What parents need to know
Developed by Brazilian indie studio Pocket Trap, Pipistrello and the Cursed Yoyo is a tribute to Game Boy Advance’s games, including those in The Legend of Zelda franchise.
You play as Pippit, a young member of the wealthy Pipistrello family who controls the city with an iron fist thanks to its monopoly on electricity. However, Pippit has little interest in family affairs (except to ask her aunt for money). In fact, Pippit much prefers to participate in yo-yo competitions.
But one day, when he comes to beg for his aunt, the town’s businessmen decide to rebel against the unfair rates imposed by the Pippistrello family, and they attack Pippit’s aunt with a laser that transforms the soul into energy that can be stored in batteries.
Pippit interrupts the experiment with her yo-yo, but it’s too little, too late. Your aunt’s soul is then imprisoned in the yo-yo, and it is up to you to gather the 4 mega-piles in order to reconstitute the body of the boss of the Pipistrello industries.
Intended as a tribute to the Zelda games on the Game Boy Advance, we discover a similar handling, with a camera that follows the action from above. We face hundreds of enemies with the help of our trusty yo-yo.
But the yo-yo is not only for beating us; It also allows us to move around and solve puzzles in this urban environment using techniques that we unlock as we adventure. For example, we can throw the head of our yo-yo to reach out-of-reach switches, or use our yo-yo to walk, or rather roll, on water. Don’t ask us how it works!
But it’s not just our yo-yo that can improve; Pippit himself can unlock new skills. There are two ways to do this. The first is by equipping badges that we find during our adventure (or that we buy by finding badge blueprints). These badges change our abilities, but the amount of badges you can equip depends on the amount of badge points you have.
The second way to improve our character is by buying new talents in the skill tree. To unlock them, you have to borrow money (even if you already have the money in hand… we imagine that Pippit wants to build its credit!). Once the money is borrowed, half of our earnings will go towards servicing our debt, and we will suffer penalties until this debt is paid.
It should also be noted that the soundtrack has benefited from a few pieces signed by the legendary composer Yoko Shimomura (Super Mario RPG, Kingdom Hearts, Xenoblade Chronicles).
Details
Level of experience required
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Evaluation
There is a very slight cartoonish violence because we attack the enemies with our yo-yo, but this one is funny and far from graphic.
Nothing of the sort.
It can be useful to read to understand the story and follow the objectives, but you can do relatively well with the visual indicators on the map alone.
We work together with our aunt who is not exactly a saint, but Pippit tries to bring her back on the right path and questions herself.
Some passages can be rather tough and require a few tries, but the title does not punish the defeat too much.
The game is affordable and does not offer paid content.
Local game modes
Single-player story mode.
Online Game Modes
None.
Expansions/Add-ons (DLC)
The soundtrack can be purchased separately.
Our opinion
Some more cynical players sometimes look at large-scale games and lament the lack of love that the developers seem to have for their production.
We will answer those to look at independent developers to reconcile with the medium. Because there’s no doubt about it, the developers of Pocket Trap have given lots and lots of love to their newest title.
First of all, we have to talk about the packaging, which pays homage to the GBA era. The menu welcomes us by presenting us with a cartridge of Pipistrello and the Cursed Yoyo inserted into a console reminiscent of the GBA, here called the Pocket Trap. The plump and colorful sprites also remind us of this particular era of video games (in addition to being a visual delight, with decidedly modern lighting). The game also offers us a host of visual filters if we want to recreate even more faithfully the experience of playing on the latest console in the Game Boy line.
It’s obvious that the Pocket Trap team feels a sincere nostalgia for that time, and they send us all their love for this console.
But Pipistrello is not content to play on our nostalgic fibre. It’s an innovative game that’s full of great ideas. You take a single tool, the yo-yo, and you find a million ways to use it, both in combat and exploration. The puzzles are clever, and have pushed me several times to be impressed by the creativity of the developers.
The title also features brilliant game systems. The debt system for unlocking new abilities in the skill tree is great. It forces us to weigh the pros and cons before making our choices and to think. Is the penalty that will be imposed on us worth the cost? Is it better to wait until you’ve completed a difficult passage before unlocking a new skill? Maybe find a way to make money quickly to pay off this troublesome debt as quickly as possible?
It’s a system that the writer of these lines doesn’t remember seeing before, and it adds a unique dimension to our progress.
But the game systems are not only original, they are mastered. Moving around is always pleasant, and at the fifteenth hour of play, I was still having as much fun as the first one in propelling myself to the four corners of the city with my yo-yo. In addition, the constant addition of new options with our yo-yo means that we never have time to get bored and become jaded.
The only (tiny) shadow in the picture; Some optional objectives require us to retrace our steps and drag an object through large portions of the city, which isn’t particularly exciting. But since it’s very optional, we don’t complain too much about it.
Finally, the soundtrack is worth the detour and accompanies this track perfectly. Whether it’s the talent of the two main composers (Leonardo Lima and Henrique Lorenzi) or the touch of Yoko Shimomura (or more likely, a mix of all of these), one thing is certain; the soundtrack of Pipistrello and the Cursed Yoyo is memorable.
What more can we say? Between a cute and neat visual style, a memorable soundtrack, a story that raises interesting questions with humor but above all, a gameplay so exhilarating that we saw the end of the game arrive with regret, Pipistrello and the Cursed Yoyo is a title that is just waiting to reconcile you with the state of the video game industry.
