Pipistrello and the Cursed Yoyo is a platformer, adventure metroidvania (or "Yoyovania) developed by Pocket Trap and published by PM Studios. As soon as you turn on the game, you're treated to probably one of the coolest retro opening ever, foreshadowing the inevitable fun you'll have with this game!

Story

✅ Simple story
✅ fun dialogue 
✅ interesting characters

Pipistrello and the Cursed Yoyo is a story about a city that is essentially run by the Pipistrello family due to their control over energy. Auntie, the current head of Pipistrello Industries runs a tight ship, dictating how everything should be done in the city and charging exorbitant taxes. Because of this, several people that run key businesses are unhappy with the way things are going.

Incidentally, Auntie has been experimenting with a way to create an infinite source of energy – creating Mega Batteries utilizing a person's soul. This sounds super evil right? Unfortunately (for Auntie), four business owners decides to steal her soul, trap it, and create 4 Mega Batteries. You play as Pipit, coming home from another failed yo-yo competition, when you inadvertently save a part of Auntie's soul, trapping her inside your yo-yo. Together their goal is to stop these 4 baddies thus getting Auntie’s soul back. Along the way, we learn about the city, how the Pipistrello family affected it, and how it is now that it's being run by 4 major companies with infinite energy.

Gameplay

✅ fun yo-yo inspired traversal abilities
✅ You can PARRY 
✅ challenging & varied platforming 
✅ easy to use map & informative
✅ great enemy variety & bosses
❌ very difficult start
âž– but is modular in difficulty settings 
✅ unique character progression through contracts
✅ equippable badges to change the way you play
✅ great checkpoint system "rooms"

Pipit and his trusty cursed yo-yo (currently being inhabited by his Auntie) has many challenges in store for him, in order to get his Auntie back to her body. In order to do so, Pipit learns yo-yo abilities for both battle and traversal. The world is tough and unforgiving with plenty of hazards, and the enemies will do their best to stop you in your tracks. 

The gameplay loop when it comes to fighting enemies and how your resources are handled are as follows: You have hearts that you lose every time you get hurt from an enemy or from world hazards like falling in water. You also have coins that are mostly used for improving your badges, paying off your debt (more on this later), and buying some key items in shops to complete puzzles or side quests. These 2 main resources (health & coins) are seen around the world but are also dropped by enemies.  When you fail (lose all hearts), you have the option to restart the "room" again or teleport to your last visited safe house. You'll also lose a portion of your coins every time this happens.

With all these in mind, the game is actually quite challenging due to the amount of enemies you could face at a time, the hazards you need to be wary of, and what you stand to lose when you fail.

Thankfully, difficulty settings in Pipistrello and the Cursed Yoyo is completely modular allowing you to potentially bypass any/all damage from enemies or hazards if you so desire. When I played the game, I turned off fall damage, which I would actually suggest unless you hate yourself, because as the game progresses, the platforming aspects gets increasingly complicated and you will fall, A LOT! I will also suggest turning off or lessening the loss of coins from game over, at least at the beginning, because it will severely hinder your character progression being unable to pay the cost to upgrade your badges.

Speaking of badges, Pipit has 2 main ways to progress apart from learning new traversal or combat abilities through story progression: Badges and Upgrades. Badges are like accessories you can equip from the workbench. You have a very limited amount you can equip at a time at first, dictated by your Badge Points and these points can be improved by collecting 2 Badge Shards in the world, or through Upgrades.

Badges can really change the way you play, improve your yo-yo skills, and the way you travel. They can vary from increasing your life by 1, make it so that coins are drawn to you, to a completely game breaking badge called "Cheater's Unleash Badge" that makes water traversal/puzzles negligible. You can also improve these badges in your safe house using coins. Doing so can increase the badge's potency or decrease the amount of BP it requires to equip it.

Upgrades are your passive skill tree that you acquire through entering a contract. They have great permanent benefits, but in order to get them, you need to pay off the amount it costs as a debt. While you are indebted, you will have some negative effects that will remain until you pay it off. These negative effects will vary from lesser hearts, BP, enemies not dropping roses (your health), or lessening your attack power.

They way you pay off your debt is when you acquire coins in the world or through defeating enemies, 50% of the coins will be used to pay off the debt, and the other you get to keep. It's a unique risk and reward system and will certainly add an extra layer of difficulty in your play. I would definitely suggest paying off your debt before a boss battle so you are in tip-top shape for it. 

When it comes to battles, be it against regular enemies or bosses, you'll have your regular yo-yo attack, as well as a Charged Move and a Special Move. Charged Moves is used by holding the attack button and releasing when ready. There are 3 to choose from and can be switched out using the workbench in your safe house or some scattered around the world. It's good to switch them out depending on your encounters as some are better at single target and 1 that is perfect for mobs (Cat's Cradle).

Special Moves are secondary abilities that you can use. Similar to Charged, there are three to choose from and switched out from the workbench. These moves are a bit more interesting as it can change the way you react to enemies. One of these moves is Parry, allowing you to counter enemy attacks or projectiles with proper timing.

Lastly, it isn't a proper metroidvania without some traversal abilities that you gradually learn as you progress through the story, opening up new areas and treasures. Pipit learns 5 actions in total, all utilizing real yo-yo techniques such as Walk-the-Dog allowing him to bypass water hazards, or UFO Throw giving you an additional anchor to jump over craters. 

The really neat thing about the world and how your yo-yo interacts with it in movement and combat is everything is straight, horizontal or vertical. However, many parts of the stages will feature diagonals which will allow your yo-yo to bounce off in that direction. Due to the combination of Pipit's actions, hazards, and these diagonals, it makes for wonderful platforming and room puzzles which left me stumped in more than one occasion tying to figure out how to get a collectible or progress to the next room. The world is full of these and they are really fun to do and satisfying when you solve the traversal puzzle.

Accessibility & Options

✅ modular difficulty setting 
✅ change graphics filter
✅ robust game options 
✅ change keybinding

When it comes to indie games, accessibility and settings are typically less robust than a AAA game would have. This game isn't as stacked in this aspect,  but definitely has more so than a typical indie would! From being able to change graphics filter, making it look like you're playing the game on a CRTV or a Gameboy, to accessibility features like turning off screen shake, lessening vibrations, and increasing/decreasing game speed! 

Pipistrello and the Cursed Yoyo also has modular difficulty settings that will allow anyone, from all levels of ability, to complete and enjoy the game. You can make it easy as pie, completely nullifying damage, or you can make it tough as nails by giving yourself masochistic levels of handicap! I kept it mostly at default, except I turned off fall damage and money lost on game over (trust me, especially early in the game, this will make you hate yourself way less).

Lastly, again while not as robust as some AAA, the game offers six different language settings as well: English, Portuguese, Spanish, French, Dutch, Italian, and Japanese. 

Graphics, World, & Sound

✅ set in city with several districts & a full interconnected sewer system
✅ retro inspired pixelated graphics
✅ fully realized metroidvania city
✅ crisp and unique SFX for each enemy
✅ BGM is catchy and retro

With Pipistrello Industries in disarray due to the stolen Mega Batteries, we are tasked to take them back from 4 main districts. The city is in chaos: complete with hazards such as poor plumbing which created water spots all over the city, deep craters due to over construction, officials blocking the way in order to maintain peace and control the public, and really really impatient and dangerous drivers. This doesn't even include all the baddies trying to stop you from accomplishing your task! 

To get around, you'll need to use the sewers and streets, complete your missions, acquire new abilities in order to get further into the city like you would in a typical metroidvania. The world a is colourful, busy, and bustling in both the way it's represented and the way it sounds.

To tie them all together is their great use of sound to really represent each enemy, moves, and the hustle and bustle of the city. The enemies have several sound cues that plays an important role to allow you to react and keep yourself safe. The bad guys hurt and are unforgiving, so these graphics and sound cues are a necessity. 

Final Thoughts

Pipistrello and the Cursed Yoyo is Yoyovania that excel in all aspects of what makes metroidvanias great and so much fun! A definite must-play for fans of this genre

Pipistrello and the Cursed Yoyo was released on May 28th, 2025 and was played on PlayStation 5 Pro.
The game was provided by the publisher.

It's currently available on PlayStation 5, Nintendo Switch, Xbox Series, and PC.