Pipistrello and the Cursed Yoyo Review (Switch eShop)

Though the latest 3D Zelda releases have unmistakably taken the already popular series to all-new heights, there are still some fans who miss the ‘old’ way Nintendo used to design its popular green-hatted protagonist’s adventures.

Such fans will want to pay attention to Pipistrello and the Cursed Yoyo from Brazil-based developer Pocket Trap. This clever and quirky new Metroidvania demonstrates consistent mastery of the essential design principles of a top-down action game, smartly combining action, puzzles, and exploration into a thoroughly enjoyable adventure you won’t want to miss.

You play as Pippit, a young bat with big dreams of one day becoming a famed yoyo master. Even though he isn’t necessarily great with it, he’s fortunately a trust fund baby connected to the family that owns the powerful Pipistrello Industries energy company which supplies power to the whole city. While on a routine visit to his aunt’s mansion to ask for another allowance, he stumbles upon a plot from a small gang of locals to murder his aunt with a soul-stealing ray. Though he intervenes just in time to save her life, Pippit’s injured aunt becomes stored in his yoyo while other pieces of her soul are spirited away in batteries that the duo must track down.

Gameplay could be described as a more urban take on the formula of the 8-bit and 16-bit Zelda games, with you exploring a vast overworld dotted with large and small dungeons, treasures to collect, puzzles to solve, and plenty of baddies to beat up. The gimmick here, of course, is that instead of sweeping valleys and tall peaks, the overworld consists of a crowded and bustling Rio-esque city, while the dungeon designs trade out the typical ‘ancient ruins’ for something like a large shopping mall or stadium.

It'd be impossible to fully describe this gameplay loop without discussing its all-important co-star: the yoyo. Pippit’s simple string toy is far more than just a cheap replacement for a sword; it acts as an incredibly versatile traversal tool and weapon that continuously demonstrates cool new uses throughout the game. Much like an actual yoyo, there’s a lot more you can do than you may think at first glance, and learning new tricks that grant you abilities like being able to zip across water surfaces or grind along the edges of walls gives you a tremendous sense of empowerment and progression.

You’ll naturally pick up various upgrades and treasures along the way as you explore, but the skill tree deserves special mention due to the creative approach it takes to character growth. Pippit quickly gains access to a standard skill tree that hones his abilities once he rescues one of his cousins, but they offer you the upgrades with a catch. Not only do you have to cough up some coins, but they're a germaphobe who refuses to accept the money already in his wallet. So, you have to buy upgrades one at a time via a ‘contract’ in which you’re given the upgrade along with a persistent negative effect (such as decreased health or damage) until you pay off the debt by picking up enough coins from exploration and combat.

If the negative effects are too strong, you can always opt to cancel the contract early, but you then have to give the upgrade back until the next try. We appreciated this rather unique approach to character growth, as it makes you really stop and consider each upgrade before committing yourself. More importantly, it helps to balance the in-game economy a bit by giving you a slightly more indirect way of ‘paying’ for upgrades rather than just forking over more cash as soon as you have it.

Additionally, there’s a Paper Mario-style system in place that allows you to kit out Pippit with various badges you find and earn throughout the adventure to round out some of your stats and give you an edge. Each badge costs a certain amount of BP to equip, and BP is relatively limited, so you have to be very choosy about which of the dozens of options will be part of your build.

If there’s a particular badge that you really like, you can also stump up some extra cash to upgrade it and do things like reduce its BP cost or strengthen its effects to make it that much more useful. We enjoyed what this badge system brings to the overall loop, offering something a bit more novel to reward you for exploration than more rote upgrades like the in-game equivalent of heart pieces. Plus, it gives you a very good reason to continue chasing after coins—those badge upgrades don’t come cheap.

Though this adventure flows impressively smoothly throughout its run, one relatively minor nitpick is that its difficulty can feel rather inconsistent. There are instances in which you’ll be faced with a platforming gauntlet or enemy arena that, while not impossible, feels oddly out of step with the other challenges that came before it. It can mess with the pacing of a dungeon or overworld segment, but this issue isn’t significant enough to notably drag down the overall experience. Not only are the difficulty spikes relatively uncommon, but there’s an ‘assist mode’ where you can individually tweak values for things like drop rates, damage, health, and more to get you past these more difficult sections if you really just can’t get past them.

Visually, Pipistrello and the Cursed Yoyo does an excellent job of emulating the look and feel of classic GBA games, right down to the game booting first on a fictional ‘Pocket Trap’ handheld. Once you get into the game itself, those gorgeous 16-bit graphics are on full display as you investigate colourful and lively city streets, shops, police stations, and more. Additionally, you can go into the image settings and trigger different filters, such as a ‘pixel perfect’ mode or CRT mode, to complete the effect.