Penny’s Big Breakaway

As it stands at the time of me writing this, the PC Port of Penny's Big Breakaway is a cesspool of bugs that crumbles under the pressure of being played normally. During my 14-hour, 100% completion playthrough, the following has happened; falling out of bounds multiple times while triggering interactable objects, revolving platforms failing to properly set the player's position when ascending with a magnet, falling out of bounds upon bumping any collision while riding the yo-yo in half-pipes and being sent flying in random directions right when mounting the burger-powered yo-yo for no apparent reason. Now, while those may be the only kinds of glitches I can remember happening, the frequency of these was aggravating. At least one or two of these would happen per stage. I'd love to talk about how fun the concept is or how saucy the gameplay can get at times, but outside of the whole bug infestation the game itself is... just okay. It's a perfectly serviceable, short and sweet time that is not worth the asking price whatsoever. Especially when you have to accept an undisclosed Take-Two Interactive EULA (which in theory breaks Steam's ToS, maybe) if you want to play at all. Plus, despite advertising full Dualshock 4 controller support, the program will completely stop and give up on recognizing any inputs from the DS4 the moment it detects any other inputs from a keyboard or mouse, forcing you to use Steam Input with no way of modifying the controller glyphs from anything other than the default XBox 360 ones you get automatically by using this workaround. And for a game with quick-time events, that's a big hit to its accessibility potential. It's a real shame, because you can tell there's real passion behind the project, but the publisher refused to invest any money on quality assurance or any bug fixing potential for that matter. So now, we're stuck with a PC port for a video game in which there are more bugs in a casual playthrough than your average Sonic 06 runthrough. The current state of the video game industry, amirite? ...I wish I weren't. Ugh.

This platformer use physics and momentum in a interesting way. The control can look easy but if you don't take care you could easily lose control because of the speed. The game is very colorful and the music is outstanding. Very recommended if you want a different take in mascot platformers and a lot of challenge if you want to complete at 100%.

Please avoid purchasing this game, whilst all worlds you explore work fine as they should but by the time you get to World 11, the game keeps crashing out which notoriously this happens in levels 2-4 of Workd 11 and the live stream I done via TikTok was absolutely embarrassing. It is nothing to do with the steam deck as it’s all currently up to date, it is nothing to with heat issues as it is cool, I’ve tried with different major games including steam verified indie games and all are fine. But for a gaming developer and publisher to leave this in such a state in one of the levels should hang their heads in shame especially when charging at £25! I have video recorded evidence and I will be more than happy to share this with Valve and with Evening Star & Private Division should they wish to contact me via rg88@ryugamer88.co.uk or via my website at www.ryugamer88.co.uk. But for any gamers out there, please avoid the disappointment and not purchase this game as the ending game to be crashing out is not fair for us gaming content streamers and you guys as gaming consumers. FYI Valve: if the game has not been updated in god knows how long, this should be removed from sale marketing and would like a full refund out of this please. Look forward to hearing from you Evening Star & Private Division. Yours truly, RyuGamer88

Eu estava jogando achando o jogo bonitinho, mas estava achando meio méh, mas quando cheguei em Bolhas parece que o jogo começa a fluir bem, todo o setor Bolhas parece bem divertido, acho que virou meu setor favorito, as fases tem bom fluxo e a musiquinha é bem boa, até o momento de Bolhas em diante o jogo me conquistou. (nas minhas configuraçoes tive que deixar tudo no minimo a 1080p sem anti aliasing e sem v sync para jogar normalmente, caso ao contrario o jogo parece ficar em camera lenta mesmo a 60 fps)

Has a ton of annoying bugs. But the gameplay and artstyle make up for it.

As much as i would like to play this game it, I unfortunately cannot reccommend it as the game wont even get past the main menu without crashing so yeah the tech issues are not a lie like i literally cant even play the game Update: i contacted the publishers and despite my attempts to get them to help fix the game so I can run it they said they arent able to do so, so yeah purchase with caution

Penny's Big Disappointment. The score system is terribly implemented and due to that the conditions to unlock the concept art can be irritating. Each level has what I'll refer to as a level score that you are required to attain in order to unlock the concept art (in game the art is referred to as postcards). The game has a combo system that it wants you to maintain throughout the entirety of the levels but trying to do this while also solving the denizens dilemmas and collecting the show pieces is very finnicky but doing all of them is required to make up most of your level score but far too often I found myself running a bit short of the needed amount despite making a effort. Combos can be lost at the drop of a hat and there's no timer showing it decreasing so it just seems inconsistent a lot of the time, I can be doing a ton of tricks and as soon as I touch the ground I'll lose it and other times it seems to linger despite me not doing anything to maintain it. I've seen a common sentiment of people of the few people who actively tried to get the postcards just not bothering doing it by playing the game normally and instead choosing to just cheese the score system by spending a few minutes jumping on a trampoline or using similar methods and the worst part is I think Evening Star may actually expect you to play in this manner for some of the scores (assuming it was intended or tested at all, it really feels like a last minute addition as it isn't required to 100% a file). Here's a example explaining why I think that to be the case: I did the third to last Star Globe (these are extra levels that are primarily a test of your skill) called Fireball Fling, managed to do it near perfectly (perfect busking and all!) and I was still only 50% towards unlocking the postcard and this was with the Show-off Spotlight item that massively increases your Busking Bonus active at the time too. I got curious and looked at a video of a Full Combo (a term for getting through a level without breaking a combo once, nets a high bonus) of the level and even with somebody that skilled playing that well at the game, they still fell short of the required score, seriously guys? Getting all the collectibles in a level or just being really fast in a run should be enough and if you're skilled sometimes that is all it takes, but not all the time, which is why I think the system needed more considerations or should have been scrapped entirely in favour of purely focusing on the speed running aspect since that's the part people enjoy the most (barely anyone who likes the game talks about the level score system so I don't think it'd have went amiss). World Six in particular is really well made for some odd reason, to the point that I feel it must've been directed or created by somebody else, if it was made under the same conditions as the other worlds then I really have to wonder what happened because this one world feels so much better designed than the rest. I won't go into specifics as to not spoil anything but it's the only world that adds new methods of getting points that feels scaled to the higher score requirements of the later half of the game (though these methods only appear in world six and none of the ones after that), I never once felt I had to faff about to build up a high enough score for these levels, I could just play normally and get all the collectibles without worrying if I had too little a score to get the postcards of these levels. This positive feeling soon dissipated in World Seven. Art is good (though I find the cutscenes to look a bit cheap), Music is great. In the end I must say I didn't particularly care about any of the cast of characters though I liked the design of the penguins (though they have a annoying aspect to them where if even one latches onto you, it can break your combo even if you are doing tricks) Controls are the biggest point of contention I seen from people and I mostly didn't find them too bad but there was a few things that were a bother, the major one was this method of rotating the right analogue stick while in mid-air to buffer a spin for while you're on the ground, this is required for maintaining a combo in some cases but the issue is that the right analogue stick can also do a move that can fire you forward through the air so while I'm getting ready to buffer a spin to keep a combo going on a small platform, I instead just go flying off into a random direction and into a pit. Even after 100% completing the game (with all the postcards) I can see why the game didn't do well, only around 50% of the people who played it on Steam didn't even beat the first boss after all and I thought it was alright before then! More fool me, I guess. it still felt like it didn't cater to the arbitrary level scores (aside from World Six) even after I've managed to figure out a decent system of maintaining combos. The game really had me second guessing myself thinking I was terrible at it and sure, I'm no pro speed runner but I was able to get the achievement for beating the final level of the game in under a time of 4:30, less than 5% of the players on Steam have managed that so its gotta count for something, right? I wouldn't bother buying unless you don't care about my primary issue with it. If you aren't interested in experiencing the full breadth of the game then you'll probably like it and if you can get a handle on the controls you can achieve some really crazy movement, just don't expect a sequel. If you have a completionist mentality like me, I think you'll find the game just feels confused in some of its design choices. I do genuinely hate that I've left the game feeling this way, I wanted to love it and I thought I would from all the positivity I seen towards it, but that one system just got the peel-out rolling on me noticing more things that caused me to dislike my time with the game. I want Evening Star to do better in the future, at the time of this review they've been recruiting so there's hope, I just personally hope it's something other than Penny, if it's more yo-yo, then it's a no-go!

The game is good but its buggy sometimes. when you get into a flow its great though

The kinda game where you start off thinking "These controls are kinda awkward" to "This is better than most AAA games"

This is the honestly the most fun platformer I've played in years. The art style (ESPECIALLY the UI! Everything looks so cute!), the M O V E M E N T, and the INCREDIBLE OST (Tee Lopes & Sean Bialo are unbelievably good, oh my god their compositions hit like crack) makes this game an EASY 10 out of 10!