Dear Christian Whitehead,

Never stop being a legend.

Sincerely,
Everyone

ok now give them the rayman IP

STEAM DECK EXPERIENCE SO FAR:

Amazing on Steam Deck. It's still early days, but the game runs at locked 90fps on my OLED model so far. Main menu and hand-drawn cutscenes are forced to 16:9, but all gameplay and in-game cutscenes are 16:10 and fill the entire screen. No HDR support, but looks nice and vibrant anyways. Looks and controls feel very fluid. I did feel some haptic feedback happening as well. Settings are very basic, really just a slider for draw distance, and a toggle for vsync, tripple buffering, and anti-aliasing, but you can max it out and no dips in performance. Feels very polished so far. Excited to experience the rest of the game.

holy crap the movement in this game is something else

I somehow managed to avoid any significant lack of polish moments described in other reviews and had a pretty fun time overall.

You can combo your way through an entire level without touching the ground if you're sick at this game. I am not... But if you like looking stylish while swinging and rolling your way through a candy-coated dreamscape, this is the game for you.
Smooth controls, a camera you don't have to fight and I've been happily playing this on my Steam Deck this morning.

10/10, would be absolutely bodied by a penguin onslaught again.

While I recommend this game, I'll say it is equal parts one of the most fun platforms I've experienced and parts one of the most frustrating games to try to play well with the systems that dictate your skills.

Pros

Music: Plain and simple just amazing, Tee Lopes and Sean Bialo legitimately knocked it out of the park. Some of these songs themes I could have on loop for days.

Gameplay: Penny's moveset is versatile, with yoyo ride's, yoyo dashes, and yoyo slings all being able to be intertwined with each other to allow the player to basically approach any obstacle the way they want to. Combining this with the fact the game has amazing momentum and physics that make it so you not only have tons of tools to use, but using them well has you BLASTING thru level set pieces.

Level Design: Penny level design is at it's core fueled towards momentum based platforming and it shows. With a lot of set pieces like half pipes and slopes leading to the player getting big air and standard platforming mixed in that usually works alongside the slope play, the level design is overall more of a positive than a negative.

Neutral:

Story: The characters are cute and inoffensive, at least for me, but the story is about what you expect for a 3d platformer sadly. Just a bunch of characters that get one note scenes and then back to 4-5 levels before another one note scene.

Cons:

Bosses: Look, these aren't sonic boss tedium bad, but they are so nothing I feel it has to be a negative. Most of them over no challenge nor do they feel all that engaging.

Jankiness/Controls: I don't really know if it was one or the other, but I combined both. The game has a big issue with both inputs being dropped seemingly with no rhyme or reason along with overall jankiness making it worse. A lot of times, whether it be from leaving a set piece like a zipline or penny interacting oddly with a small scenery object, you will just not get inputs you should be getting (being able to shoot out your yoyo but not dash despite not using it up, or penny tumbling with ABSOLUTELY no ability to do any inputs). This leads into issues with the score and combo system that I'll go over in below.

Side Objectives: I really don't get the idea behind them. They feel to go completely against the core gameplay of keeping your flow and combo going. A few are fine and are very easy to keep the gameplay tempo up (simply getting a certain combo score or just picking up collectables/rings in the upcoming area), but a majority require you to pick up and carry an item/use the yoyo to do a task. THESE objectives 90% of the time either force you to end your combo or can lead to an easy combo ♥♥♥♥ up if you decide to take part and make up a majority of them and I ended up just not doing them halfway through as they just ruined the game for me whenever I tried to interact with them at all

Scoring System: By far my biggest gripe. The scoring system to me was the biggest incentive when doing levels as otherwise, tackling them was just getting from A to B. However, halfway through I just stopped because both the requirements and the jank/controls led to me getting frustrated attempting it. Because side objects led to drop combos, I found that I wanted to avoid them and just try to go for long combos for points. However, this had it's own issues:

- some levels legit had me far below the score requirement, likely due to side objectives being likely mandatory for the run.
- even when going for long combos, the aforementioned jankiness whether it be not being able to do maneuvers i should be able to from eaten inputs or janky set pieces could stop my combos at any point as they felt frequent enough to be a deterent
- combos being dropped because a single penguin grabs you (which DOES NOT impact you in any way, you will keep going like nothing happened) or hitting a hazard (which just straight up ends the combo AND gives you no points)

that end up adding up to the scoring system being this frustrating perfectionist gamestyle that I just didn't enjoy dealing with. I'm not in the mood to find out which levels I can just attempt to do one long combo and which the points from side objectives are REQUIRED. It really sucks because this could've been the best part of the game, but for me the frustration made it one of the worsts

Verdict:

Despite all that ranting and the fact it's seemingly way longer than the pros, I still can't say I wouldn't recommend the game as I'm only super critical because the parts I enjoyed were so good and wished it had more time in the oven. For a casual player, the whimsical and energetic music along with the momentum based 3d platforming add up to an incredible package and, for a competitive player, you have the time attack and for people that don't mind it, the score system. I really hope Evening Star tries to work upon this formula and finetune it as this gameplay style has the potential to push out one of the best games ever created.

Love letter to old fun game design. Was worried they wouldn't be able to follow up mania on their own ip. This game is absolutely wonderful.

i'm kinda torn on whether or not to recommend this game. i tolerated it enough to finish it, and i wouldn't really say i hated my time with it. a certain type of person is really going to love this game a lot. but at the same time, i don't think i'll ever want to play it again
the movement in this game feels fresh and unique, and it's admirable how much unique writing can be found throughout the levels. the soundtrack is also pretty solid, even if there aren't any especially amazing tracks. but it doesn't feel like that care was extended to any other part of it. level design is extremely bland, with samey platforming challenges that feel like they were designed to be skipped over. visuals are fine but kind of uninspired, with a lot of environments feeling very copy-paste. boss battles also kind of suck, even when they're actually working correctly. most of this game's design isn't strictly bad, but almost everything feels poorly considered and half-hearted, like they didn't care to flesh the game out beyond its movement mechanics and haphazardly built a game around them
but the thing is, those movement mechanics *are* fun. the reason i was able to finish the game in the first place is because it's a lot of fun to build momentum and perform stunts with penny's unique moveset. therefore, i think anyone who enjoys 3D platformers would probably get a lot out of this game. the real thing that keeps me from recommending this game, at least for now, is the astounding lack of polish. there are bugs *everywhere*, with collision issues basically being inevitable in any given playthrough. bosses often have unique mechanics that straight up don't work, and it's easy to lose health over physics goofs that are straight up out of your control. for reference, i played this game at launch, and i would struggle to even call it a finished game in the state it launched in. i've heard they've been rolling out patches for it recently, and that's great to hear, but having played the entire game when it was like that just left a rancid taste in my mouth
there's plenty to like in penny's big breakaway, but i would strongly advise at least waiting for a sale before picking it up. some interesting mechanics and nice music aren't worth paying $30 for a buggy and mostly hollow experience

The first Yo-Yo type game.