Penny’s Big Breakaway (Switch)

Crafting a satisfying movement system is a solid way of starting work on a 3D platformer. If you can make the movement enjoyable before you even factor in level design and goals, you’ve already taken a big step in winning over the hearts of players. However, Penny’s Big Breakaway takes a bit of a risk, in that its yo-yo based jumping and movement does have some entertaining utility and flexibility, but it also has a learning curve, and when other parts of the design make it a bit hard to see what it’s going for at first, this first independent adventure from many of the developers of the superb Sonic Mania actually needs some time for its movement system to become that sort of inherently satisfying system that keeps you playing just to use it more.

Penny’s Big Breakaway takes place in the colorful world of Macaroon where its ruler Emperor Eddie hosts a fantastic gala for all his subjects to attend each year. For quite a few years though it’s been a stagnant affair since only he performs at it, but when he opens auditions for new entertainment, Penny sees her chance to make it big. The little performer’s yo-yo tricks are a little unrefined, but along the way to the auditions she finds a cosmic string that brings her yo-yo to life, letting her do incredible things like ride it like a bike or make it float in mid-air so she can swing from it. Unfortunately, one of this yo-yo’s tricks is also to chew up the emperor’s clothes, her audition quickly going awry and Eddie ordering his penguin guards to apprehend her. Penny ends up on the run, trying to escape capture while also seeing if she can clear her name, her breakaway taking her all over Macaroon as she meets a few colorful characters who might stand in her way or help her out.

Penny’s big trick for getting around the platforming levels of Penny’s Big Breakaway is her range of yo-yo techniques. She has a double jump for simple maneuvering, but then you can throw the yo-yo out for a few extra options. Double press your attack button and Penny will launch herself in that direction you looked. Throw your yo-yo beneath your feet and you can ride atop it, able to build up incredible speed and even skate over surfaces like water and lava if you can maintain a healthy speed. You can even throw the yo-yo out midair and then freeze it in place, swinging from the string in the same way you can use grapple points at other locations. There is a certain rhythm to Penny’s movements though, a frantic button mash likely to fling you in the wrong direction, and to ride the yo-yo properly, you need to make sure you’re not too high above the ground before hopping aboard. You can start to learn specific tricks like suspending the yo-yo over a ledge so Penny will pull herself up onto it, and when movement starts to become second nature, you can move around with incredible finesse and speed. Even things early on like the delayed lock-on realize their potential once you get the pacing down, players not accidentally latching onto objects or hitting containers when trying to do moves since you need to wait that half-second for an object to become possible to accurately throw your yo-yo at. Many levels provide places to let you transition between moves fluidly, ramps and other tools like trampolines giving you ways to keep a movement combo going, the game even scoring you on how many tricks you can string together with a piece of concept art being your reward if you can hit a level’s score goal.

Coming to grips with the movement system pays off when you’re free to explore its range, and when you’re cleanly moving through an area, you can tell that your speed and fluidity is a result of your understanding of the momentum and technique chaining, especially since as naturally as levels try to assist the movement style, they also test you by putting in things that can slow you down if you slip up. However, while having some enemies and tricky platform placement make sense and ask you to really get the most out of things like the midair swing or yo-yo ride, one of the most common repeating elements of the game and in fact the first enemies you ever contend with feels like a pretty bad fit for this style of play. Emperor Eddie’s penguin patrol don’t hurt Penny when they make contact with her, they only latch on, and if enough grab on, she’ll be arrested, something that works similarly to death in that it throws you back to a checkpoint with one chunk of your four piece life bar now gone. Penguins always come in a large bunch that chase after you, but you’re not actually meant to fight them. You do have a yo-yo twirl around your body that seems like it would be a good fit for taking them out and you can even use the right control stick to fire your yo-yo in the exact desired direction, but penguins can only be defeated with very specific maneuvers like the double jump, and even then it only takes out a penguin or two at a time. This seems to be because you’re not actually meant to stand and fight the penguins, you want to outrun them, but when you’re coming to grips with how the game is even played in those early stages, it can end up frustrating with how hard taking out a penguin group can be.

There are eventually new dangers that will take away a chunk of your life instead of doing the capture trick penguins attempt and they are generally better handled, it much easier to understand you should leap over fire bars while enemies like the living marionettes are just taken out with a quick yo-yo strike instead of just getting knocked away a bit like penguins would be. Most of the time, forward progress will be your goal though, meaning you can try to outrun penguins without missing much, but then Penny’s Big Breakaway gets a bit weird again when it comes to the relationship with its fast-moving techniques and elements of its game design. Most stages outside of boss battles in Penny’s Big Breakaway have three major things to focus on in addition to simply beating the level. The first ties to the points mentioned earlier, this feeling like the most optional task since the rewards are looks at development materials and you’ll get better at movement the more you play so you can come back and more easily hit the score benchmarks. However, levels also have three Dilemmas and three Show Pieces. The Show Pieces are large floating medals hidden in the levels, sometimes in areas off the beaten path you can spot out of the corner of your eye, giving you a little navigational challenge or something extra to do than rush to the end. Other times though, the Show Pieces will require you to slow down and scour for some odd placements, it fairly easy to become anxious you’re missing one if you continue to quickly through the levels. Show Pieces are the most useful collectible to boot, unlocking a series of devoted challenge levels that are short but sweet tests based around one strong gimmick. It’s a bit hard to zoom through levels like the level geometry and your techniques could let you do because of the Show Pieces asking for a closer eye, but they do at least give you a reason to stop and consider levels some more, and it’s not like you’re usually moving at such a breakneck pace that you would miss the more conspicuous side roads.

Dilemmas are the more hit and miss element truthfully. A resident of the area you find yourself in will request your help when you approach, and for the most part, these can be nice little diversions. A character might ask you to break a bunch of nearby containers, take some time to try and earn a high scoring combo with your moves, or collect some items in a brief platforming gauntlet. A pretty good example of an effective one takes place in an ice level where a bunch of items are scattered across the ice, the player needing to carefully maneuver around since spotlights nearby will unleash penguins should you slip into their sights. Your movement abilities are tested well, the ground not Penny’s ideal way to travel much of the time, so a mastery of aerial movement plus accommodating the moving spotlights gives you a brief engaging challenge before you’re back to hopping your way towards the level’s end stage where you can put on a brief performance for extra points. However, some Dilemmas are time-based and activate the moment you approach, the player not even sure what they’re doing yet and losing precious time as they figure it out. Even when explained, sometimes you don’t know enough about what lies ahead, meaning you can’t really clear it in the often unusually short timeframe allotted. Should you fail the challenge, the only way to repeat the Dilemma is to die and go back to the last checkpoint to trigger it again. It’s an unusually sloppy and inconvenient approach to optional goals, but while Dilemmas are marked down for your level completion stats, you don’t technically need to do them, although funnily enough the Dilemma designs get better as they go on as you encounter less moments of being blindsided with timed challenges and tasks start being either easy enough to clear quickly or serve as actual solid platforming skill tests.

Penny’s Big Breakaway ends up needing a bit of time to find itself in the same way you need to figure out how it works, but it’s not overly rough despite the rare glitch. In fact, while it is possible for you to sometimes to find yourself clipping into an object, it’s almost always in your favor, Penny sometimes saved by being pulled into the object instead of bouncing off its edge. One time I did require a full level restart after getting truly stuck in an object, but for an already rare enough occurrence, it often is the kind of glitch that goes right for you instead of causing trouble. Instead, you’ll start to get more levels with different gimmicks and designs, Penny heading to places like the electric sands of Zaphara, the wave pools of Bubblin, or the mysterious cosmic library that serves as one of your few breaks from the penguin patrols. Power-ups can briefly give you useful options like flying through the air or smashing things apart with a big burger, although the timers could have been made a bit longer as the game again perhaps overestimates how speedily you will take things. Boss battles cap off a few worlds, many of which will have their difficulty defined by how well you can move, some like a battle atop a magic pool table requiring a new aiming mechanic while others like a giant penguin robot are more about using your regular skills for high stakes dodging. Most boss fights won’t trouble you much and can be surprisingly easy if you have a good hang of your yo-yo tricks, there being some enjoyment in realizing you’ve become skilled enough to trivialize a danger and clear it so rapidly. The small cast of characters can be colorful and fun, there are actually a lot of civilians who will make a quick comment as you pass by if you want to learn even more about the world, but there’s a decent enough air of mystery around your living yo-yo and Emperor Eddie’s apparent past to make the scenes interesting when they’re being a bit more than cute interactions.

One area of the game that undoubtedly succeeds without qualification though is the excellent soundtrack from Tee Lopes. While the game’s circus atmosphere can lead to some tunes that are a bit too bouncy or contain a bit of strange instrumentation, much of the time, the tracks can quickly get stuck in your head and have strong enough beats that you almost want to dance. Some areas are elevated just by having such catchy music playing along the way, and when you’re moving seamlessly through a level with such strong tracks backing your action, you can get into a thrilling flow state that makes you wish you had understood the game’s systems sooner to embrace that feeling more often. If you do find the game too difficult, you can collect a currency scattered pretty liberally around levels and spend them on things like temporary extra life chunks, some protection from penguin arrest, or a bail out if you fall out of a level, although if you’re going for Dilemmas these might not help you as much as you’d like since they get in the way of a quick death restart. The currency isn’t really able to be spent on anything else besides such help though, so you can either ignore them if you don’t care for the extra points they provide in a level or splurge on those assisting items since you don’t need to worry about saving them up. Getting better at the movement system would be ideal, but it doesn’t hurt to have this almost forgettable system for a bit of assistance which can even help if you want to go back in and search for things like the Show Pieces later instead of on the first run.

THE VERDICT: Penny’s Big Breakaway feels like it’s still figuring out a few things about its own design. It has an excellent movement system with a wonderful soundtrack and once you get deeper into the game, everything definitely clicks, but that’s mostly because the game starts to move more and more away from missteps like its reliance on the penguin guards or Dilemmas that don’t feel like they account for how you approach them. You start to get much better at moving around more challenging levels where you want to combo and earn points just because doing so feels great, and when the levels play into things right, you will find an enjoyable and colorful romp despite the learning period not being the best handled at the start.

And so, I give Penny’s Big Breakaway for Nintendo Switch…

A GOOD rating. Even at its roughest, Penny’s Big Breakaway doesn’t really dip below Okay. The penguins are a problem to be sure, it possibly better to have them more easily capture you or not even be traditional enemies you can harm in any way besides shaking them off. That way, the game could better communicate they’re meant to be avoided or outrun, combat not really a big factor in this adventure with most other enemies being quickly dispatched and bosses often movement tests before you take your opening to strike. Penny’s Big Breakaway works very well when its focused on trying to string together moves to build momentum, maintain speed, and be ready to pop over platforms and dangers, and having a few moments to slow down doesn’t necessarily hurt this. When a Show Piece or Dilemma shifts the goals a bit for a moment, it’s nice to have an element focused more on things like precise maneuvering or figuring out a small but busy area. Trying to earn concept art for point totals at a level’s end can be a nice extra goal to shoot for, although it would be preferred if the game told you in advance the target score, it again feeling like Penny’s Big Breakaway doesn’t always understand its component parts the best, even the Time Attack mode more about online leaderboards with no developer times to better gauge yourself against.

A timed challenge is fine if you know what you’re getting into, but some Dilemmas just throw it at you and you don’t have an easy way to retry. You can have excellent clean movement, then hit a wave pool in an odd way and end up flying off in an unexpected manner. You won’t be able to avoid a little roughness, but perhaps why they stand out as much as they do is because of how nice things feel when they’re running smoothly. You always get the feeling you could be moving in some helpful way, a growing understanding of your skills and when to use them letting you overcome obstacles in a way that can feel like a breeze but wouldn’t have been so easy if you hadn’t honed your mastery to get to that point. It’s why bosses can be enjoyable even when they’re not able to hold a candle to you. The reduction in difficulty is a reward and the movement still has enough to it that it’s entertaining to engage with it as you overcome the obstacles that failed to slow your roll.

Penny’s Big Breakaway requires a short learning period to get to grips with, it thankfully likely to click before the first world’s end so you have ten more plus the bonus levels to handle with your burgeoning yo-yo skills. However, it also feels like Penny’s Big Breakaway underwent its own learning period, some ideas hit upon during development left in despite not being as conducive to the movement system and play as ideas that thankfully become more abundant the deeper in you get. A follow-up could avoid some of the ideas like the penguins, an enemy that sounds sort of reasonable in a speedy game but doesn’t really gel with it because their impact is almost purely negative. Penny wasn’t the cleanest performer before she got the cosmic string though, and Penny’s Big Breakaway needed a little time to find itself too, the game quickly hitting on a much cleaner flow that feels good to go along with.