content in a single run. If they went full Pizza Tower and scored you based on how many tokens collected, side quests completed, and final clear time instead of how many tricks you performed, this would be a fantastic scoring system. All of the puzzle pieces are here, but Evening Star neglected to put them together.
Wow, those are some heavy criticisms, so what exactly makes it worth playing despite all that? I’m glad you asked!
The best part of Penny’s Big Breakaway is the moveset. Penny doesn’t control like other platforming mascots. She can dash, spin in the air, swing on the yo-yo like a grappling hook, and roll forward like a pinball. All of these moves can be used once in the air before landing and preserve forward momentum. Dashing for a quick burst of speed so you can follow it up with a carefully-timed swing to hurl Penny forward, then spin in the air for additional distance, and finally carry all that momentum into a roll should rank among gaming’s best jump combos. You really feel like the trapeze artist Penny is shown to be in the intro cutscene. Undoubtedly the most distinct implementation of physics-based movement in a 3D platformer since Sonic Adventure.
Backing up this movement is extremely solid level design. Outside of a few disruptive gimmicks like pull switches, golf balls, and slippery ice, it’s abundantly clear Evening Star spent a lot of time ensuring that speedrunning these levels would be a blast. I can’t say I recall a lot of levels individually, but neither were there any I outright disliked. One of my favorite aspects of each level is the ramps. Like the classic Sonic games, they create a natural transition between platforming challenges while also providing opportunities for experienced players to gain considerable height for speedrunning and reaching certain secrets. The unlockable Star Globe levels were also fun. These short gauntlets push level gimmicks much further than the main story, to the point I wouldn’t have minded if the whole game was like that. They feel similar to the secret courses in Mario Sunshine. There’s even a few mechanics borrowed from Galaxy to great effect, like the dash pepper, boulder roll, and helicopter spin. The music is also good, though there should have been more of it. I got sick of hearing the same track 3-4 times in a row during most worlds. Tee Lopes’ work on Sonic Mania proves he has great sound sensibilities, so it’s a pity he hardly got to stretch that muscle for this project.
Evening Star appears to have put most of their effort in the places where it matters, as this is a very original product. Expecting this to be similar to Sonic just because the designers got their big break with Mania would be an insult to their talent. The quirky movement and consistent level design is a combo rarely achieved in 3D platformers. It breaks my heart that some design elements feel at odds with one another, which is why I can’t quite place it in the pantheon of all-time greats. Still, this is a well above average game. On top of nailing the most important elements of the genre, it carves out its own niche in the process, in 3D no less! For that, it gets my personal recommendation.