Consoles: PS5,Xbox Series X,S, PC, Nintendo Switch
Published:Private Division
Developers:Evening star
Released: February 2024
Penny's big breakaway is the debut title of the newly form studio Evening star. A new studio formed in 2018 with the goal of making unique games that will not only be good at the time of their release but ones that will stand the test of time. A great ambition from a passionate team.
The team claimed to be in love with old classic games such as the original Sonic Adventure games and Super Mario games. In fact the team is the consisted of the same ones that developed the well knownSonic Mania. For those unaware, Sonic Mania was being developed by fans and because of their
fantastic job Sega helped them and made it official. As an established studio, their first game, Penny's big breakaway is the result of their work after Sonic Mania.
The game was said to be in works in late 2021 but it was only revealed in June 2023. The publisher Private devision was also in charge of publishing the game as they showed the potential it had. The game was set to be released in February 2024. A week before its release the developers released a demo
for those who wanted or considered purchasing the game. A week later the game came out and it seems that just like Sonic Mania the game was praised for its originality characters music and others. The game was released in all current platforms and so far there have been no technical issues report online about the game.
Overall it in terms of feedback from critics and players the game was well received.
As of May 2024 the game doesnt have a physical release but it is confirmed that it will receive one at some point.
Story of the Game
Penny's big breakaway has a goofy story which works perfectly. The game takes place in a planet called Macaroon where Penny a young girl notices a flyer which was advertising auditions for performers interested in the Gala. The performers would perform infornt of the Emperor Eddie who ruled the land. Penny was
ineterested in the event and wanted to show her Yo-yo skills to the world. On her way to the auditions she comes across a Cosmic string which she enfuses with her yoyo. In doing so her Yoyo became sentient with its own personality. Penny didnt really seemed to be worried and rush down to the auditions. When she arrived
to the place, she was shocked by the ammount of participants interested in the event and chose to skip in line through one way or another. Cutting in line Penny found herself infront of the Emperor and begings her act. The Emperor and the crowd seemed to be enjoying her performance but things went south near the end as her Yoyo
decides on its own to jump at the Emperor and rip his clothers leaving him with his underpants. A humiliated and enrage emperor blames Penny for everything and sents his army of penguins to capture her. Penny ran away as the emperor lost his composure and she wouldnt be able to reach him out.
Penny then tries her best to escape the area as the penguins are on her tail. The game then proceeds with Penny's adventure to not only escape the penguins but to also prove her inosence to the world.
The game proceeds and takes Penny around different areas and she comes across different personalities who will either help her or get in her way. The game will also try to give some of its characters time in the spotlight whether its personality or backstory. Last but not least the game is aware that people will be interested in
the story of the Yo-yo and made sure to give the players an explanation of sorts.
Thoughts on the story
I personally enjoy how goofy and good the story of the game is. I always stated that platformers dont require the most complicated story telling in order to work. All they need is a decent scenario and a good gameplay. In this scenario the game delivers its story through hand drawn sketches and animations that are a hit or miss.
For me, i found them good and funny as the expressions of the characters and the frame to frame jumps create some funny moments. The characters do NOT have voice actors and the story is usually delivered through a dialog box. When it comes down to Penny, she doesnt talk nor have dialog boxes. Instead she responds with cartoonish
expressions and childish stick drawings. Nevertheless personalities are still shine through for some characters. As for the scenario, i was enjoying it for most part but near the end they tried to create some "complicated" plot twist which i found unecessarry.
Gameplay
The gameplay of Penny's big breakaway is what you get when Super Mario meets Devil May cry .
The hub world of the game is the planet of Macaroon. The planet is seperated into multiple sub parts representing Worlds. Just like most platformers, the player will not be able to unlock the next world unless clearing the last level of the current one. Completing a level will immidietly place you to the next one without going back to the
hub world. The players can also purcase things from the store in the hub world which will help them during a level such as extra life, sparing Penny from falling off atleast once and others. The hub world aslo the place where players can access the Bonus levels which we will see later on.
The best way to describe Penny's core gameplay is litteraly by comparing it to Super Mario. The player gets control of Penny with the goal of reaching the end of the level. The players are free to explore each level at their pace. Each area has
three different collectibles:
Mission Tokens(Show Piece)
Side Mission Tokens(Dielemma)
Coins
All these collectibles are scattered around the levels and the players can collect them by simply walking towards them except for Dilemmas. Just like the 2 games mentioned, the location of each collectible is unknown to the player but they can find it's respective position based on the others unlocked. For example, if you start a level and
collect a collectible or dilemma it will be placed in the first slot(top left), you know you haven't miss anything, but if it goes to the second or third slot, you know that from the starting point all the way to where you just picked the item there was another one/two prior. You re given the space/level to explore more or less at your own pace.
The game has multiple paths making it harder for players to find all the collectables on their first attempt. Show pieces, are like the green stars in Mario 3D world, they re found floating around the levels and re needed in order to unlock the Bonus Levels. Dilemmas are small side quest found around each level. When walking by an NPC
with an exclanation mark(!) on top of them a side quest will instantly begin. The side mention usully consist of delivering something from one NPC to the other, others are the same but if u get hit/touch ground etc the item will be lost, others require you to collect a certian ammount of items found in your path within time and exedra. They re usually easy to
do and DO NOT stop your flow. Coins just every other game are there to increase your overall performance and to be spent in the store.
To its core, Penny's big breakaway is a 3D platformer. However the developers wanted to add their own unique spin to the genre and made something quite unique. Their way was simple, add both the Yo-yo and a Style meter as core parts of the game with a quite festive finish line.
Penny moves around in a 3D environment and jumps once just like most other platformers. Once she gets her yoyo the gameplay and the levels expand. By using her Yo-yo, Penny is capable of riding it increasing her movement speed. Given that Penny's speed increased means that she is also capable of reaching higher heights when moving towards a ramp. Picture it like a skateboarder
who builds momentum and jumps of a ramp or uses a ramp to reach a bigger height and do certain tricks. Riding her yo-yo can also be used to ride the waves. When a person throws a rock towards the water the momentum used will make it bounce(Skipping stone) resulting in it doing a few skips before sinking. This same logic applies to Penny. If she has a fast momentum and approaches
a watery surface, her Yo-yo will allow her to bounce before sinking her. Both these mechanics can be used to skip through levels and get shorcuts.
The Yo-yo can also be used in other ways. When there's a big gap amongs platforms, Penny can jump, use her Yo-yo and hold the button in order to leave it on the air and then use it's string as a swing to help her swing to the other side. Swinging is mainly used to jump wide areas or to simpy help Penny hover on the air for a while. When moving in high speed the swing can be
used to launch the player up, straigh and even backwards. In a similar way, if Penny use her Yo-yo near the edge of a platform, its going to bite/grap the corner allowing Penny to climb all the way up to that platform. Furtermore, Penny can use her Yo-yo to lauch her self towards a direction. In comparison to swinging, laucnhing Penny covers bigger gaps, builds faster momentum
and can also used once per jump. Unlike swinging you cannot hold down the button. Last but not least, the yo-yo is capable of also grapping onto different areas in the levels which can be used to either push platfroms, pull others, hold on to others and break certain things which will unlock other things.
The main enemy of Penny is the penguins. These Penguins chase Penny through out the levels and set various of traps in order to get her. If a player falls into any of their traps(nets), the players will have to quickly mash buttons as they dont have full control of Penny. The penguins walk around the levels searching for Penny, if they spot her they start chasing her. When the penguins
gets close they re attached to penny Delaying her movements. The more penguins the slower Penny gets. Eventually they will overpower Penny caprturing her. The players can use their Yo-yo to push the penguins away. Spinning around pushes the penguins away for a while. Penguins who fell of the clip will stop following you whilst the ones hit towards a wall will cartoonisly turn
into 2D sprites before comming out of the wall and back to their 3D designs. When a penguin attaches itself to Penny, the player should do yo-yo tricks to push them off of her. The player can only die in one of two ways. One way is being fully captured by the penguins and the other one is failling platforming tasks. A green circle represents the lives a player has before getting the
game over screen. Any death prior brings Penny back to the Checkpoints. A gameover screen will ask the player to either restart, or accept to continue from last checkpoint by sacrifising a huge ammount of points.
There are a couple of Boss encounters who will put Penny's skills to the test. Each boss is completely different from the other. Each boss has a unique design, a unique level and different ways of defeating them. Some are simply races, others are standard collect item and hit the boss whilst others require countering attacks and then playing a game of 8 pool. I cant express how fresh and
original some encounters were. As someone who played alot of platformers, this game had suprisingly good boss fights. There was only one battle which i did not enjoy, mainly because of the camera angles used during it. Each boss encounter is escorted with cutscenes before and after the ecnounter.
Another thing worth mentioning is Penny is stack with Level Power Ups. These are limited time power ups found around specific stages. The player usually will have to use them in order to manuver through level obstacles. For example, when the Yo-yo consumes a red hot chilly pepper, the Player can ride the Yoyo on top of deep water areas,can surf on lava and can also ride it vertically on walls. The
hammer power up allows Penny to hit all the enemies away from her and also break different brick walls. The ice cream will give the player a 1-up on their overall lives. The fire candle allows Penny to burn certain items and to also light up the cannons which she can use to launch herself away. Furthermore theres the helicopter ability which allows Penny to fly high up in the air.
The last thing of the gameplay is the Style factor. Players familiar with games like Devil May Cry and Forspoken might be aware of this mechanism. Pretty much in those games people use different compat abilities to build a chain of hits without repeating the same ability in a row. This builds a style meter which pretty much allows you to flex your style and
earn many points and Exp. In Pennys big breakaway, the player builds a style meter for comboing their Yo-yo abilities. Each trick rewards the player with extra points. At the right side of the screen you can see how many tricks you stacked/did into that one combo. The only way the combo will stop is with Penny landing on her two feet. Players should spam using the Swing, lauch, attacks, jumps and yoyo-riding non
stop. The bigger the style/streak the more points the player will receive. Last but not least, the game has a unique ending. In Super Mario usually has to capture the top of the flag. Here, the end of each level is represented with a stage of three laves forming a "spheric" pyramid. When Penny lands on them she performs her stage tricks which will be quick time events. If the player lands on top(smaller surface)
Penny has to perform 3 sets of tricks, middle one is 2 sets of tricks and the bottom line is one. Each succesfull trick in the end rewards more points.
Bonus Levels
During or after the players succesfully play the main campaign of the game, they can unlock the Bonus levels. As mentioned prior in the overwolrd tapping a button will bring you to the bonus level area where the players can test their skills. To unlock these levels, the players will have to spent show pieces which they gathered from playing the main levels. These missions/levels are usually small but they rely on presice platforming
and skills. They re also filled with mechanics introduces through levels. For example, some are filled with spikes and the player will have to balance their time on air and the timing od the spikes. In others, the level design is based on a certain power up(hammer/pepper/fire etc) where the player has to ultilize that ability. Moreover, others are designed based on a level hazard such as electricity, fire, bombs, water pressure etc.
These are mainly end game material so player will most likely deal with them at the end.
Sound and Graphics
The game was made using their own studio engine, Star Engine & StarSDK. For those unaware, this is the same engine the developers used a few years ago when they made Sonic Mania. The engine is closed to what they wanted to make when it came down to game developing. They want to make good games, focusing on the physics of their games but also
make them have an old pixelised/polygonish style. They sum up their goal is creating high definition retro styled games. Penny looks very similar to all the 3D levels found in Sonic Mania. This allows for a very unique retro style game without feeling old or messy. It has nice color palletes and lovable characters. The cutscenes are using hand drawn
images filled with personality. Each world as it's own gimmic to the game introducing new mechanicks any time they get the chance. Some levels using ice to make slippery floors, others use lava to make your platforming precise until you re forced to use your Yoyo in lava, others use water as an obstacle(through waves and pipes) and many more.
Keeping it close, the audio department followed the same logic as the graphics and remained close to that of Sonic Mania. A retro style circus themes. All the levels of the game have their own unique OST which stay close to all the other found in the same area. Just like every platformer game, levels are seperated in the form of World 1 level 1/2/3 etc before
reaching the boss encounters. The developers made sure to keep the music tracks close to each other but different from each world. Overall for a game that shared 0 voice acting, the game does a fantastic job compining its music and graphics together.
Final Thoughts
In conclusion Penny's big breakaway is a Fantastic 3D platformer that not only plays well, but also adds its own unique spin to a gerne packed with alot of games. The story of the game is fun and suprisingly funny. It's delivery includes some nice artworks by the developers escorted by nice audio files. The gameplay is nice, smooth and challenging when it comes
down to the bonus levels. The developers decision to make the yo-yo a vital part of the experience was very good and payed off. Using the Yo-yo and it's own style meter adds variety to the content. Another thing was praising is the Level design which not only look good but also are well developed. There's a lot of paths the players can take to reach the goal and each
world has it's own unique gimmick. Whether it's surfing waves, dealing with electric wires etc it never gets old. The art style and the audio of the game create this retro style experience in a time where not many games like this exist.
Gameplay of the Game
This is a video showcasing some of my time with the the Game
