When we first caught glimpse of this game at GDC, it looked like your run-of-the-mill, top-down, action-adventure game made by people who insist these kinds of games marked the golden years of gaming. While that mindset isn’t necessarily wrong, especially as someone who also grew up enjoying those kinds of video games, those games are a dime dozen today especially on the indie scene. No matter how good they actually are, they hardly ever do anything different or modern, and it’s hard to set them apart.
Though it looks like a classic trying to hard to be cool, Pipistrello and the Cursed Yoyo checks all the boxes when it comes to different and modern ideas, and the result is something extraordinary. You’d be making a big mistake if you gave Pipistrello the cold shoulder.
The game puts you in the tiny shoes of Pippit Pipistrello, a young member of the Pipistrello family who more or less runs the world thanks to a stroke of luck that made them rich and all powerful, invoking tariffs and making enemies all over the city because of their greed–this is not a politically charged statement I’m making; I’m being absolutely serious. Anyway, Pippit doesn’t care about any of that. He only cares about being the best at his yoyo, even though he admits he’s not great at it–I’m still being serious. One day, he goes back to the Pipistrello family manor and finds his aunt getting zapped by a laser that split her soul into pieces. (Un)luckily for him, one part of her soul is trapped in his Yoyo, and it’s up to him to fix things in the city and right things in the company on a quest to bring her weird aunt back.
The game takes place in a living, breathing city overworld where you really should be careful when you cross the street.
As wild a plot as this is, it’s also pretty unique, so I have to give credit to where it’s due there. It’s not your typical “save the princess” story. I don’t know how long this game took to develop, but with the real issues we’re seeing with tariffs today, it’s quite current. Like I said, this game checks all the boxes when it comes to doing different things despite seeming familiar.
Developed by Pocket Trap, the same folks behind Dodgeball Academia, Pipistrello and the Cursed Yoyo is a game developers dub as “the first yoyovania.” While there are aspects to the game that give it a Metroidvania feel, namely backtracking to places when you have new abilities to open more paths, it’s really more akin to classic 2D Zelda–more specifically, the Zelda games featured on handhelds.
As you traverse through the game’s city overworld and it’s various dungeons, you’ll notice that every area corresponds to coordinates on a map grid, much like how The Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening‘s exploration worked. This is actually pretty useful, because unless you’ve put some work into the game’s difficulty settings, you’ll die frequently. So every time you die, you’ll have the option of respawning at the screen you actually died in.
You gotta love the in-your-face, retro way of how the game introduces key characters.
To put an end to comparisons to other franchises, what sets Pipistrello apart from other games is Pippit’s yoyo. The yoyo is everything from a weapon to a tool to pick up items or money. Pippit’s yoyo maneuvers include standard melee strikes, the offstring throw that turn the yoyo into a projectile that’ll bounce off the walls, a “walk-the-dog” trick that’ll propel Pippit through water, and even a wall ride move. Making the use of the yoyo more interesting is the way the game handles bounce physics. Throughout the game, you’ll see slanted walls, and when you either launch or throw your yoyo at them, they’ll bounce at other directions. Understanding of the way each wall is laid out is essential for some of the tougher fights, including those against bosses.
Speaking of bosses, to go back to the Zelda comparison, you’ll find them at the end of every major dungeon, and from there, they feel like Mega Man bosses, not necessarily as far as difficulty goes, but with the way you need to quickly understand their attack patterns and in the visual style that they’re introduced. Since the bosses aren’t incredibly huge, they could be as hard to hit as some of the smaller bosses in the 2D era.
Getting back to the dungeons at hand, the majority of them require you to perform certain tasks in various rooms to get the keys to open specific doors. Most of the time, it’s ridding the screen of enemies. Other times, it’s finding a hidden item after ridding several screens of enemies. At times I wished there was more variety with how they’re built from a gameplay perspective because the majority of dungeon rooms were kill rooms, and a handful of them especially early on were more annoying than they were fun. Still, I did enjoy the escape sections of the game which really maximized platforming. Sure, I died several times, but they also seemed fair.
Great reference to a certain children’s card game.
To up your arsenal, you’ll have access to safe houses that also have resources like badges to enhance your gameplay or upgrades that’ll give Pippet a few more points to work with as far as attack power, badge points, and other buffs like the ability to lose less money when you die. Again, early on, these feel useful. But once you begin to stack your life gauge with more hearts, things become way easier to handle. I didn’t even really use these safe houses much later in the game except when I needed to heal right away.
On that note, the team at Pocket Trap needs to be commended for their Difficulty Menu. The game doesn’t have default difficulty settings to choose from, but there are sliders in the game where you can adjust different variables to make the experience easier. You can do things like give yourself more life, badge points, make the enemies weaker, and things of that nature. So if this game is tough as nails for you, you can also make the game too easy if it’s really frustrating you to that extent.
Depending on how skilled you are and how much you choose to explore this vibrant and dangerous world, Pipistrello should take you anywhere between 12 to 20 hours to finish. At $20 digital, the game is definitely a chunky experience that’ll keep those longing for a high-octane experience worthy of those SNES or GBA “better” days.
It has its issues, namely in a lack of variety and difficulty spikes too early that can be tough to overcome, but it also doesn’t take long for the game to show that it’s something special. From an unexpectedly profound plot to its familiar yet modern take on old-school game that both borrows from other greats in addition to bringing cool ideas, Pipistrello and the Cursed Yoyo is definitely easy to recommend to anyone who wants something different from top-down games. If Pocket Trap isn’t on your list of indie studios to watch now, it definitely should be.
When we first caught glimpse of this game at GDC, it looked like your run-of-the-mill, top-down, action-adventure game made by people who insist these kinds of games marked the golden years of gaming. While that mindset isn’t necessarily wrong, especially…
When we first caught glimpse of this game at GDC, it looked like your run-of-the-mill, top-down, action-adventure game made by people who insist these kinds of games marked the golden years of gaming. While that mindset isn’t necessarily wrong, especially as someone who also grew up enjoying those kinds of video games, those games are a dime dozen today especially on the indie scene. No matter how good they actually are, they hardly ever do anything different or modern, and it’s hard to set them apart.
Though it looks like a classic trying to hard to be cool, Pipistrello and the Cursed Yoyo checks all the boxes when it comes to different and modern ideas, and the result is something extraordinary. You’d be making a big mistake if you gave Pipistrello the cold shoulder.
The game puts you in the tiny shoes of Pippit Pipistrello, a young member of the Pipistrello family who more or less runs the world thanks to a stroke of luck that made them rich and all powerful, invoking tariffs and making enemies all over the city because of their greed–this is not a politically charged statement I’m making; I’m being absolutely serious. Anyway, Pippit doesn’t care about any of that. He only cares about being the best at his yoyo, even though he admits he’s not great at it–I’m still being serious. One day, he goes back to the Pipistrello family manor and finds his aunt getting zapped by a laser that split her soul into pieces. (Un)luckily for him, one part of her soul is trapped in his Yoyo, and it’s up to him to fix things in the city and right things in the company on a quest to bring her weird aunt back.
The game takes place in a living, breathing city overworld where you really should be careful when you cross the street.
As wild a plot as this is, it’s also pretty unique, so I have to give credit to where it’s due there. It’s not your typical “save the princess” story. I don’t know how long this game took to develop, but with the real issues we’re seeing with tariffs today, it’s quite current. Like I said, this game checks all the boxes when it comes to doing different things despite seeming familiar.
Developed by Pocket Trap, the same folks behind Dodgeball Academia, Pipistrello and the Cursed Yoyo is a game developers dub as “the first yoyovania.” While there are aspects to the game that give it a Metroidvania feel, namely backtracking to places when you have new abilities to open more paths, it’s really more akin to classic 2D Zelda–more specifically, the Zelda games featured on handhelds.
As you traverse through the game’s city overworld and it’s various dungeons, you’ll notice that every area corresponds to coordinates on a map grid, much like how The Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening‘s exploration worked. This is actually pretty useful, because unless you’ve put some work into the game’s difficulty settings, you’ll die frequently. So every time you die, you’ll have the option of respawning at the screen you actually died in.
You gotta love the in-your-face, retro way of how the game introduces key characters.
To put an end to comparisons to other franchises, what sets Pipistrello apart from other games is Pippit’s yoyo. The yoyo is everything from a weapon to a tool to pick up items or money. Pippit’s yoyo maneuvers include standard melee strikes, the offstring throw that turn the yoyo into a projectile that’ll bounce off the walls, a “walk-the-dog” trick that’ll propel Pippit through water, and even a wall ride move. Making the use of the yoyo more interesting is the way the game handles bounce physics. Throughout the game, you’ll see slanted walls, and when you either launch or throw your yoyo at them, they’ll bounce at other directions. Understanding of the way each wall is laid out is essential for some of the tougher fights, including those against bosses.
Speaking of bosses, to go back to the Zelda comparison, you’ll find them at the end of every major dungeon, and from there, they feel like Mega Man bosses, not necessarily as far as difficulty goes, but with the way you need to quickly understand their attack patterns and in the visual style that they’re introduced. Since the bosses aren’t incredibly huge, they could be as hard to hit as some of the smaller bosses in the 2D era.
Getting back to the dungeons at hand, the majority of them require you to perform certain tasks in various rooms to get the keys to open specific doors. Most of the time, it’s ridding the screen of enemies. Other times, it’s finding a hidden item after ridding several screens of enemies. At times I wished there was more variety with how they’re built from a gameplay perspective because the majority of dungeon rooms were kill rooms, and a handful of them especially early on were more annoying than they were fun. Still, I did enjoy the escape sections of the game which really maximized platforming. Sure, I died several times, but they also seemed fair.
Great reference to a certain children’s card game.
To up your arsenal, you’ll have access to safe houses that also have resources like badges to enhance your gameplay or upgrades that’ll give Pippet a few more points to work with as far as attack power, badge points, and other buffs like the ability to lose less money when you die. Again, early on, these feel useful. But once you begin to stack your life gauge with more hearts, things become way easier to handle. I didn’t even really use these safe houses much later in the game except when I needed to heal right away.
On that note, the team at Pocket Trap needs to be commended for their Difficulty Menu. The game doesn’t have default difficulty settings to choose from, but there are sliders in the game where you can adjust different variables to make the experience easier. You can do things like give yourself more life, badge points, make the enemies weaker, and things of that nature. So if this game is tough as nails for you, you can also make the game too easy if it’s really frustrating you to that extent.
Depending on how skilled you are and how much you choose to explore this vibrant and dangerous world, Pipistrello should take you anywhere between 12 to 20 hours to finish. At $20 digital, the game is definitely a chunky experience that’ll keep those longing for a high-octane experience worthy of those SNES or GBA “better” days.
It has its issues, namely in a lack of variety and difficulty spikes too early that can be tough to overcome, but it also doesn’t take long for the game to show that it’s something special. From an unexpectedly profound plot to its familiar yet modern take on old-school game that both borrows from other greats in addition to bringing cool ideas, Pipistrello and the Cursed Yoyo is definitely easy to recommend to anyone who wants something different from top-down games. If Pocket Trap isn’t on your list of indie studios to watch now, it definitely should be.
by Danreb Victorio
