Penny's Big Breakaway Review - Shut Up and Dance

Looking back on it now, Sonic Mania really was a minor modern miracle. Spearheaded by Christian Whitehead, it has revitalized a franchise that’s now seeing a more consistent graph of quality, and for better or worse, introduced a whole new wave of Sonic The Hedgehog fans. Naturally, with that power, comes a blank check for which Whitehead and co. has shadowdropped in the form of Penny’s Big Breakaway.

This is the debut title from developers Evening Star, founded by ex-Sonic Mania developers, and published by Take Two’s indie branch, Private Division. Telling the story of Penny, a young woman who is quite talented with a yo-yo, and even more so once it becomes sentient through cosmic string. After Penny’s audition to be the new partner of famed performer Emperor Eddie results in Penny’s yo-yo publicly humiliating Eddie, Penny finds herself on the run trying to clear her name in style.

Style is the name of the game here. Aesthetically and mechanically, Penny’s Big Breakaway extends a hand for the player to practice an essence of flair and finesse that isn’t too dissimilar from the art of speedrunning. It’s easy to say this, especially considering the pedigree of Evening Star’s previous work, but there’s an exercise on display that asks more from the player than a game usually would, right from the get-go.

The game has a heavy emphasis on momentum, like speed in Sonic the Hedgehog, but with a tonne of new parameters, all of which involve the yo-yo. You can double jump, dash, glide, and hang in mid-air with the sentient beast, and all of it lends itself to the kind of easy-to-learn, hard-to-master curvature that most platformers dream of. As such, Penny’s Big Breakaway is excited to provide, but apprehensive to explain.

In all actuality, it plays closer to indie cult hit Defunct in execution, right down to the peaks, valleys, and perils, but there’s a strong hint of Sonic Heroes (The best Sonic game ever made) also. Certain wind-down sections can feel eerily similar to Team Sonic shenanigans when playing some of Penny’s Big Breakaway’s more trickier sections, and like Sonic Heroes, it’s absolutely exhilarating to play once all the parts are in place.

There’s a moment early on where you’re in an Indiana Jones-esque sequence with a gargantuan boulder that speeds through the city you start in. By now, the games explained all it can without the use of largely world-specific power-ups, and the camera is winding around to showcase the world and the destruction you’re causing. For a brief moment, Penny’s Big Breakaway is, in your mind's eye, an unequaled feat of spectacle, delight, and opportunity.

It will take a while to fully click, mind you. Penny’s Big Breakaway’s control scheme is a tricky mistress, and Penny herself is quite weighty. Everything, from the “Busker Bonus” to the character animations, has a bounce and force to it, which you have to keep in mind throughout. Still, there’s something here that smacks of an auteur’s work, which isn’t surprising, but can be a mindset that damages its surroundings.

A good example of this is the fixed camera angle proceedings. While it’s not a bold new idea to relinquish camera control from the player in a platformer, Penny’s Big Breakaway’s pacing means that you’re gonna struggle with it throughout. At best, it is a tool to help the level design shine with hidden nooks and crannies with which bonuses and collectibles hide. At worst, it is a hindrance that constantly messes with the perspective no matter how far you get in.

Does it actively cooperate with the control scheme? A lot of the time, yes. It’s quite clear that the fixed camera angle isn’t just for the cinematic spectacle, especially given how nonplussed Penny’s Big Breakaway is with presenting its world of “Macaroon”. This leads to another thing, however, in that I’m not entirely convinced with the world-building throughout. If anything, these are canvases, with which Evening Star paints broad strokes of mechanical perfections across everything.

The game certainly does try to create a background. The soundtrack by Tee Lopes and Sean Bialo is inextricably tied to the visual design, and features the aesthetically-relevant head-boppin' tunes you’d expect. Beautiful lush tracks for the dreamy purple-tinted havens, jammin’ guitar tracks on the water-park levels, vaguely Middle Eastern-inspired tracks for the sand world – it’s what you’d expect to fit in, but it’s not enough to stand out, y’know?

Even in its extremities, Penny’s Big Breakaway feels more like a checklist than a world in which I’m inspired to sink in. The game has both a health bar for Penny and a capture system involving Emperor Eddie’s penguins. If several penguins manage to grab a hold of you without shaking them off, then you’re set back a checkpoint, and it does lead to some of the games most intense moments, but past the flourishes of the first levels, they make less and less of an impact in moment-to-moment gameplay, even when the stakes heat up.

I can load up a Mario game, and I’m in a world of possibility. The sun’s beating down on my face, and I’m in bliss. I can load up a Sonic game, and I’m miles up in the air breaking land speed records. One wrong move, and I’m feeling the wind for eternity. In Penny’s Big Breakaway, I’m on my way to work. If I make one wrong move, my ass is on the chopping block, and maybe that’s for the best? To the powers that be and the one controlling me.

Penny's Big Breakaway Review | Final Verdict

In its design, Penny’s Big Breakaway is for the purists, the ones looking for a test with restricted equipment. It’s designed to be exploited and sanded down to its most distilled elements so you can blitz through it as quickly as possible. As such, anyone looking for a simple time may find themselves beaten down by its more rigorous components. It can be a gateway to similar titles that want speedrunners to break it inside and out, but if you want leisure, Penny’s Big Breakaway isn’t here to entertain you. It’s vice versa.

Penny's Big Breakaway was reviewed on Xbox Series S using a copy purchased by the reviewer over the course of 12 hours of gameplay. All screenshots were taken during the process of review.