Review: Pipistrello and the Cursed Yoyo

Waiter, there’s Hollow Knight in my Zelda! I at least fumbled my way through using accessibility settings.

I really wanted to like Pipistrello and the Cursed Yoyo more than I did. I love the old 2D Zelda games, but indie devs don’t seem to make much in the same vein. Hell, that’s not even a tag on Steam. Zelda-likes are frequently tagged with Metroidvania, but I think the relation isn’t as strong as people make it out to be.

A good Zelda-like is mostly exploration and puzzles. A good Metroidvania is mostly exploration and combat. Also, Zelda-likes typically have almost no platforming, since the top down camera angle is not conducive to that.

If this game wasn’t both immensely charming and full to the gills with accessibility options, I definitely wouldn’t have finished it.

Hollow Knight seems to have captivated the brains of indie game designers out there. Perhaps not as badly as Dark Souls, but you could argue that Hollow Knight is sort of the Dark Souls of Metroidvanias. And I like both games to differing degrees, but continuously feel like indie game designers are taking the wrong inspirations from these games (mostly focusing on difficulty).

Pros

• Gorgeous pixel art

• Goofy and fun writing

• Modern day setting with modern problems

• The yoyo is creative

• Some of the platforming feels really good to execute

• The intertwined city and sewer maps are really fun

• Copying the mini puzzle shrines from Breath of the Wild was a great idea

Cons

• Way too much platforming for a top down video game

  • I actually like platforming games, like Celeste and N+, for what it’s worth

  • And fall damage??? C’mon!

• Many puzzles are time sensitive and require quick execution

• Encounter design feels awful

  • Enemies are all damage sponges, taking 2-3 times as many hits as I’d expect

  • Combat mostly occurs in locked rooms (a la Devil May Cry or Guacamelee), and the enemy density is too high to effectively fight without getting hit constantly

• The game is extremely punishing by default

  • You start with three hearts, but you can’t talk half or quarter heart damage like in Zelda… that’s three hits, period

  • Beating a boss doesn’t give you another heart container

  • And it takes 8 heart container pieces to get another heart in this game (unlike 4 in Zelda—where there’s also full sized heart containers available)

• Some of the best upgrades in the game require you to go into debt, severely penalizing your stats until you can accumulate enough money

• By default you lose money when you die

• Holy fucking shit cars drive super fast, rarely stop, and hit you so much that I died walking around the city at least once

Screenshots