Pipistrello and the Cursed Yoyo Review
Rating – Highly Recommend!
It’s not often I find a game that scratches an itch I didn’t even know I had. Pipistrello and the Cursed Yoyo, a pixel art, isometric, Metroidvania adventure-puzzle game published by PM Studios and developed by the Brazil-based Pocket Trap Games, is a delightful surprise. I previously knew Pocket Trap Games for developing Dodgeball Academia, another game I unexpectedly loved. Knowing this before playing Pipistrello and the Cursed Yoyo, I was confident it would be another home run, and I’m glad to confirm I was right!
The game follows Pippit, a member of the powerful Pipistrello bat family, which holds a monopoly over the city’s electrical power supply. The family business is run by Pippit’s aunt, the aptly named Madame. Pippit isn’t interested in the family business (though they are interested in the money it provides); they’d rather focus on their yo-yo skills and becoming the best yo-yo master. They enter multiple competitions, with mixed results, relying on family funds to compete. This leads to the game’s beginning: Pippit returns home needing their yearly allowance for their next yo-yo competition, but things quickly take a turn for the worse. The Pipistrello family estate is attacked by the leaders of four rival gangs, using their combined power to transform Madame Pipistrello into pure energy that powers their comically large batteries. However, in a moment of desperation to save his family, Pippit throws their yo-yo into the energy beam, unknowingly allowing Madame to inhabit the yo-yo, empowering it and giving Pippit new abilities. Now, the nephew-aunt duo must reclaim the batteries to reverse the process and restore Madame to her body.
While Pipistrello is lighthearted, comical, and fun on the surface, there’s an underlying layer of commentary on classism and the effects of a monopoly. The Pipistrello family controls all the city’s electricity; everyone must pay them for power, and the prices are unfair. Many NPC’s throughout the game mention the unfair pricing and its impact on their businesses. It’s clear Madame isn’t well-liked because of these business practices. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing; it gives the character room to grow, understand the harm they’re causing their community, and ultimately, I believe, this thought process pays off by the end of the game.
After Pippit unknowingly saves their aunt, they’re tossed into the sewers, as the new bosses of the city only came for Madame. This serves as the game’s beginner dungeon and tutorial, where you’ll familiarize yourself with the basic controls and the unique aspect of Pipistrello: the yo-yo’s interaction with walls. Pipistrello’s appearance and gameplay are most reminiscent of top-down Legend of Zelda games like A Link to the Past on the SNES. In A Link to the Past, hitting a wall with your sword results in no change; the attack clanks against the wall, which can be dangerous in a room with enemies. Pipistrello puts a unique spin on this: the attack is reactive to the curve of what it hits. Throwing your yo-yo/aunt forward and back provides range and allows the yo-yo to extend and bounce off angled walls, enabling impressive puzzle-solving. Launching the yo-yo down a corridor of angles and watching it wrap around like an extending snake is very satisfying. You’ll use this to hit distant enemies, grab items, or flick switches, creating complex and satisfying chains of actions to progress through the dungeons. After clearing this tutorial dungeon, the second surprise appears: a fully explorable city split into North and South. Arriving in the South, Madame explains that you need to go to each gang member’s turf and retrieve the batteries containing her essence, which are now being used to supercharge their turf’s theme, such as Football/Soccer, Construction and Music Festivals. This gives you the option of going East or West to challenge their dungeon and battle the boss, reclaim the batteries, and learn new skills to progress and access previously inaccessible areas and items.
At its core, Pipistrello and the Cursed Yoyo is a Metroidvania, and one I thoroughly enjoyed. The area is expansive, full of secrets, and doesn’t railroad you into one solution for many puzzles. I was surprised by how expansive the map is; many times I thought I’d reached the edge, only to find I could continue. This is one of Pipistrello’s strengths: I wanted to engage with it, explore the city, and see what I could find—collectible badges that give Pippit unique effects, containers that expand the number of badges or life hearts, or simply collecting money from coins and defeated enemies. The core gameplay and the skills you unlock make city exploration a joy.
The only gameplay mechanic I didn’t enjoy was the contract system. Speaking with one of Pippit’s cousins allows you to acquire upgrades through a loan, requiring you to collect a certain amount of money. Initially, this is low for smaller upgrades, but taking on these contracts also means penalties until you repay your debt. While a contract is active, 50% of the money you collect is yours, and the other 50% goes toward paying off the contract. As the game progresses and you take on more contracts, the amount of money needed can become quite time-consuming, though there are ways to speed it up. You can collect large diamonds and trade them to a jeweler for cash. The worst part is the penalties: reduced heart count, lower attack damage, or enemies not dropping health. This is what I disliked most; the penalties often felt too burdensome, especially combined with the large amount of money needed to unlock the upgrade. Thankfully, the game lets you quit contracts if they make the game too difficult, which is a nice compromise. However, if you find the game too easy, this might be the solution you’re looking for.
Sprite work is an arduous task, especially when aiming for smooth movement. Pipistrello opts for a simpler approach, which isn’t a bad thing. It allows for unique character poses used effectively during conversations to express the feelings and tones of the dialogue. The music matches the game’s presentation marvellously. Pipistrello aims for a Game Boy Advance aesthetic and recreates the accompanying chiptune OST. A massive surprise in the soundtrack (and probably for many in the trailers) is the inclusion of famed composer Yoko Shimomura. If you’re a fan of the Kingdom Hearts series or Super Mario RPG, this name will fill you with confidence in the music’s quality, which I personally enjoyed greatly and found very catchy, even after hearing the same songs multiple times.
Pipistrello and the Cursed Yoyo is a fantastic game. I enjoyed the humour (and the Easter eggs!), the music, and the gameplay. You can feel the development team’s love for older Super Nintendo games, but it’s never a mere copy; they always apply their own twists to make it their own. After Pipistrello and Dodgeball Academia, Pocket Trap Games has rightfully earned a spot on my watchlist of developers. They’ve more than earned it.
If this review has peaked your interest in the game, I would highly recommend checking it out, it can be found on PC through Steam or the Epic Games Store, PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S and Nintendo Switch 1 & 2!
