This game is fine and I think thats what disappoints me the most - I reaaaally wanted to like this game but I was bored by the back half of the game, mainly because the levels are pretty similar. They tend to mesh together so I was going through the motions and while they did get slightly more difficult, it still felt relatively safe. The mechanics are good enough, I liked the unique concept behind the yo-yo but the levels never really push you to “master” them, you can get by just taking your time. And for a game built around speed, there’s a lot of start-stopping so I didn’t feel an incentive to combo my movements. The side missions are pointless, as they’re the same 3-5 types of missions repeated over and over for every level. The art direction, character design, and soundtrack are fantastic though

Okay, I almost never review a game that I haven't completed but I have so many strong feelings about Penny's Big Breakaway from my time spent playing it that I really want to get down on paper while I'm thinking about them.

The first time I heard about the game was through the Nintendo Direct showcase, where it was advertised as an 'easy to learn but hard to master' 3d platform game. This is just close enough to being true to not be false advertising, but only just so.

I'll admit - I'm far from 'good' at these sort of games, but I've played through all of A Hat in Time, Super Mario 3D World, and I've also played the Sonic games Christian Whitehead was involved in.

However, I have the experience to say with confidence, that the game is in no way 'easy to learn'. The game gives you a 5 minute tutorial on 7 different abilities you can do for base level movement and expects you to have mastered them by the end of it. I game-overed at least 6 times in the first world, and while I'm normally lenient on games that ask a lot of the player, Penny is asking for too much.

Penny also suffers from a case of "who is this game for?"-syndrome. My best guess is that it's for the speed-running community, and people who have already played and beaten Penny's Big Breakaway.

If I tried to go fast (like the game is marketed), I'd game over because of the difficulty curve. If I tried to take it slow and safe, I might live and get through the level, but the game would constantly put sequences in my way that would say "Oh boy do this in 5 seconds and get a shiny thing! Go Go Go!".
No matter what I did, I felt like I was playing it wrong.

I'm not hyperbolizing on the time there either. The game will put dialog on screen saying you need to do something in 5 seconds, but by the time you're done reading the text, 3 seconds have passed and you don't even know what you're looking for. So you either replay the level out of frustration, or you just ignore all rewards and try to beat the level as best you can.

Fun fact: Did you know that while Penny is riding on top of her Yo-Yo that she can drift like in Mario-Kart if you press the trigger buttons? Well if you didn't, it's not your fault, because I only learned that she can do that when I went back and watched the Nintendo Direct trailer again. If they tell you that in game, I sure didn't get the message.

The ship boss was a complete mess and I basically had to shelve the game right then and there. On multiple different attempts the camera bugged out and put me 30 miles away from the action. On one attempt I was sent slowly ascending into the great beyond and had to reset. The speed boosts are finnicky as hell, and if you jump through them instead of riding through them you'll wipe out - it's extremely unintuitive.

But besides that, it's also just a poorly designed fight? Jumping up to the different sections of the ship was really weird - like you had JUST enough height to make the first jump from the lower deck to the middle, and then the pole vault doesn't even actually put you on the third floor of the ship. It just sends you adjacent to it? Like yeah I get it, I can just jump-roll out of it to get on top, but it doesn't feel right. It was buggy as hell and not a good look for any further content.

So at the end of my time with it I just got this feeling that the only way I was going to actually enjoy playing Penny's Big Breakaway --- was if I beat Penny's Big Breakaway first. That the only way to truly experience the game, was to already be a master at it, and honestly I just don't have the heart to push myself through 7 more worlds to find out what I'm missing. I might return to it later, but for now, play at your own risk - especially with the bugs.

Reasonably good platformer on the surface, was expecting more finesse from these creators, but a really good time. There's just too much holding it back including re-use of level design aspects, inconsistency in design and bugs, subpar bosses that feel like they haven't been playtested, and how it handles precise platforming.

What it absoluteky excells at is speedy momentum based gameplay which feels amazing when going fast and skipping huge chunks of the levels and their respectively suburflous and repetetive mechanics. More at the end, but here're my issues and likes I listed as I was playing the game through Story Mode.

Problems:
- Control feel is unnecessarily floaty and tanky
- Turning mid-air is absolutely horrible
- The movement doesn't have a ton of depth, you just have three moves: ride the yo-yo, swing on the yo-yo, and yo-yo dash, coupled with a double jump and wall jump and it doesn't go beyond that.
- Why does the spin attack have the most dreadful sound?
- Riding on the yo-yo feels absolutely horrible, it never turns how it should, especially with how tight some of the turns are demanded from the player.
- For such a nimble and acrobatic character, it feels wierd to have everything control with the difficulty of a bar of soap sliding around in the bathtub.
- QTE at the ending of each level, not a fan, could've been easily left out, they add nothing of value
- Bosses are uninteresting both character wise and gameplay wise. Not to mention janky and glitchy, one literally just locks you into position and if you happen to be caught in a specific spot, it'll just spawn a laser over you. And what the hell was the final boss even, it was over in one minute and you rode a low resolution flat PNG of the penguins, just dissapointing.
- Characters and themes feel inconsistent and half-hazardly slapped together. All the bosses are kind of just, nice to you after fighting them? Things could just be a little bit more tought out in that degree, Penny isn't all that likeable herself either.
- The yoyo moves can be sometimes inconsistent, especially when you initiate riding the yo-yo, I feel like half the time I won't start riding it immediately, losing the oddly placed tony hawk combo system.
- Anything that's not a flat platform and exactly the intended path will result in odd collisions or just straight up clipping through the floor
- Not a fan of the locked camera, or at least not how it was done, they could've picked a more isometric view, or zoomed out a little, but as it stands with how it is, coupled with the very bright and graphic art direction, depth perception is constantly an issue, and this is coming from someone who's favorite and most played genre is 3D movement games. Penny's shadow sometimes isn't visible as well which makes everything so much worse.
- The levels are gorgeous, but.. don't offer a lot of interesting gameplay scenarios? Everything plays out the same, sure there are power ups, but they're not largley interesting and just slightly amplify what you can already do, they don't change anything drastically or are intriguing to play around with.
- The game runs out of unique platforming mechanics and powerups by the half-way point, everything is just a mish mash of previously re-cycled elements. In most of the amazing and great platformers you would have mechanics that are unique to a world and are introduced, used, and then left behind to introduce something new in the next world to keep things fresh, not re-use it constantly every single time.
- Same goes for helping out all these worker dudes, they're dressed accordingly for the world, and what you're doing for them might look different, but it's all the same stuff over and over again; 1. Carry something without taking damage 2. Rack up a score. 3. Collect some goobers, 4 Go through a ring in time. Not a lot of gameplay is unique to the specific worlds.
- The theming of these level mechanics is also only consistent for a few worlds, and is very limited, mostly in the form of platforms that look and function a little different. Why wasn't there a freeze powerup in the ice world that froze platforms or water so you could jump over, or ride along a set of waves, or use it in a creative manner to help out the robots, or make ice cream or turn into a giant snowball? If anyone played Donkey Kong Tropical Freeze, there's a whole world that slowly takes you through the production of picking fruits, blending them, and making ice cream out of them for the boss at the end, it was such an engaging concept and I really wanted that kind of creativity and connectivity in the world design with this game. I would've preferred half the amount of levels if it meant more interesting and involved design choices.
- Some elements are only interactible with the yo-yo, some are not, it's really disorientating and inconsistent, I constantly wish I could grab powerups on the fly easily by riding through them, and I wish I could grab those special coins or ice creams with the yo-yo.
- When trying to grab the powerups mid air, it's incredibly inconsistent and you miss it half the time, it's not great since you have to stop abruptly, get the powerup and then go, which just disrupts the flow, again solved by just getting them by riding over them, this is especially annoying with the turbo powerup.
- After riding on some predetermined roller coaster-like elements; zip lines, wierd ticket things, cannons, or springs, it's inredibly difficult, or sometimes impossible to chain into a yo-yo ride to keep the combo going making it really frustrating when you're forced out of your control to finish your combo.
- Why the HECK aren't there any loops.

What I do like:
- Cute penguins and fantastic colour design and level aesthetics throughout the entire game. I seriously love the penguins so much.
- The fact that the penguins set up various traps to catch you is such a fun little thing, although not much of an obsactle. I wish they expanded on it more and more, it'd be great if Penny was just assaulted with tanks, attack helicopters, giant penguin robots at the end. Like she caused so much chaos she's now the top most wanted criminal in the whole kingdom and instead of the bosses being fellow performers that try to brutally murder you for no real reason and then flip their mood to a kind friend like some bipolar degenerates, they could've been trying to get Penny because the King placed a bounty on her head and whoever gets her imprisoned will get the title of the royal performer. The setup could've been simpler and better, I honestly don't even know what the hell the character's deal is because I lost interest by the third boss.
- The game has a ton of charm, despite some wierd stuff it really sells that genesis Nights into Dreams/Sonic Sega Saturn aesthetic.
- I LOVE the alternative control scheme with the stick, that was a fantastic decision, it takes a while to get used to, but feels amazing once you get it down.
- Whilst tanky and janky in smaller movements, the way this game preserves momentum overall is absolutely wonderful, and the moves flow together seamlessly.
- When the game is good and at its best, is when you replay the levels and realise just how much freedom you have in approaching and skipping all the boring janky minute platforming. The best part of the game is not playing the game, and thats honestly really telling how unpolished things feel when playing through the courses the way the level designers set up.
- The music is absolutely amazing and I get Balearic Birds from Tee Lopes to listen to on repeat.

Time Attack:

After a rather huge initial letdown in what I was expecting to be one of my favorite games this year, I decided to give the game another shot and maybe see how I can poke and prod at the momentum mechanics and potentially find any more interesting level skips.
And my god this game is absolutely cracked on time attack, there's none of the annoying features that the game has, no QTE, no bosses, no side missions for NPC's, half the issues I had with this game are GONE. All that's there is speed and momentum. Half the time I don't know if I'm breaking the game or doing shortcuts the way the developers intented, but I figured out a way to instantly get a large amount of speed, as well as scale fucking cliffs with this moveset. Plus the game doesn't have (none that I have managed to find) invisible walls, if you can manage it, you're free to do it. World's Edge is just unreal to play now. You can skip all the annoying puzzles, most of the annoying powerups, the annoying platforming, you're going mach speed through it all. Quite honestly I feel the same like that first time when I experienced the reveal in The Witness, or discovered some crazy shit in Outer Wilds, a whole nother game inside a game. Once you figure out the skips the levels are more interesting, more challenging, and they really push the momentum engine to it's limits. This is the real game, not whatever Story Mode is trying to do.

Unfortunately the game is still glitchy and inconsistent, the ledge grab is extremely picky with what ledges it'll attach to, I constantly get stuck on wierd geometry that screw up a run. You can jump on the small red lights on the walls in Zaphara and Penny will go crazy, I even got her to run on walls, I couldn't really replicate the glitch again, but I managed to get a nice view of the level. It's not perfect, but the way to enjoy this game to its fullest is go nuts on Time Attack after rushing through the Story Mode. And that's how I upped this from 3 to 4 stars.

I'm really surprised how negative the reviews are for this here because I had a great time with this. I'll chalk it up to the game being admittedly a little janky, but not to the extent, IMO, being described here.

I also think the pedigree of the game makes it seem like it's going to inherently be a "speedy" platformer when it's maybe not. Like there's definitely the capacity to go fast here, and it was built with that in mind, but in a lot of cases you're poking around looking for stuff or doing little tasks for NPCs or whatever, and the movement mechanics have a little bit of a learning curve that has to be overcome before you can really move quickly, so maybe some people are feeling like they got bait-and-switched? But once you have your head wrapped around and are flying thru using the full bag of tricks it's a ton of fun.

I will say that after a couple days of sustained play I began to find the aesthetic and music in the game kind of grating and the sequence in the last boss where you're riding up the ramp has a whirling camera that makes the correct inputs unclear and lead to a frustrating number of failures. Putting all that aside, this is a short sweet game with movement mechanics satisfying enough that I know I'll come back and have some fun blasting through now and again and that's I was looking for.

this is some hella charming shit, but I can’t help but feel like it was playtested by only 1 person. The platforming mechanics just aren’t clicking for me, some moves straight up don’t register when and how you expect them to. levels are structured for speedrunning, but 50% of the time the big segments don’t hit correctly and/or u run into walls because of a lack of direction.

Other than that, a charming technical achievement made by a small indie team on their own fucking game engine, word.

Edit: I’m 8 worlds into the game now and nah this shit is infuriating, too many bugs and inconsistencies with the platforming. Some bosses are also just completely unfair (the pool table and magnet ones). Putting this down until they fix it, Christ.

Look I'm an old head. I was playing video games before you were even a sperm in your fathers cock. And I just feel like developers are ignoring us old guys. One day you will be like me, forgotten by society. Left to rot in a shitty old folks home with the rest of the dead.

Visually Penny's Big Breakaway is 10/10 for me. The environments, worlds, characters, FX, UI, all look great, but this is not a game you just look at, you also have to play it. And that's the rough part. I don't know if I've played a game where I've thought "Why is this designed like this?" or "Why is it doing that?" so much. The physics are inconsistent, the player controller is inconsistent, glitching into walls/getting stuck happens fairly often. And overall it just feels bad to play, especially if you are a 3D platformer connoisseur such as myself. And 3 moves are mapped to 1 button. Look guys I've got arthritis! I can't be doing this shit. You got a controller with a bamillion buttons on it!! Use them!!

You play as the nimble and quick character "Penny", however Penny does not feel nimble nor quick, Penny is slow to speed up, and quick to slow down. Gaining momentum is a battle, and the world usually doesn't give you enough space to do so. The levels are very Mario 3D world-esque, so now imagine sonic trying to run around in those levels. Touching a wall or static object in the world will annoyingly cause Penny to lose all momentum. To try and play this game like a 3D Mario game is almost certainly a mistake, the game becomes very slow and tedious. It's clear it is meant to be played like sonic. It is a sonic style player moveset, slowed down. I hate sonic. ( how sonic controls, not sonic himself ). The player controller feels like playing a 3D platformer made in Dreams (the game). (bad).

If you are a sonic fan ( the derogatory type ), you'll probably enjoy this.

Sorry Penny, it looks like this breakaway wasn't so big after all. I agree with the citizens in the game, Penny SHOULD be locked up in dungeon and left to rot. I'm not a monster. I'm just ahead of the curve. This city deserves a better class of 3D platformer.

Old head out

This Review was sponsored by SEGA.

This, uh, really does not feel great to rate 2.5 stars. (bumped it up to 3.5, see last 4 paragraphs for why) Especially since when Evening Star first announced Penny to the world, I was really rooting for them to knock things out of the park, and prove that they don't need to rely on Sega to deliver a fantastic game. Booting this up for the first time, I thought I was in for a slam dunk, like there was no way this would be anything else but a good time. The reality is... somewhere in-between. After playing it, I'm still rooting for Evening Star, but mostly in the sense of hoping that they fix what's currently a very promising, but frankly jank game.

There are technical issues. In the first world, I got softlocked when jumping onto a roof. Thankfully, you can restart from checkpoints. Then there were two other times where I clipped straight through a wall. The first time, it was really amusing because it was actually helpful as a shortcut towards an optional collectible. The other time, it just led to an unfair death. The boss with the ship setpiece was all sorts of wonky, the camera would keep snapping away from Penny onto some random part of the level, leaving me in disarray regarding my current position. At the end of one level, Penny decided to do her victory dance while floating in mid-air.

I'm not usually the type of person that attracts bugs and glitches, because I don't try that hard to experiment in the games I play. Generally, I do my best to follow what they want me to do. So, the fact I was able to run into bugs this easily - not to mention seeing reports of other people having the same issues - makes me wonder if shadowdropping the game this month was a good idea.

Then there's the controls. So, this one seems way more subjective, and it's possible you might not feel these problems as I did. The most generous way to describe playing Penny is "technical." The less generous description would be "Takes some heavy getting used to." Speaking of heavy, the least generous term is heavy. In contrast to what the trailers made me think, getting Penny to soar through these levels was far from an easy task, and has led me to fumble an embarrassing amount of jumps. I counted eight. Eight instances of me just walking off an edge before I was able to press the jump button, and that's when I began to question if I'm starting to get too old for video games. But, no, I'm fairly certain that there's just something slightly off here, but slight enough that I could never quite get used to it.

Having to double tap the attack button for the dash, instead of just giving it its own button, is one questionable example. Sometimes, the dash would not activate if my double tap was too rapid, requiring me to adjust to a slightly more drawn-out timing. I would keep forgetting to do this however, and would keep falling to my death as a result. There were also moments where a whole bunch of enemies ganged up on me, and I would panic by mashing the attack button in order to deter them away. Of course, this would then activate the dash, and cause me to careen off a cliff. The physics on the dash itself feel too overtuned, using it to attempt and reach a platform would often cause me to overshoot it, and because Penny's turning can be heavy, it would be not enough to course-correct my mistake.

By far the worst of it is the rolling move, the one where you get on your yo-yo and can use downhill slopes to gain a ton of momentum and launch off ramps. Again, the trailers made this move look so fun, but as I got to try it myself, I've learned that for some ungodly reason, your directional controls are completely locked during the first 2-3 seconds of using this move. It's only after that, you can start kiiinda moving left and right, but forget about making any sharp turns. The rolling movement is only good for making slight adjustments on linear paths, but otherwise feels really stiff to use, less like a car and more like trying to steer a tank as it tumbles down a hill.

I've tested both the keyboard and the controller, and while controller does feel a little better, it does not flip the entire game feel upside down, and the problems still persist. It's hard to learn, and hard to master. I believe there desperately needs to be a patch to retune the game feel, as what's on offer right now is good enough for a casual run, but would make me rip my hair out if I was trying to perfect it.

And I really do think that a couple touchs-up is all this game needs to rocket into stardom. Have you seen those visuals? Holy shit, dude. You look at the visual design of the menu and think "Oh, whoever made the Sonic Mania menus definitely worked on this", and then you go into the game, and everything's so charming, and colorful, and the main character is so expressive! And the MUSIC, man, the game's hiding its best track for one of the later stages, and I already know I'm gonna be blasting this on loop for the next several weeks.

And I know I've been super harsh on the gameplay, but I can feel it, there's something really special here on those couple instances when the game IS working in your favor. It can be great to swing from one platform to the next, to soar at high speeds, to find little shortcuts and alternate pathways. The combo system in itself looks like a whole different ballpark of skill which I haven't even scratched the surface on, and I would love, LOVE to be able to fully appreciate these things if-!

Fuck, I walked off the edge again.

Update: I opted to do some post-game cleanup, and began to get to gripes with the combo system, thus engaging with the levels in more involved ways by aiming for the high scores. I also took some time to watch a developer utilize the combo system, and was taught that the best way to use the roll move, is to toggle it off by jumping, then readjust your direction, and toggle it back on while still in mid-air. This allows for a significantly higher degree of maneuverability than I previously thought was possible.

Don't get me wrong, I still hold the view that the game's physics could take some fixing up, they're still too finicky for my liking, and at times, feel either unresponsive, or too strict. However, if you're gonna play the game, I would highly advise engaging with the combo system and taking the time to learn as much of it as possible before you proceed through the rest of the game, as this is where I have found the most amount of fun to be had. Doing a 2nd run, the moment I obtained a high score after several tries, pumped my fists and thought "HAHA, YES!!!", that's when I realized "Oh, shit, so it IS fun!" It's just that the learning curve feels higher than it really should, and it took me a 2nd playthrough to really understand it. That's not good. Some people aren't gonna stick around for that long to figure this out. Then again, some people have clicked with the controls far more immediately than others did, so clearly, your mileage may vary.

Is it worth 30 dollars? Ehhh, I'm not so sure about that, I would've rather paid 20 myself. Is it good, though? Sure, but I do think that... it could've handled teaching the player its mechanics a lot better. But if you were to take the time to learn these mechanics yourself, and practice up, I think you could get quite a lot out of this otherwise short game. Give it a try! Perhaps you'll end up feeling proud of the scars it gives you.

Update 2: 5 attempts at getting a high score messed up due to collision bugs. Alright, seriously. This needs work.