Let me start by saying I haven’t had that much fun with an indie game like that for a long time. Pipistrello and the Cursed Yoyo puts you in control of Pippit, the young (bat) heir of the Pipistrello family who is composed of a bunch of rich, controlling billionaires pretty much keeping the New Jolt city on a leash for their own profit. There is probably some kind of social commentary in there. However, Pippit could not care that much about his family - his thing is to play with his yo-yo and to become great at it. That’s the only thing he dreams about.

Your aunt is currently in charge of the business, and things are going well thanks to the invention of mega batteries that provide a huge amount of power to the city and the activities required by the Pipistrello companies.

But things cannot go well forever. These mega-batteries are amazing and caught the eye of some folks looking for a quick way to riches. A few Pipistrello employees conspired together and decided to rebel, get rid of your aunt, and steal the 4 mega batteries for themselves.

In the process, they almost managed to kill your aunt, but she ended up having her personality transferred to Pippit’s pet pocket bat.

And so you are on a quest to bring your aunt back to her real body, and retrieve the mega batteries and get rid of the ones who took them for themselves. Time for revenge!

Powerful 2D

More than the pixel art (which is very nice in itself), this game is incredibly polished. You are presented here with a game very much in the same vein as the older Zelda games (think Zelda III on Super NES), where you move from one screen to the next, fight enemies, solve puzzles, and unlock new items, powers or weapons that make it possible for you to reach new areas. Such a national ID card required to pass a checkpoint!

As for weapons, we aren’t talking about swords and bows here: the key weapon is your yo-yo. It starts very small, with a few movements that you can use with your Yo-yo, and progressively add more complexity and powers, capabilities. For example, one power makes it possible to throw your yo-yo in circle around you, hitting multiple enemies at once. Another one lets you throw your yo-yo ahead of you like a leash and as you run, pulled by the movement of the Yo-yo, you are able to walk on water!

As you start on the 2D game map, you are very much guided by your aunt to go to a specific area. Many places are off limits because you don’t have the right powers yet to cross some boundaries, destroy specific obstacles and so on. So you do have a few options to reach Point B from Point A, but it’s mostly a linear trip at least in the first few hours.

As you move around you can speak with NPCs that will unlock some subquests, and additional challenges that will give you money, power-ups or unlock new capabilities. Or sometimes, comments from your aunt, berating you constantly!

Your trusted yo-yo is of course your main weapon to fight enemies - and also to solve puzzles. Some of the puzzles are about making your yo-yo hit walls and ricochet to finally push a lever.

This means you will lose your yo-yo once it falls somewhere you can’t reach, but it’s temporary. After 5 seconds, a lost yo-yo will respawn in your hands. That’s great, but that also makes you vulnerable for a short time in case there are enemies around.

Once you enter buildings, the action happens on single screens, that contain either enemies or levers or buttons, etc. to unlock the next door. There is typically some back and forth involved, as several locations need to be cleared before reaching the boss of the current level, and unlocking one location needs clearing another. But it’s not that bad, you don’t spend lots of time backtracking.

What I really like is the diversity of the challenges. It’s very easy to make things repetitive, but the devs managed to avoid that. The new capabilities of the yo-yo are constantly exploited, and at first you will be faced with a new puzzle that seems impossible, until you realize a recent capability can help to beat the challenge. The puzzles are, also, never too hard. I was never stuck for too long, and I did not need to check a walkthrough either, which is a good sign.

There is no game over. Just like in Zelda, you have hearts, and every time you are hit you lose one. Beating some waves of enemies can usually give you back one heart, so you are not constantly on the razor’s edge. If you die, you restart in the same room with all your hearts, which makes it easier to progress further and further. The only penalty of dying is to lose some money. Which is problematic, as money is needed to unlock new powers. Throughout the world you have secret trap doors (marked by a red curtain) that lead you to your family’s lair. They act as additional save points, but that’s not all. In there, your remaining uncles and cousins support you in your quest. One of them can repair and craft new badges for you (adding more hearts, increasing the power of your yo-yo), and another one lets you buy skills from a skill tree, for a fee.

So you effectively buy a new skill with a debt (let’s say 1000 dollars), and until you repay it, you will be benefiting from the new power, while being handicapped by some other trait. For example, no more getting hearts when killing enemies while you haven’t paid back the loan. Once the loan is paid, the handicap is removed, until you decide to try to get yet another skill that will give you another handicap until your new debt is paid.

It’s a very cool concept. It makes you a little more vulnerable while your powers will progressively increase. A good balance that prevents your character from becoming all powerful too fast, and actively incentivizes you to grab the money on the map or after killing enemies, before they disappear.

Challenges

Clearing enemies as you move around is usually not too hard, while some enemies swarm can take you by surprise and cause you to die once in a while. But that’s never really a showstopper. Respawn, do better, and move on. But the real fights are with the end-level bosses. The ones you protect the mega-batteries. And such bosses are great! They are the toughest parts of the game.

As I said earlier, dying just makes you lose some money and lets you restart in the same room - but bosses have a lot more HP than other enemies, and beating them is not just about finding one weakness. Similar to games likes Elden Ring, bosses will have new ways to attack you as they lose a quarter of their HP, and so on, so beating them at once, you won’t. There is always some kind of pattern to leverage to make them bleed, but they get faster or stronger as their life goes down, or the pattern changes. And since they have a lot of HP, you are actively trying to avoid getting hit while hitting them as fast and as hard as possible, making the margin for errors much smaller than for other enemies.

Some of the bosses are easier than others. But dying a few times (up to dozens of times) is not completely out of the question. But it’s good fun - they are well done, funny, and are the cherry on the cake for every level.

A very good surprise

Armed with an excellent soundtrack (with some pieces composed by the Japanese composer Yoko Shimomura, who did a lot of music for Capcom, including Street Fighter 2), and a gameplay that never disappoints, Pipistrello and the Cursed Yoyo iks an absolute gem.

It also happens to work perfectly on the Steam Deck and completely deserves its Verified rating. It’s one of the rare games that captures very accurately the spirit of 8 and 16 bits games of the good old days.

Highly recommended, and it goes as you can expect inside our recommended games list. You can also try as demo before buying it, on Steam.

Note: we have received a key from the published for this review, but opinions are ours.