Penny’s Big Breakaway Review: Playing With A Yo-Yo Never Felt Better!

Reviewed On: PS5
Also Available On: Nintendo Switch, Xbox Series, and PC
Price: $29.99 USD
Developer: Evening Star
Publisher: Private Division
Release Date: February 21, 2024

Please Note: A review code was provided by Private Division but does not influence the opinions in this review.

Private Division and Evening Star had announced this game back in Summer 2023 and last week during the Nintendo Direct Partner Showcase, they just went and shadow dropped Penny’s Big Breakaway. You may not know who Evening Star even is, but this is the team that crafted Sonic Mania back in 2017. They went and formed their own studio after the success of that game. This game has a lot to love within the adventure from its quirky characters, beautiful stages, awesome gameplay, and more. There are also some flaws that prevent it from being one of the best platformers of all time.

In this game, you are playing as Penny who auditions for Emperor Eddie… but something goes really wrong and your Yo-Yo companion ends up making a fool of Eddie by destroying his clothing. You are then marked as a felon and must go on a journey in order to avoid being captured by the guards. Throughout the story, you will meet others who either want to audition as well or who have worked for and/or with Eddie. None of them are happy to meet you at first, but once you win them over they help you with your adventure. The characters are all great, but the story as a whole wasn’t as exciting as it possibly could have been. Platformers don’t normally have a fantastic story as the gameplay in a platformer is much more important, and I am glad to say the gameplay is mostly terrific!

While the story may not be the best, that doesn’t mean it isn’t a fun game. Your goal is to go level by level and complete the different sections of the map to escape from the guards and eventually clear your name. To do this, you must go through eleven different worlds each offering a few levels that will take you to many different locations from beaches to mansions, to the edge of the world, and more. Your objective, since it is a 3D platformer, is to get to the end of each level with the highest amount of points possible. To do this, you need to perform tricks with your Yo-Yo, collect coins, avoid the penguin guards that will chase you, and more. You can go into the level with extra health, a copter that will help you if you fall off the edge, and other helpful items. At the end of each level, you complete a short QTE (quick time event) that rewards you with extra points as well. The game is very simple to pick up and play, but it definitely takes a bit of time to master.

Besides just doing tricks and completing the level, there are other optional things to do including collecting tokens and helping with dilemmas that are sprinkled over the levels. There are three of each per level that will reward you extra points at the end of the level if you choose to complete/collect them all. The dilemmas are pretty much always the same; rush to get an item to someone else, collect pieces of an item that is scattered through an area, destroy a certain number of objects, or do a set of tricks to get some points. Even though they’re repetitive, all of them felt slightly different as there are different obstacles that you have to overcome to complete them. As for the tokens, if you get enough of them, you can use them to unlock Star Globes. These Star Globes are even harder levels that will test your abilities with the Yo-Yo and how you use it.

So I have talked a lot about what you can do in a level from the optional activities, to other items you can take into the levels, combos, and more, but what does everything really play like? Well, here is an example of a speed run that I did for Level 7-2. Time attacks are available which you can choose to challenge a level and post a score for to compete with others. I don’t normally do those in games as I like to take my time with titles, but there are a few trophies in the game that require you to complete levels in a specific amount of time; however, these were actually pretty easy to get. I wanted to show how the game looks in motion and to show the art and music in motion!

The music for this game is an absolute delight to listen to. Tee Lopes and the rest of the audio team created an absolutely stunning soundtrack that never got old for me. Each of the different worlds and levels has a unique feel to the beauty of them. Some of the soundtrack is more up-tempo while others are more calming. Some have more of a techno feel, some have a jazz feel, some have rock & roll, and so many more different styles. Within these levels, when you get a lot of penguin guards chasing you, it makes the game feel very intense with its music changing mid-level while you are getting swarmed with enemies. When a game makes it so you never have to put on outside music while playing, it says a lot about the overall quality. The sound design of the characters and everything in the world felt terrific and made it feel alive, even outside of the music.

In terms of the art, Penny’s Big Breakaway excels at being an absolutely vibrant and colorful adventure. The model of Penny, the penguins, and all of the other characters popped out at you. Enemy variety is a bit weaker and the lack of a customizable color pallet for Penny were a few issues from my perspective but I understand there is only so much that can be done for the game. The levels themselves always had a terrific look with each world having a different style from the sandy beaches to the bright city, to the volcanoes or the darkness of space. The world always felt alive with their beautiful designs and none of them ever felt boring or not worth playing. I think the game’s look is one of the best qualities of the adventure.

The performance of the game was smooth as butter without any frame rate issues that made me fall off a ledge, break a combo, or get captured by the penguins. There was also no big pop-in that distracted me from the main parts of the level. There were pop-ins during some of the game, but they weren’t distracting to me as they were more in the background parts of the stages. Saying this though, there were a bunch of bugs that I came across during the 20 hours I put into the game getting the Platinum trophy.

Some of these include glitching through walls or floors, weird Yo-Yo actions like flinging me somewhere I didn’t tell it to, button presses sometimes not registering correctly, and more. Were any of these extremely game-breaking or made me want to put the game down? Absolutely not as I could just reset the level or combo. I did have a large issue once I beat level 11-4. I tried to finish the last Star Globe level I needed to, but the game would keep crashing for some unknown reason right before it registered I beat it. Tried a bunch of different things, and I got it to work after beating the final boss in the game, but it definitely was a bug for some reason that caused me to almost miss out on the Platinum trophy.

There are a couple of gripes that I personally have in the game and they really come down to the points needed to unlock the bonus gallery in levels. A bunch of the levels are 70,000+ points and in order to get that number, I found it wasn’t extremely plausible unless you do a bit of a combo grind. If I missed something somewhere, I’m sorry but I couldn’t find a way to get some of the required numbers without doing this. I had to get them by doing a four-button combo (X, X, Square, O) for a while to get a combo of 200, as this will net you a bunch of extra points once you reach the end of the level (20,000 to be exact). See an example of this below, and then add this process for a bunch of levels to unlock the postcard for that level.

The problem here is sometimes the buttons wouldn’t always register correctly so it occasionally broke my combo and I would have to start again. Other bonuses like completing the dilemmas the denizens will provide you with, getting the three tokens, money collected, busking perfectly, and more will help a lot with the points needed, but typically without a large combo bonus it was not enough. Time is also a bonus if you beat a level quickly enough, but it rewards you with so few points, that I found that it is better to not rush a level. I already said my other gripe was enemy variety and lack of color outfits for Penny, but eventually, those became very minor and not that big of a deal for me.

A brand new, high-quality, 3-D platformer game from a non-established IP isn’t the most common anymore and I think this game needs to get a bunch of attention. Sure, it doesn’t have the best story, there are some bugs, and the points system isn’t perfect, but there are so many amazing aspects that people shouldn’t overlook. The gameplay loop, the art, the stellar music, and the variety of the worlds all provide an amazing experience that I didn’t expect to enjoy as much as I did. Fans of platformers should not pass this game up whatsoever, and it deserves a lot of love from both fans and critics alike.

Review Score: 9/10