I’m a total 90s kid, and I remember some of the phases well – pogs, BMX bikes, and even a yo-yo phase. I remember saving up my allowance for one of the Yomegas and learning all sorts of tricks like walk the dog, around the world, and rock the baby. What does this have to do with Pipistrello and the Cursed Yoyo? A lot of those tricks end up in your toolkit as you traverse New Jolt City. This plays pretty fluid compared to that era, but this could have easily been a game I would’ve fired up on my modded GBA – I had one of those backlight kits installed.

Unfortunately, I never got around to playing the GBA era of Legend of Zelda or Castlevania, and both games are huge influences for Pipistrello. I was more of a Mario & Luigi guy. I recently covered the release date news for Pipistrello, and I was pretty stoked to get my hands on a key. The game launches on a rotating, suspiciously similar Game Boy Advance (GBA) called the Pocket Trap Game System, and there’s a display option that simulates the game as if you’re playing it, complete with button presses. Instead of a traditional choose-your-difficulty system, there are options to adjust things like drops, damage, or even nullify fall damage.

Pipistrello and the Cursed Yoyo - Pocket Trap Game System display setting — I love when games throw in little attention to detail like this

Going to Bat for His Auntie

Pipistrello and the Cursed Yoyo kicks off with a few cutscenes explaining that the Pipistrello family has a monopoly on electricity after discovering they can extract roses for the ultimate energy source. It sort of paints them like MomCorp from Futurama – they proceeded to dominate all other forms of industry, and that’s where our Rogue’s Gallery of bosses comes into play. Pippet gets introduced as he’s taking a cab to Pipistrello Industries to hit up his auntie for another allowance. He’s trying to chase his dream of becoming a yo-yo champion, even if he placed in the upper 300s.

After a brief tutorial, Pippit reunites with his auntie, Madame Pipistrello, just as a crew of Crime Bosses arrives with a machine to drain Madame Pipistrello’s energy to power up all of their Mega-Batteries. Pippit tries to intervene with a yo-yo trick and causes things to go sideways. Somehow, Madame Pipistrello’s soul gets trapped in Pippit’s yoyo, and she sort of acts as a curmudgeonly Navi for the remainder of the game. Pippit makes it to the family safe house, which serves as your save point, place to upgrade badges, and place to swap out your moves.

New Jolt City Is Huge

You start with two of the crime bosses marked on your map. The game map is huge, and I liked that it automatically calls out side quests and collectibles with markers and exclamation points. This is a Metroidvania, so there’s a gameplay loop of unlocking a new skill and exploring a previously inaccessible area. Pipistrello and the Cursed Yoyo does an awesome job at little quality of life things, like if you lose all of your hearts, you can retry the room at a cost. Certain badges allow you to mitigate those costs. If you drop an item, it automatically respawns in the room. I groaned at the idea of a fetch quest and so much backtracking until I realized I could just use the fast travel system to quickly grab the item, hop in a cab, and hand it over to the NPC.

All of the side areas and side quests either reward you with heart containers, badge points, or money, and they’re just the right amount of challenging. The only thing that would get a little wonky is when you would try to chain together skills like a wall jump into running across water, but that’s probably just a skill issue. It feels like you’re trying to power up Pipistrello vs. just platinum hunting collectibles. I’m notorious for trying to find all of those areas before even progressing a main questline.

Pipistrello and the Cursed Yoyo Side Quest — Each major area is filled with so many side quests and challenges

Risk vs Reward

The upgrade system has an interesting dynamic – you find Pippet’s cousin Pepita while exploring, and she explains that due to germaphobia, she doesn’t want to handle money (understandable and valid) and will instead offer a contract where 50% of the coins you gain go to her. While this contract is active, Pippet gets the buff, but there’s also a debuff – usually a combination of losing hearts, badge points, or attack points. This made the early game challenging since I was effectively operating at 2 health. After a lot of exploration and puzzling, I started to find badges that would do things like increase the amount of coins enemies dropped, give me a free redo if I fall off a platform, etc. I’m currently at the halfway mark as I’m writing this, so I’m curious to see what endgame builds look like.

I’ve stayed up pretty late playing through Pipistrello and the Cursed Yoyo, and that’s a solid sign that it’s a banger. I appreciate when games have unique enemy designs for each section – it didn’t feel stale or like I was fighting reskinned versions of the same enemy. There’s a fast travel system, so I’d also experiment with swapping out my moves depending on the rooms. The banter between Pippit and Madame Pipistrello had me laughing, and there were a lot of funny bits – I purchased some popcorn thinking it’d be a quest item and got destroyed by pigeons when I tried to throw it. The team added plenty of anti-frustration features and managed to find that fine balance between keeping things challenging and not like you’re going to steamroll through the game in God mode.

Pipistrello and the Cursed Yoyo is available now on all consoles and Steam.