Penny’s Big Breakaway is the first game to come to us from Evening Star, a team created by the developers of Sonic Mania. Despite the success of the team’s previous works, Penny’s Big Breakaway did not perform well financially, and the team had to cut its staff. While we don’t know for sure why Penny’s Big Breakaway was not a breakaway success, there are a few theories present. The first of which was the amount of bugs present at launch, which likely turned a lot of people away. There have also been some that claimed it was Penny’s design, but I personally don’t see a problem with it.

I would have to chalk its poor sales up to the fact that Penny’s Big Breakaway is just not that good. While I don’t consider it a bad game by any means, I found it rather disappointing, and it lacked the finesse that is necessary for a truly great platformer. This can be seen seen almost immediately in the visual design, where each level is splattered with dozens of brightly colored pastels that all clash with each other. This makes each level feel excessively similar to each other, and breaks any sense of immersion into this game’s world.

If it sounds like I’m nitpicking here, I’m not. Penny’s Big Breakaway is a 3D platformer, a genre where aesthetics and art design is especially vital. Look at any game considered a classic in the genre, and you will notice that art design and aesthetics were especially important, and that they were about significantly more than just “get from point A to point B.” I can at least give credit to the character animation for doing its job, but the visual design just kills so much of the potential right off the bat.

The music is one of the better qualities of this game. The soundtrack is co-composed by Tee Lopes. Sean Bialo, and Christian Whitehead himself. It’s worth noting that Tee Lopes has a fairly prolific career, having previously been the lead composer for Sonic Mania and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Shredder’s Revenge, and having also composed music for Youtubers SomeCallMeJohnny, Caddicarus, and Scott the Woz. Sean Bialo doesn’t have as much of a pedigree as Tee Lopes, but he has previously contributed to Double Dragon Gaiden and Spark the Electric Jester 3.

The three of them did an excellent job with the soundtrack. Despite my less than stellar views regarding this game, I’m going to have “Jig’s Up Penny” stuck in my head for the rest of my life. This also seems like the best place to mention that a friend of mine is really insistent the the Busker Bonus theme sounds like porn music. Before writing this review, I decided to give it a close listen to see if there was anything I was missing. I don’t hear it, it just sounds like goofy, cartoony music to me. However, I did realize that the song in question is titled “Trick of the Wrist,” and that two spots on the playlist later, there’s a song called “Penny in a Pinch,” so I guess the joke is on me.

Gameplay wise, I can see what Penny’s Big Breakaway was going for; it was an attempt at a Sonic inspired platformer with less emphasis on speed and more emphasis on stunts and fancy maneuvers. The intent is to make each level feel like a performance, with an emphasis on the end of level score. If I found the base game engaging, I’m sure this would provide a fair amount of replay value beyond the initial playthrough.

The first problem is the levels are forgettable and bland. No seriously, I’m struggling to remember any noteworthy details of the levels even though I just finished the game. I’m probably going to need to look at some gameplay footage or something. Okay, I think I get why I found this game so dull. A major part is the visual design, as I already stated. The other part, however, is that level design is very simplistic. There just really isn’t anything done other than “get to the end of the level,” and maybe go after the gears and collect designated item for NPC that has a task (and that’s often timed, so you will always fail it on the first attempt and have to restart if you want to try it again). Oh, and we can’t forget about the powerups that only exist to get past designated plot barrier and that time out as soon as you get past plot barrier so you can’t use them for anything else.

The biggest problem with Penny’s Big Breakaway is that it’s clearly not made for a general audience; it’s made for speedrunners. In other words, it’s for people whose first instinct upon playing a game is to see how they can break and deconstruct it to the point that large swaths of the game can be skipped. And yes, I’m fully aware of the irony of this game being slower paced than most 3D Sonic games, while being more geared for speed running.

Penny’s Big Breakaway also has a strong emphasis on high scores, and building up combos by doing fancy moves and stunts. Unfortunately, I missed out on this when I played through the game, since I prefer to play my games and not methodically deconstruct them to make imaginary number go up. To quell the inevitable “get good” response, Penny’s Big Breakaway isn’t a hard game, this isn’t Dark Souls with yo-yos and jesters.

It isn’t a matter of the combo system being “too hard to do,” I got all time relics in Crash Bandicoot: N Sane Trilogy and completed all time challenges in Demon Turf as well, and those were excruciatingly difficult. The key difference is that I actually enjoyed those games, and thus felt more compelled to challenge myself to complete them. I didn’t even feel engaged when playing Penny’s Big Breakaway normally, so why would I feel motivated to master its mechanics when I just want to be done with it as soon as possible?

I think that Penny’s Big Breakaway offers a lot of insight into the Sonic series’ struggle to transition to 3D. We have the team that made Sonic Mania, the most highly acclaimed Sonic game in years, and one that many claim is superior to the classic Mega Drive games, and then they made this slop. The difference; the former is 2D and the latter is 3D! Oh, and both used the same engine, which I’m sure went very smoothly and didn’t create any problems with development.

As for whether I can recommend Penny’s Big Breakaway, I’m not sure. At the very least I’d wait for a sale.

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