This game has been an incredibly rewarding and consistently fun experience throughout my playthrough and, having finished the game, I came out having wonderful time, even if its not entirely perfect.
Firstly I want to go over a lot of my positive thoughts:
This game's style is EXCEPTIONALLY strong, both in it's visuals and audio. The game has a really strong visual identity, with lots of bight and vibrant colours mixed with some excellent character and environment design, that work together to create a world thats an absolute treat to experience. Similarly with the audio, the music is constantly upbeat and energetic, really adding to the game's unique visuals and enhancing the experience as a whole.
Control-wise, I feel its really important to go in understanding that it doesn't play like a lot of other 3D-platformers. The game implements a duel-stick scheme that allows you to control Penny and Yo-Yo independently of one-another, and makes it so that the only buttons that are needed are triggers for things like jumping and rolling, though thankfully you can still use the face buttons for those and other actions too! Having messed around with it, once you get a feeling for how movement and controls work, you can tell these levels were designed around allowing for a lot of momentum and movement, as well as to allow for sequence-breaking and flexibility for how you choose to traverse them, and it fells INCREDIBLE to play! I recommend really spending some time to get a feel for the controls, as once you figure out the full potential of them, your options when it comes to movement and traverseal open up tremendously!
This is all brought together with exceptional performance on PC! On my set-up with an RTX 3070 Ti and a Ryzen 5900X, I was always able to play at a locked 120fps with no drops nor stuttering, and it felt incredible to play at that kind of framerate! Similarly on my OLED Deck, it ran locked at 90fps at max settings, so it seems like this game is very well polished on an optimization level!
While I've had a great time however, I DO have a few critiques about the game:
Physics can be a bit janky in sections that require more precision, as I found certain sections I had to play more carefully in order to avoid the physics causing me to fall-off a platform and die. This also extends to some gameplay issues in-regards to collision as there were several points where things like Yo-Yo or even Penny herself would get stuck on geometry, keep hovering in mid-air on certain platforms, or in some cases even getting soft-locked into parts of the level geometry. Thankfully the game is pretty forgiving in this sense with no lives and being able to restart at checkpoints instead of the beginning of the level, but they were something that could occasionally cause some frustration and break the flow of gameplay.
Another issue for me stemmed from some general polish issues in regards to cutscene presentation, as the cutscenes that are in-game felt like they needed another pass in terms of animation, as they felt rather unpolished and rough around the edges. Same with the pre-rendered cutscenes, though Id argue to a lesser extent, as well as there being some general issues with sound-balancing throughout both certain cutscenes and gameplay.
Overall however, despite some of my issues, I've been having a GREAT time with this game, and would absolutely recommend it to those who love 3D-platformers and especially those looking for something more experimental and faster paced! Its got it's quirks that I hope will get addressed in the future, but stick with it and you'll find a game thats bursting with charm and character and that will keep you coming back to replay and master for a long time!
Firstly I want to go over a lot of my positive thoughts:
This game's style is EXCEPTIONALLY strong, both in it's visuals and audio. The game has a really strong visual identity, with lots of bight and vibrant colours mixed with some excellent character and environment design, that work together to create a world thats an absolute treat to experience. Similarly with the audio, the music is constantly upbeat and energetic, really adding to the game's unique visuals and enhancing the experience as a whole.
Control-wise, I feel its really important to go in understanding that it doesn't play like a lot of other 3D-platformers. The game implements a duel-stick scheme that allows you to control Penny and Yo-Yo independently of one-another, and makes it so that the only buttons that are needed are triggers for things like jumping and rolling, though thankfully you can still use the face buttons for those and other actions too! Having messed around with it, once you get a feeling for how movement and controls work, you can tell these levels were designed around allowing for a lot of momentum and movement, as well as to allow for sequence-breaking and flexibility for how you choose to traverse them, and it fells INCREDIBLE to play! I recommend really spending some time to get a feel for the controls, as once you figure out the full potential of them, your options when it comes to movement and traverseal open up tremendously!
This is all brought together with exceptional performance on PC! On my set-up with an RTX 3070 Ti and a Ryzen 5900X, I was always able to play at a locked 120fps with no drops nor stuttering, and it felt incredible to play at that kind of framerate! Similarly on my OLED Deck, it ran locked at 90fps at max settings, so it seems like this game is very well polished on an optimization level!
While I've had a great time however, I DO have a few critiques about the game:
Physics can be a bit janky in sections that require more precision, as I found certain sections I had to play more carefully in order to avoid the physics causing me to fall-off a platform and die. This also extends to some gameplay issues in-regards to collision as there were several points where things like Yo-Yo or even Penny herself would get stuck on geometry, keep hovering in mid-air on certain platforms, or in some cases even getting soft-locked into parts of the level geometry. Thankfully the game is pretty forgiving in this sense with no lives and being able to restart at checkpoints instead of the beginning of the level, but they were something that could occasionally cause some frustration and break the flow of gameplay.
Another issue for me stemmed from some general polish issues in regards to cutscene presentation, as the cutscenes that are in-game felt like they needed another pass in terms of animation, as they felt rather unpolished and rough around the edges. Same with the pre-rendered cutscenes, though Id argue to a lesser extent, as well as there being some general issues with sound-balancing throughout both certain cutscenes and gameplay.
Overall however, despite some of my issues, I've been having a GREAT time with this game, and would absolutely recommend it to those who love 3D-platformers and especially those looking for something more experimental and faster paced! Its got it's quirks that I hope will get addressed in the future, but stick with it and you'll find a game thats bursting with charm and character and that will keep you coming back to replay and master for a long time!