Folks, I think ‘Penny’s Big Breakaway’ is something special. A new platforming IP by ‘Sonic Mania’ developer Evening Star and published by 2K’s Private Division, this take on momentum-focused platforming is thoughtful and a lot of fun—even besides the few thorns that prick at Penny and her amazing acrobat slash yo-yo abilities.
String your yoyo and avoid the whiplash, because it’s time for Penny’s Big Breakaway.
A Flick of the Wrist
Our star of the show, Penny, finds herself in a fair bit of trouble when her newly-acquired yo-yo, a part of the cosmics, ends up eating the pants of King Eddie in front of all his peoples. What was supposed to be her rise to stardom through an audition to impress said king now has Penny on the lam, running through many a stage while helping out the townsfolk and collection coins. The lam part is a full-on mechanic, as throughout all these levels you’ll have adorable yet very annoying penguins charge at you enmasse as they try to apprehend you. Stop moving and you’re bird food.
Thankfully, Penny is as acrobatic in gameplay as she is in cutscene. Our girl of many bright colours can zip, slide, and ride her cosmic yoyo into and away from enemies and hazards as needed. Unlike a lot of platformers, however, Penny’s movements are heavily influenced by her prior movement and overall momentum. You’ll need to build up speed to really get going and you’ll also need to learn how to maneuver around the world with her yoyo if you wanna stay on the level.
So let me put this out first: Penny’s character controller along with the game’s physics are some of the best I’ve seen in 3D platformers in years. It is incredibly fun to zip and slide around levels once you figure out Penny’s movements and her limits. Even better, once you figure out the perfect formula to resetting her available moves, you’ll explode past hazards with no sweat—the only challenge remaining is just how well you memorise a stage to clear it as fast as possible while collecting and completing tasks that random citizens have to anchor onto you.
Each level is a straight shot to the goal. Alternating paths will catch your falls ‘n mistakes, which helps each level feel inviting and fun to explore. Slide off a half-pipe at top speed and then explode off into another direction with the press of Penny’s yoyo’s attack button, which can either be the “X” button or double-flicking the right analog stick in the direction of your choice. Yes, this does mean that you have no camera control, but that’s not a bad thing—all levels are built in such a way that the player’s viewport is clear no matter their angle of attack. And if you do get stuck behind an object, the game will show place an overlay over Penny to help you get back on screen. Now mind, I do take issue with a lack of camera control, but I’ll get to that in a bit.
Once you have the attacks down, you’re ready to help Penny ride forth and help denizens of what really looks like a cuter Death Egg. A lot of the time, you’ll be asked to collect objects or deliver something without damage on the way to your next checkpoint. Some of these are timed, some of them are not. But they add a bit of spice to level segments, and more importantly highlight that the game always wants you on the move. If it’s not the penguins, it’s countdowns or reverting platforms that’ll get you KO’d quick. But Penny isn’t a difficult game and you are free to respawn at checkpoints even after being bonk’d at the expense of your level’s high score.
Last but not least is the final bout, where you ideally want to land Penny on top of a three-story busker. This multicoloured cake-looking stage is the equivalent of landing right at the top of the flag podium in a Mario game—depending on where you land, you’ll need to pull off a sequence of quick time events to secure a high score. They aren’t hard to do lest your left stick is drifting (I found out the hard way) and you don’t need them to clear a level. But solid mechanics aside, Penny is very much centered on scoring as high as you can and there’s not much else in the way of collectibles to fill that void.
Finnicky String
Penny’s Big Breakaway is very much influenced by the 3D platformers of yore, and that of which includes its share of baggage. If the gameplay doesn’t make that immediately obvious, then its visuals will. With my limited SEGA experience, I put Penny’s visual style somewhere between an early arcade ‘Virtua Fighter’ and ‘NiGHTS: Into Dreams’. Flat shading, simple geometric shapes (as simple as they can be now), and bright colours dot the landscape. The world further into the background is rendered in an almost dreamlike state as well, which more or less is a remnant of that era.
Personally I like it! (the law zone was disappointing, though. Lava? Really?) And character animations are also very close to Naughty Dogs’ older platformers, which makes me a little more biased. The music is a bit of a bop, but some zones can become a bit grating as there’s only one track that covers said zones and its sublevels. A couple of visual and physics-based bugs caused a number of grating sound effects to be played on loop quite a few times, so try and keep your volume slider at the ready.
Now sometimes these visuals get in the way of my platforming and I’m not really keen on that. The aforementioned on-rails camera works for the most part, but I found myself getting caught between a rock and a hard place at times and overshot a lot more jumps than I’d have liked to. Expect to miss the top busker quite a bit especially if you’re racing through levels for a best time. It would’ve been nice to have a first-person view button to cover for a lack of camera control.
However, the bigger stinger here is one jumping mechanic that’ll break all your momentum: the swinging bar. These horizontal bars ignore all momentum you’ve built up, instead forcing you to angle a landing awkwardly with your left stick. Rather than being able to jump freely at the highest point of your swing, you’re forced to slow down to make jumps (and sometimes, the angle measurement gets confused!). Even by the end of my first run, I still wasn’t used to this and I feel like it slows down Penny’s level progression unnecessarily. No other latch mechanic forces you to angle your jump besides this one and it’d be better off gone.
But these knots aren’t enough to halt Penny’s Big Breakaway’s momentum. From solid level design and an extremely well-done character controller, this game is an easy recommendation for the momentum-favoured platformer player. ∎
Penny's Big Breakaway
Played on
Xbox Series X
PROS
- Great retro-inspired presentation.
- Solid level design that covers for your skill (and lack thereof).
- Fantastic character controller and game physics.
CONS
- Camera can become a nuisance.
- Momentum-breaking swinging bar sucks.
- Some funny bugs here 'n there.
