After I was a child, there was a second when it felt like everybody was obsessive about yo-yos. I by no means obtained higher than simply with the ability to make the yo-yo go up and down. However with Pipistrello and the Cursed Yoyo, I may fake like I used to be midway respectable — all whereas enjoying a foolish sport that appears like a non secular successor to the Sport Boy Advance titles I liked rising up.
Pipistrello is a top-down journey sport, by which you utilize your yo-yo to assault enemies and traverse the world. You play as Pippit, a goofy bat who has goals of yo-yo excellence however can also be a freeloader who depends on monetary help from his rich aunt, an vitality magnate. Within the opening minutes of the sport, the aunt will get merged along with your yo-yo as 4 large baddies steal her Mega Batteries, and your aim is to get the batteries again and assist free her.
The sport is kind of charming. Pippit is a lovable doofus, and also you’ll even be tasked with ridiculous missions like rounding up folks for a soccer fan membership so you may get simpler entry to a stadium run by a corrupt boss, who desires folks to gamble. The pixel artwork is nice, too — it appears precisely like what I keep in mind from GBA video games, regardless that I performed Pipistrello on my Steam Deck OLED’s much more trendy display screen. (However if you wish to go full retro, there’s a mode that mimics the GBA’s look, and it even frames the sport on a fake handheld.)
Pocket Entice, the sport’s developer, makes Pippit’s yo-yo greater than only a toy. It’s additionally good for bashing enemies, after all. However you may even chuck the yo-yo off the string to hit enemies at vary or spin it round you to maintain them at bay. And as you progress, you’ll get further yo-yo-themed strikes that may make it easier to extra simply fend off baddies, discover town that the sport takes place in, and resolve puzzles. Most of the strikes are primarily based on precise yo-yo tips: the stroll the canine transfer, for instance, sends the yo-yo surging ahead, yanking Pippit alongside so he can cross our bodies of water.
The sport additionally has an excellent ability tree with a contract-based system. Once you choose up a contract, you need to work off a cash debt and take care of some sort of penalty till you pay again the contract in full, like dropping a coronary heart or some assault energy. The system forces you to be considerate about which contract to tackle and helps hold you from turning into overpowered too rapidly.
Not that it is best to actually fear about getting too sturdy, although. I discovered that Pipistrello was actually tough, particularly early on. Pipistrello has a number of fight, and enemies ceaselessly overwhelmed me. There’s not an enormous penalty for dying — you simply lose some cash and might deal with the room once more — however some rooms have been nonetheless fairly robust and took a number of tries to complete.
Thankfully, Pipistrello has a really versatile problem system that allows you to tweak issues like your assault energy or what number of cash enemies drop. You possibly can even nullify fall harm. As I performed, I ceaselessly messed round with the choices to assist clean over some notably tough sections.
I’ll admit that by the tip of my almost 10-hour playthrough, I usually made myself invincible in order that I may extra rapidly see the remainder of the story, the puzzles, and the platforming. The fight rooms turned an excessive amount of of a time suck for me. However regardless that the enemies posed no hazard, I nonetheless had a blast yo-yoing them to demise. And I nonetheless had to determine puzzles by myself, too, so it’s not like I made the sport a complete stroll within the park.
When you’re feeling nostalgic for the pixel graphics and blaring horns of GBA video games, Pipistrello and the Cursed Yoyo scratches that itch — and has some intelligent new concepts, too. It received’t really make you higher at utilizing a yo-yo, however it’s fairly darn enjoyable to have one in a online game.
Pipistrello and the Cursed Yoyo is offered now on Nintendo Swap, PC, PlayStation, and Xbox.
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