Of anything inPenny’s Big Breakawaythat’s so vivid and evocative of those times glued to a N64/PlayStation-connected TV as a kid, bizarrely, it’s thelevel select themethat conjures those most blissful of memories. Credit to developer Evening Star, if there were a category this year for best stand-alone menu music, you’d be hard-pressed to find a track any more grand in its delivery than this. The bright, punchy synth motifs, punctuated by its dexterous electric guitar riff. Very much a symbol of the overall vibrant aesthetic and stature as one that not only wants to be as celebratory of that early period of 3D platformers, but itself wants to be celebrated for carrying on the tradition.
And sure, there’s a lot to like – even love – aboutPenny’s Big Breakaway. Mainly in the ways it genuinely attempts to set itself apart from other platformers of its ilk – ones that merely settle for reminiscing on the classics, as opposed to building out and off them. The best thing you could say about Evening Star’s craft here is how close they get in marrying the best traits of a Mario-esque, 3D World-like iteration with the speed and reliance on split-second accuracy that something like Sonic is associated with. Yes, Evening Star do indeed have a degree of experience with the latter, butPenny’s Big Breakawayis at its best when its influences very much feel like the means to what are satisfying ends.
“Close” being the operative word here. A slew of technical issues, baffling design choices and generally, the kind of introduction to gameplay mechanics that could do just as well putting people off entirely – as they can entice players to master what’s on show. The issue withPenny’s Big Breakawayisn’t that its gamble with originality, through what is an admittedly-creative spin on movement and traversal mechanics, somehow falls short. It’s that everything going on around its gameplay feels at odds with both the player and as much itself. At its best, a splendid reminder at the wild imagination 3D platformers were once renowned for and in this case, can still deliver on. But at its worst, a game troubled by an under-cooked technical state and ultimately divisive as to how it all unravels.
Need for Speed
But as far as setting a foundation as to convincing its players to trudge through the thirty-or-so levels present in the game,Penny’spremise is, characteristically for the genre, far-fetched but crucially of all, befitting of the design ethos it maintains throughout. As we see in the opening segments of the plot, shortly after acquiring her trustee device-come-sidekick yo-yo, the titular Penny finds herself on the run after an audition – in front of the Emperor of all things – goes South. Levels are constructed not only as linear series of environments to get through (with optional collectibles tucked away amidst hidden and hard-to-reach corners alike), but occasional segments that have you fending off a rabid troupe of penguin-like soldiers aiming to capture you. It’s a novel pseudo-narrative twist on what is essentially one of the genre’s oldest basic principles: start a level, get to the end in one piece, finish.
What this does, however, is further encourage players to seek out the speedier segments wherein staying on the move not only becomes a luxury of dishing out chained-together combos, but of paramount importance. Find yourself nabbed by five penguin units at one time and it’s back to the last checkpoint in much the same way a death or depletion of health takes place. While the volume of segments in a level involving having to avoid a group of penguin foes may risk getting old-hat or irksome – especially for those who may want to take things slower and hunt down each level’s hidden secrets –Penny’s Big Breakawayfortunately offers plenty of space to make these moments not only short-lived, but manageable to get through.
Breakthrough Hit
As an accompaniment, the level design for a lot ofPenny’s Big Breakawayfinds itself shifting back and forth between obstacle course-like arrangements of floating platforms, narrow ledges, etc and more spacious reaches where apparatus like ramps, quarter-pipes and descending slopes further encourage a sense of speed to what one is doing. Again, where the worry might be given how familiar a lot of these arrangements become, the repetitiveness works against it. In reality, Evening Star manage to find just the right balance between these Mario-esque requirements on nailing a precision jump in one case and that Sonic-esque indulging on being as stylish with one’s speed as you want. Cleverly – and commendably as a result – recognizing that there’s a fine art in crafting the best kind of platforming levels.
Even if the opening few levels are not the best in so far as simply getting used to the control scheme and what it is you’re even capable of doing. It’s a touch annoying, not least when the game can’t even decide on what constitutes an insufficient button press to instigate a desired move and what doesn’t. More annoying that such things like Penny’s aerial dash and using your Yo-Yo as a means to swing above a space are mapped to the same face button. Even the efforts to map out a basic attack skill with the right analog stick feels ill-advised given how cumbersome it can be to chain out of said move, or out of any move for that matter.Penny’s Big Breakawaycan be messy in its controls, but when it eventually clicks (and works as fluidly as one should expect) the desire to indulge on chaining together combos becomes hard to ignore.
Penny’s Big Breakaway Might Be Slightly Busted, But Promising
Penny’s Big Breakway is aiming to be a platforming show-stopper, but something threatens to potentially kill the performance.
Combos being one of the means with which players work towards building up their total level score. One that, come level’s climax – and capped off with a brief busking mini-game having you input a series of commands in a limited time – determines whether you’ve done well enough to nab that stage’s coveted unlockable in the form of a piece of concept artwork. Beyond this, however, the game has no means of grading or ranking one’s performance outside the score accumulated. Even so, measly rewards notwithstanding, it’s something you just as quickly grow to outright loathe, given how specificallyPenny’s Big Breakawayis built in so far as optional challenges to endeavor towards.
Too Fast, Too Furious
In fact, such is the level of frustration with how the game approaches the idea of extra, added-on challenge, it’s enough to put anyone off even bothering with going after a high score. For starters, the busking climax at each level’s end comes across more as rubbing salt into the wound for failing, rather than a pleasant accompaniment of a reward regardless of how well you perform. And while you can see what Evening Star are going for here – a kind of evolution on that desire to hit the top of a flag-pole in any Mario game for more points – the troublesome depth perception problem (one that plagues many of the more precision-focused moments) on top of the unruly nature of its controls makes these level closing moments feel like a greater punch to the gut than they perhaps should.
But that sense of meddlesome, ill-judged design crops up more often than not with the grouping of optional challenges you can partake in across each level. Essentially aiding the denizens in a number of objectives: having you carry a certain object to a desired location, collecting a set number of items in a given region or more prominently, reaching a particular point in an allotted time. The issue – more glaring in the latter example, than the others – is the fact the game spends no time setting the scene and letting its players properly get accustomed to what exactly’s been asked of them. Everything is just way too sudden and immediate.
The game wastes no time thrusting you into the scenario present and you can’t help but immediately and instinctively feel like a rabbit caught in headlights at how fast and abrupt this all feels.Penny’s Big Breakawaypresumes you’re turned on, tuned in and well aware of the objective before it’s even shown to you. No preparation time, not even a prompt to ask if you’re ready to commence the challenge. That the time-limited objectives feel too restrictive is bad enough, that failing a challenge in the warped-away “secret” areas has you exit said section, having to find the entrance again just to have another crack, only makes this part of the game more laborious and time-consuming than it should. In short, the attempt to encourage replaying stages and achieving 100% completion has the opposite effect in pushing all players – enthused with its gameplay or otherwise – even further away.
In For A Penny, In For A Pound
What really kills the momentum in attaining a level of lofty enjoyment withPenny’s Big Breakawayare the technical issues at present. A game that very much invokes the kind of retro throwback akin to the genre’s lesser-known, lesser-celebrated examples of the time in more ways than one. Namely the plethora of animation glitches – players soft-locked into, for example, what can be surmised as a “slipping off” animation rendering all movement controls useless – and just a general feeling that the game is making the act of simply moving about its 3D space more difficult than it should be. Worse still, instances of clipping into parts of the level environment and getting stuck, forcing one to restart said level.
As noted, in combination with the confusing, scrambled nature of how controls are mapped, the indecisiveness the game shows at times translating what the player has inputted on-screen. Contextual actions like ledge-grabbing quickly becoming more annoying to pull off than it likely should be. You could even argue that the decision to stick with a fixed camera approach only makes the requirements to avoid death feel like players are already being put at a disadvantage. Some clever use of sight-lines and obstructing regions behind certain bits of geometry aside, the game doesn’t make a strong enough argument that removing player control over where the camera is pointing makes for an improved experience.
Closing Comments:
Wielding enough creativity and originality in its approach,Penny’s Big Breakawayis a classic case of the good of its premise outmatching the occasional bad of its execution. As annoying the technical state in parts is, let alone some of the misjudged application of additional, incentivizing challenge runs a greater risk of putting players off entirely. Even so, flawed and lacking a touch of polish it may be, Evening Star have done well establishing a new IP that is not only reminiscent of past years, but eagerly wants to build something new out of it. What it ends up creating may not be the most fluid or immediately-enticing take on traversal, butPenny’s Big Breakawayis a small, but promising start crammed full of fresh ideas and endearing style alike.
