Pipistrello and the Cursed Yoyo would really feel proper at house in your GBA

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 having the ability to make the yo-yo go up and down. However with Pipistrello and the Cursed Yoyo, I may faux like I used to be midway first rate — all whereas enjoying a foolish sport that seems like a non secular successor to the Sport Boy Advance titles I beloved rising up.

Pipistrello is a top-down journey sport, during 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 power 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 purpose 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 will 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, despite the fact that I performed Pipistrello on my Steam Deck OLED’s way more trendy 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 extra yo-yo-themed strikes that can enable you extra simply fend off baddies, discover the town that the sport takes place in, and remedy puzzles. Lots 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 talent tree with a contract-based system. Once you decide up a contract, you need to work off a cash debt and take care of 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 turning into overpowered too rapidly.

Not that you must actually fear about getting too robust, although. I discovered that Pipistrello was actually tough, particularly early on. Pipistrello has a whole lot of fight, and enemies regularly overwhelmed me. There’s not an enormous penalty for dying — you simply lose some cash and might sort out the room once more — however some rooms have been nonetheless fairly robust and took a number of tries to complete.

Fortuitously, 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’ll be able to even nullify fall harm. As I performed, I regularly messed round with the choices to assist clean over some significantly tough sections.

I’ll admit that by the tip of my almost 10-hour playthrough, I typically made myself invincible in order that I may extra rapidly see the remainder of the story, the puzzles, and the platforming. The fight rooms grew to become an excessive amount of of a time suck for me. However despite the fact that the enemies posed no hazard, I nonetheless had a blast yo-yoing them to loss of life. And I nonetheless had to determine puzzles alone, 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, but it surely’s fairly darn enjoyable to have one in a online game.

^{Pipistrello and the Cursed Yoyo is offered now on Nintendo Change, PC, PlayStation, and Xbox.}