You're going to hear a lot about 'Pipistrello and the Cursed Yoyo' | Off The Radar

Available on: Steam (what this episode is based on), Nintendo Switch, Xbox Series X|S, PlayStation 5

Price: $19.99 USD, Demo available

Release date: May 28th, 2025

Developer, publisher: Pocket Trap, PM Studios

Prior works: Ninjin: Clash of Carrots, Dodgeball Academia

Disclosure: An early review copy was provided to me

My first contact with ‘Pipistrello and the Cursed Yoyo’ was to grimace at it using the term “yoyovania”, so I ask that your first contact with this piece be me eating crow. In a time where there are increasingly silly genre names buzzing around (read: positively said), yoyovania somehow struck me as a bridge too far. However, after 8 hours with it I must confess that they’ve earned the right to make up any word they like.

Even with the 8 hours I’ve managed to sneak in over the last week I’m still sitting at about 44% of the game completed. I do tend to play games more slowly than most, so I swapped notes with my cohort Kevin from The Golden Bolt and Crub, our podcast, who tends to play games faster than most. He hit 100% in around 16 hours, so you’re probably looking at around that time to see credits and have most of the game’s objectives checked off. So, what is a yoyovania?

If I were to put it simply, it’s an interesting mix of metroidvania design with 2D Zelda direction. You play as Pippit, a tolerably snarky little bat with ambitions of being known for their yo-yo prowess. You move through the game screen by screen, defeating enemies and navigating simple puzzle elements by throwing out a yo-yo to the left, right, up, or down. There is a main city area divided into a few sections, each with an underground sewer system with its own layout, as well as dedicated buildings with their own one-room puzzles. Additionally, there are specific areas that serve as main dungeons with more involved combat and puzzle sections leading to a boss fight at the very end. Pockets of the main city and sewer will have a character teach you a new combat ability that you can equip, and the dungeons provide a new movement ability to let you finish the dungeon and access rewards in the city that you couldn’t get before.

All the while, Pippit’s relatives offer a treadmill of micro-goals to work toward as you make your way through the world. The game’s opening sees Pippit’s mayoral aunt being attacked with a laser by 4 business owners in the city, sapping her life force into batteries to charge their own enterprises because, Video Game Logic. Pippit intercepts by throwing the yo-yo in, however, infusing his aunt’s soul with the toy. This silly event leads to a fun back-and-forth between the two characters, with very infrequent pauses in the action for the two to work out their game plan at various points in the game. This event throws the city into disarray, with you quickly finding two members of the family. One offers you a passive upgrade system, with the offset being that you automatically spend 50% of the money you earn in game to pay off a “debt” that gives debuffs until paid off. These debuffs typically lower your attack power, take away a hit point, cause enemies to not drop health items, or some mix of the three. You can refund the money you’ve put in at any time if you’re struggling, though due to being a self-described germophobe the character won’t let you put that money right back into the upgrade.

The other family member gives you access to the game’s badge system. Throughout the game you will collect equippable badges that grant you buffs or modify stats to help you slightly spec your approach to your preference. More damage as your yo-yo ricochets off of slanted corners (a very fun mechanic on its own), seeing enemy health bars, more invincibility frames after taking damage, the works. If you’re at all familiar with how the early ‘Paper Mario’ titles’ badge system worked, you’ll feel right at home here. Each badge takes up an amount of “Badge Points’ available to you, but you can pay money to upgrade a badge and lower that amount while adding another buff to it. Naturally, you can find upgrades tucked away in the world to give you more Badge Points and hit points as well. Everything alchemizes so that you rarely feel like you aren’t making some form of progress; either you’re paying off a debt with chump change from enemies, working toward upgrading a badge (or paying to craft a new one from blueprints found in the world), or you’re in the meat of the main game getting used to a new traversal ability you just obtained.

On that note, you’re given two directions to head toward once the game’s intro is dusted. East takes you to a part of the city undergoing construction from a big slime monster man, West sees you exploring around a mouse’s failing shopping mall seeing new business from a fast food joint within. As someone who photographs dying malls for funsies, naturally I went there first. Aside from my personal bias, if someone asked I would tell them to go to that area of the game first. The traversal unlock there is to “walk the dog”, letting you roll your yo-yo across stretches of water that you’d otherwise sink right into. It’s a neat ability, but in my current playtime has been incredibly limited in its use compared to what the construction area offers. Over there you get the ability to push yourself away from walls, leading to tight challenges figuring out where to aim your yo-yo as you work your way over bottomless pits and through corners and tight spaces. I was surprised by the clever design this afforded, and I imagine that if I had went here first I would have been relatively underwhelmed by the limited implementation of that move. It’s still fun! Pocket Trap just gets much more mileage out of this wall pushing move much more quickly. The tension is consistently rewarding.

What will likely catch your eye first with this game is its essence. The development team has no qualms about wearing the Game Boy Advance inspirations on their sleeve; the game even features a “Pocket Trap Advance” display option with a faux-handheld system that is just a GBA in all but name. There are filters here to approximate the screen of that system as well, and the virtual handheld’s buttons simulate presses to match up with your inputs. It is very cute, and while for me it was merely a few minutes of novelty I have to appreciate how unabashedly clear they are with what they set out for here. This allows the game to have a “GBA but how you remember it” vibe, where it looks and sounds like how you remember games being on that system but actually pulls off more than would be possible there. Putting aside the technical feasibility they absolutely nail it, it’s not hard to imagine 7 year old me playing this game on my launch GBA during long car rides, dreading the sun going down and not being able to see the game anymore.

That’s really the kicker, I would dread it. Pipistrello is simply an addictive game, perfectly balancing very light “puzzles” with its constant charm. It is immediately one of the better entries in the genre I’ve played. I don’t aim to paint it as some genre-sweeping revolution, instead just as a very well-crafted experience. Every few screens has a fun, weird little character that just wants a hamburger or is pleased to pass some quirky observation about this incredibly brightly colored city. It’s yet to cross over into being overly smarmy, and I don’t expect it to in the back half of the game either. The few minutes of setup at the start is text-heavy, but after that the game smartly steps back to let you focus on acquainting yourself with its systems. The size of the game world means that even when you only have time to sit down for 30 minutes, you can still make some satisfactory progress and feel good about having done something. This is a smart, polished game that won me over within that first 30 minutes. Every time I think I’m settling into a groove I’m thrown a new wrinkle that gets my mind running once again and really excited and just…having fun. I really feel that this game will find an ardent audience to champion it, and I’m quite pleased to be one of them. It’s exactly the kind of title that made me want to spin up ‘Off The Radar’ in the first place; an addictive experience that came out of nowhere and kept impressing me. I’m excited to see the rest of the game, and even more excited to see what Pocket Trap will bring us next. Frankly, I will be surprised if this isn’t sitting comfortably on many favorites lists come the end of the year. I’m sorry for downloading ‘Dodgeball Academia’ on Game Pass and never once booting it up, Pocket Trap.

‘Off The Radar’ is available on Beehiiv in text and audio form, on your podcast service of choice, and will be delivered early to my Patreon supporters when no embargoes are in the way. Speaking of, a special thanks to Adrian, Buckles Chucklo, Harry Baker, Hiro, James Boss, GoldStorm07, Svendelica, Jeet, TheCrazyEven, Patrick Thompson, and Cooking Mama for their support.