After I was a child, there was a second when it felt like everybody was obsessive about yo-yos. I by no means acquired higher than simply having the ability to make the yo-yo go up and down. However with Pipistrello and the Cursed Yoyo, I might faux like I used to be midway respectable — all whereas taking part in a foolish recreation that looks like a religious successor to the Recreation Boy Advance titles I liked rising up.
Pipistrello is a top-down journey recreation, during which you employ 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 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 huge baddies steal her Mega Batteries, and your objective is to get the batteries again and assist free her.
The sport is sort 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 needs folks to gamble. The pixel artwork is nice, too — it seems to be precisely like what I bear in mind from GBA video games, regardless that I performed Pipistrello on my Steam Deck OLED’s much more fashionable display. (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 faux handheld.)
Pocket Lure, 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’ll be able to 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 provide help to extra simply fend off baddies, discover the town that the sport takes place in, and resolve puzzles. Most of the strikes are based mostly 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 talent tree with a contract-based system. Whenever you choose up a contract, you must work off a cash debt and cope with some form of penalty till you pay again the contract in full, like shedding a coronary heart or some assault energy. The system forces you to be considerate about which contract to tackle and helps hold you from changing into overpowered too shortly.
Not that you must actually fear about getting too sturdy, although. I discovered that Pipistrello was actually tough, particularly early on. Pipistrello has plenty of fight, and enemies continuously overwhelmed me. There’s not an enormous penalty for dying — you simply lose some cash and may sort out the room once more — however some rooms have been nonetheless fairly powerful and took a number of tries to complete.
Thankfully, Pipistrello has a really versatile problem system that permits you to tweak issues like your assault energy or what number of cash enemies drop. You may even nullify fall injury. As I performed, I continuously messed round with the choices to assist easy over some notably tough sections.
I’ll admit that by the tip of my practically 10-hour playthrough, I usually made myself invincible in order that I might extra shortly 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 alone, too, so it’s not like I made the sport a complete stroll within the park.
If you happen to’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 gained’t really make you higher at utilizing a yo-yo, nevertheless it’s fairly darn enjoyable to have one in a online game.
Pipistrello and the Cursed Yoyo is obtainable now on Nintendo Change, PC, PlayStation, and Xbox.
