Expectation can really change how you experience anything, including games. Sometimes, it's because of external factors — who didn't have a movie that a friend hyped for MONTHS and when you watched, it was just OK? The film was probably good, but you were expecting even more of it. But, sometimes, the expectations come from how a product is presented to you in official marketing material.

It was clear to me what I was expecting from Penny's Big Breakaway, the debut title of Evening Star (a studio formed by Sonic Mania devs) and published by Private Division. The game was announced and shadow-dropped on Nintendo Direct, on the house of some of the most accessible 3D platformers even made.

It featured animated sequences and funky music, and some of the most cartoonish original characters the genre have seen in recent years. When talking about the game, the narrator invited me for a great adventure and said to me that my "speedrunning soul" would love the Time Attack mode, so there should be something for everyone, right? ...well, I was wrong.

What I was expecting

OK, that's not exactly wrong as the game really has beautiful animated sequences: they help to tell a not-so-great story, but also are a vessel to show great character design! Penny is so expressive that I want to have a figure of her in my living room. After she makes a blunder in front of Emperor Eddie, she becomes a fugitive that needs to run from a lot of stupidly cute penguins until she can finally get her big break. Her only companion is Yo-Yo, a sentient dog-like yo-yo (!) that is used as the main gimmick to move and grab things (and was also the one who ate Eddie's pants, so it's their fault).

The game is also really colorful as seen in the trailers (even too much sometimes). It's great to have those scenarios popping up in the screen, but I found hard to differentiate some of the worlds in the game. Mostly are just the same floor with a different tint and one or two new gameplay elements. That said, Penny's Big Breakaway knows how to be a visually gorgeous game, doesn't matter when you look at it.

The best thing this game does to create the atmosphere of each world is the music. This soundtrack is already one of the best of 2024! Every song is a banger, and sometimes I just stopped moving Penny with the controller just to keep hearing it. Tee Lopes, the composer of other great gaming soundtracks, had made one of his best works to date, and it's great to see him showing his power outside the Sonic the Hedgehog motifs. Sean Bialo, I didn't knew you until then, but I already love your work. You two were amazing.

So, if Penny's Big Breakaway looks great and sounds amazing, what's the problem with it? The moment I started playing the tutorial and those first levels, I understood who was the target audience of this game and what was my problem with it.

What I wasn't expecting

I played a lot of 3D platformers in my life and mostly of them focus a lot on getting a great way to movement your character. It's the main action you'll be doing during the whole game, so it's make sense. In game design, we can call many of those possible interactions between the player and the mechanics as verbs. For example, in Super Mario Odyssey, the most simple verbs you can have when moving Mario is jump, run, and throw the hat.

The greatness about those simple verbs is they are probably the only ones you need to use to finish the main story, but also, at the same time, ingredients to even more complex and advanced interactions. You can jump on a ladder step by step and go to the top, or you can do a triple jump, throw the hat, jump on it and then dive. This flexibility not only can help pace the goals and challenges through levels of mastery, but also allow players to control the complexity of their actions.

Of course, Mario is the king of platformers and it isn't that fair to compare with him, but a lot of games goes with the same idea: simple verbs that are the source of a complex tree of actions and possibilities. Penny's Big Breakaway, though, goes on the opposite direction. Already in the tutorial, the level zero of the game, you are presented to a lot of complex actions, with little details that can change completely the outcome of Penny's movement.

For example, you have a button to jump, and if you press it again, you can double jump... but this double jump doesn't really get you a lot of height (unless you are close to a platform, than you can grab on it and push yourself up). What you need to do is use the yo-yo button to lock it in the air and hang on it, and then jump again when you reach the peak. But, you need to do this fast, because as you are hanging, you keep losing height.

I need to think of all of those variables just to cross a long gap. It's not that difficult to do, but it feels way more complex that should be!? Another example is when you press the trigger button to "ride" on the yo-yo to get faster... only if you already had enough momentum to start it. You can charge the move, but it only works if you are completely still. Otherwise, you mount the yo-yo and stops moving, it's even a little funny.

How those actions are mapped to the controller is also really strange. The yo-yo button, when pressed on the ground, is a whip-like attack. But if you press it twice, Penny does a dash so fast it's hard to change your direction. So, when a swarm of penguins goes into your direction, and you try to attack them multiple times, you always will activate the dash and probably fall. In every level, you need to get all of this (and more) in consideration, independently of how much you want to invest in mastering it.

Reading all of this you can only concluded that I think the game is badly done, but isn't exactly that. The devs knew exactly what they were doing in Penny's Big Breakaway. Once you understand this complex system of actions, and can start to improvise and chain them, you will feel like a kinetic god. Just look at any "max combo" videos of any level and you will be amazed on how far someone with mastery can go. Combo counters, point multipliers, lives, distant checkpoints, point goals: every other mechanic in the game is there to encourage you to master the movement (or punish if you don't).

And that's fine! There's definitely an audience for this type of challenge. But I wasn't expecting this game, the one announced on a Nintendo stream, the one with cartoon characters, to be a "pro-focused" platformer. This can be done — Cuphead is considered a hard game and it's literally inspired by old cartoons — but this also need to be communicated well in the product and it wasn't. I've seen so much comments about the game labelling it as "confused and frustrating" and that's what happens when the learning curve starts too high and you didn't do a good job of letting your players know that.

What no one was expecting

OK, let's say you are the perfect audience for this game, is Penny's Big Breakaway a pro 3D platforming masterpiece? I don't think so. The level design isn't bad, but there isn't much memorable passages or setpieces besides the bosses (and even some of them are subpar). When you start to get some combos going on, Penny feels like it's using speedrunning techniques, ignoring whole parts of the level with her yo-yo shenanigans.

There are some power-ups that can be found during the levels that changes Yo-Yo's abilities, like a chili pepper that allows for fast riding, or a hammer to break stone walls. They are fine most of time, but some of them have an one-time use AND a time limit to activate... so you need to run to use a thing you can only use once, and I didn't understand why yet.

But the biggest problem for me, and to everyone that plays it regardless of player type, was the bugs. I know (and expect) that most of them will be fixed soon in some update, but it's bizarre how much Penny's Big Breakaway is bugged right now. Besides the full crashes, sometimes the level's geometry became a mere suggestion for Penny, that would pass through walls and floors as it was nothing. Getting stuck in any object and be forced to restart from the last checkpoint was less common, but it happened enough times that I need to comment on it.

The worst bug for me was during a chase-like boss fight in which I, when trying to attack penguins, dashed instead and fall into the abyss. BUT THEN the game respawned Penny OUTSIDE THE PLATFORM multiple times, with no time to react. Yes, I lost all my lives, and the game just restart the fight from the beginning. No matter your skill level with the controls, frustration will get to you somehow.

If you are a 3D platformer specialist, or loves to understand and master complex action systems, or just has fun trying to rack up a big combo, you will be able to get over the bugs and have a great time in Penny's Big Breakaway. Not only the title was made for playing this way, but you also will enjoy the great visuals and amazing soundtrack it has to offer. But, if you was looking to a more chill experience, with a more balanced learning curve, you still can have fun, but not without a sprinkled and constant frustration. There are more inviting platformers in the market for you and this one doesn't seem to spin out to a broader audience.