Edwin Crump
When your most recent release is the excellent Sonic Mania, renowned for revitalising 2D Sonic games as a whole, there’s a lot of pressure on what comes next.
This is the situation Christian Whitehead and his team have found themselves in. With rumours that they were unfortunately passed over for the ultimately serviceable but unexciting Sonic Superstars, instead they have thrown themselves into an entirely new title and style of platformer. The result? Penny’s Big Breakaway, a linear 3D platformer featuring with unique traversal that nevertheless maintains the spirit of Sonic throughout. I’m not sure though that it is entirely successful and perhaps unfairly I did expect more from the team, even for a debut title.
The game starts with the eponymous Penny majorly stuffing up an audition of yoyo skills in front of the King, which earns his ire and who then sets loose his army of cute but deadly penguins after our hapless hero. Penny then seeks to fix this mistake while trying to not be captured in the process. It is the type of nonsense story that’s perfect for a throwback platformer, and there’s a good sense of humour with a touch of the surreal.
This setup launches Penny to complete a series of linear 3D platform stages, spread over a number of different worlds. It’s a setup that mimics the Sonic acts structure, though with far fewer bosses. Stages are relatively long and complex, with a focus on maintaining momentum and speed, again much like Sonic. Knowing how stages are put together is rewarded, and together with the combo system, makes each level very replayable. Curiously, even though it is a game set in 3D space, you can’t control the camera at all, and have to trust in the developers to show you where you need to go. For the most part this works, however there were a few times in the build I played where I really would have liked to angle the camera slightly differently to help me with a jump.
Penny gets around with the help of her yoyo, which can attack enemy penguins, give you a small vertical boost, be swung from mid air, or even ridden like a unicycle. Interestingly, one aspect in which the game subverts Sonic players’ expectations is with the enemies. Instead of collecting rings which give you some measure of protection against hitting spikes, traps and enemies, here you have avoid the enemy penguins. If too many penguins latch onto you, they’ll take you away and you’ll have to try again. And while you can shake them off pretty easily, it encourages a style of play that I found engaging.
When combined with the need to maintain momentum and speed, avoiding enemy penguins becomes a delightful, frenetic challenge.
That’s not to say every level is a success. Some felt relatively boring, with a lack of ramping of ideas or difficulty. In some places I found how to proceed indecipherable, such as the part where you need to roll over the same lava that in other parts of the level kills you outright. I experienced my fair share of glitches and bugs too, though I do note this is not a final build and the game was updated multiple times during my time with it.
Visually, Penny’s Big Breakaway wears its inspiration on its sleeve. It has a unique style of a lost Sega Saturn or late 32X game, with bright colours, segmented bodies and grainy draw distance. I personally love this style of early 3D games, though I do wonder if it is attractive to those without the nostalgia of someone who grew up with those systems.
The biggest letdown for me with the game was the music. It just doesn’t hit right, with grating tones, repetitive tracks and uninteresting arrangements. The first world’s level music was so bad that I worried that I would have to play the rest of the game with the sound entirely muted. I hope for the final release they can have another crack at it. There were often okay melodies hidden in the musical arrangement, so there is hope for this yet.
3D platformers are having a welcome renaissance, with several strong titles coming out in recent years. And Penny’s Big Breakaway has one of the hardest tasks for itself, not only in trying to capture what made those titles great, but in attempting to convert the tricky momentum-based movement of a 2D Sonic game into 3D (albeit linear) space. It’s a task that Christian Whitehead and team are up for. And while I don’t think Penny’s Big Breakaway quite has everything in place just yet, I’m excited for the full release where some of these rough edges will hopefully have been sanded away.
Penny’s Big Breakaway is coming to pretty much everything in 2024.