Yesterday’s Nintendo Direct revealed a new upcoming 3D platformer, which has an impressive pedigree given it’s the first game out of a new studio.
The game is called Penny’s Big Breakaway, and the studio is called Evening Star. The eponymous Penny is a jester/harlequin type of indeterminate gender, who is pretty handy with a yo-yo.
Penny gets themselves into trouble when they perform for a king, and accidentally tear his clothes off. The king then sends his army of penguins after them, and chaos across a 3D world ensues. Appropriately, the penguin army’s species seem to be royal penguins.
Evening Star’s publisher for Penny’s Big Breakaway Take-Two Interactive’s label for smaller games, Private Division. However, what should really get you excited is the staff roll over at Evening Star.
As reported by Video Games Chronicle, Christian Whitehead, who made his name on the mobile ports of Sonic 1 and 2, and was director for Sonic Mania, is Evening Star’s creative director and lead engine architect.
Also jumping over from Sonic Mania’s staff to Evening Star are CEO and lead producer Dave Padilla, art director Tom Fry, chief technology officer and game director Hunter Bridges, and design director Brad Flick.
Christian shared this statement about moving forwards to an original IP:
“At Evening Star, we have a deep passion for expressive, character-driven games that focus on a concise and satisfying move-set. For our debut title, we challenged ourselves to bring that approach into not only a new IP, but to an entire 3D world.”
If you have played Sonic Mania, you will remember that Christian and his team did make some pseudo-3D stages, in an isometric fish eye lens view. Those were reminiscent of Sonic’s bonus stages in those original games, but you could have kind of guessed that Christian wanted to take ideas from those stages even further.
What you can see in the Penny’s Big Breakaway trailer is that it doesn’t go for a full 3D camera. Instead, it is similar to Super Mario 3D World, where a fixed camera gives you a clear view of whatever portion of the stage you are in. Penny’s movement is similarly reminiscent of 3D platformers with quirky movement mechanics, like Chameleon Twist or De Blob.
Penny’s Big Breakaway will be releasing in early 2024 on PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, Nintendo Switch, and Windows. You can watch the official launch trailer below.
