Pipistrello and the

Cursed Yoyo Review

A Trick Shot That Nails The Landing

Written by Dallas

Posted on: June 22nd, 2025

Developed by Pocket Trap

Published by PM Studios, Inc.

Released on May 28th 2025

PC, PS5, Xbox Series X|S, Nintendo Switch

Taking what works from other titles, mashing them into a love letter aimed at the gamers who grew up with them, and you get Pipistrello and the Cursed Yoyo. After personally playing through a slew of big modern games, Pipistrello was a breath of fresh air that I sorely needed. While I didn’t find it to be perfect, it reminded me of my childhood, of GBC classics, and what it means for a game to be just pure fun. Here’s our review:

Traversing the water into a new area. Secret in sight. Ah yea, that’s the good stuff.

CRIME! You’re Pippit, part of the Pipistrello crime family! You dream of being a professional yo-yo-er? But things go awry when you head back to your family’s estate to visit the head of your family’s empire, who is none other than your aunt. The crime bosses from the other parts of the city, in an attempt to overthrow Pipistrello Industries, attack your aunt mid conversation, and almost succeed. But the young Pippit intervenes, allowing part of the Madame’s soul to be absorbed by your yo-yo!

From there you set off to defeat the 4 crime bosses, take back the “MEGA-Batteries” that took away your aunts power, bring her back to life and help restore your family’s empire. A fun and easy enough premise to get you going. What I didn’t expect was the amount of humor layered throughout your 15hr adventure, 20+ if you get sidetracked by extra content like me. Now there’s no voice acting, instead character noises play whilst you read dialogue boxes, but that doesn’t matter when you have real clever writing. Whether you’re pushing the main story and bickering with your soul trapped aunt, or waking up workers sleeping on the job, there’s fun to be had in it.

Defeating my foes without having to even get close? I might start carrying around a yoyo as well!

Now Pipistrello and the Cursed Yoyo is what I like to call a “Gameplay First” type of game. Yes there’s a story to push you through the adventure, but at the heart of it, is the purity of fun in its gameplay. It’s designed with a gameplay focused approach. The world is built around your yoyo and its mechanics, without anything feeling out of place. Diagonal environmental blocks cover areas of your screen, intentionally placed to bounce your yoyo off of to defeat enemies or solve puzzles. Areas blocked off by simple design, only to be able to be traversed easily once a new mechanic is learned. Enemies who were once problematic, now quickly go down with a new move. It all works and blends so well.

In each given area, you’re allowed the freedom to choose which boss to go after from a set of two. Creating a different experience for the next boss based on what you chose first, as each area presents new abilities and mechanics then what the others hold.

Pipistrello and the Cursed Yoyo reminds me SO much of my time as a child, playing Zelda on my Game Boy Color, not only in its presentation of resembling those classic titles with its top down view, but in the way it handles your ability path to unlock new areas. Backtracking is there to access secrets, upgrades, etc. but never at the core of the experience in order to make actual progression. Which I actually prefer, as I like that to be optional and rewarding, rather than being forced to and lead down the same path every other player will have to take too. But this might not come as any surprise when the marketing paints it as the first “Yoyovania” (which I love btw).

Pipistrello not only pays homage to the older classic games like Zelda and Metroid, but also modern hits like Hollow Knight. Badges will be rewarded and found throughout the world, applying attributes that will help your progression as well as defining your play style. But you see, to equip a badge, you must have enough slots to place it. Some Badges can require as low as one, or up to five on the high end. Don’t worry though, you’ll gain more slots as you venture forth allowing you to equip more!

Badges aren’t your only means of upgrades. You have an interesting skill tree at your disposal too. You’ll be indebted a certain amount upon selecting the skill you want, as well as having negative attributes applied until that debt is paid. (If you’re confident in your fighting skills, you can easily take care of that debt in the arena.) But the combat here is no joke. Be prepared for a real challenge. Enemies all have their unique attack patterns and health pools. Combined with your low health points (at least in the beginning) and negative attributes to get that next upgrade, you might have a tough time, seeing that death screen more than you like.

I genuinely loved the challenge, each boss was unique and fun in their own way, and the final boss was a DOOZY. My main gripe with combat wasn’t actually due to the difficulty but rather the inconsistency with the controls. More often than not, I would be attacking the wrong way despite holding the direction I wanted, almost like I got locked from my previous action. I don’t know if this is by design, but after making me fail for the umpteenth time, it got real tiring.

This unfortunately extended to the platforming and traversal sections as well. There’s nothing worse than falling to your death, losing tons of money you had been saving, due to the game registering a combat move instead of a traversal move while you’re mid-air because you held the button down half a second too long. I feel like this could potentially be fixed with having different button prompts, but with everything being centered around your yoyo, the attack and traversal buttons being the same does make sense from a design standpoint.

While it did frustrate me, and gave me unwarranted deaths, it didn’t detract from my overall experience and/or enjoyment because at the end of the day I was still retrying after every failed attempt because I was still having fun.

I don’t appreciate the bullets.

I do appreciate seeing their pathway.

When it comes to games going for a retro aesthetic, artistic design goes a long way to pulling it off. Thankfully, Pipistrello succeeds tenfold here, with absolutely gorgeous pixel art, from the character design to the world. I felt like I was playing a game from the past, with all the quality of life features you’d expect from a modern title. For being a retro inspired title, I was genuinely impressed with the amount of options, including scaling the image to the exact desired resolution and magnification. So it should come as no surprise that it ran flawlessly, both on desktop and Steam Deck. The Steam version also includes cloud save, so switching between the Deck and PC was a seamless experience. YMMV when it comes to the console versions though, as usually their settings are different.

Look. Do you enjoy Zelda like experiences? Do you have a fondness for older games? Do you enjoy a challenge? Then just go and pick up Pipistrello and the Cursed Yoyo, you won’t regret it. It’s a lovely time. Yes, you may get frustrated but the experience is worth it. Beautiful pixel heart, a fun soundtrack with great sound design, an often hilarious story, and challenging gameplay and puzzles. What more could you ask out of a game?!

I’m looking forward to the inevitable sequel, because Pocket Trap has a hit on their hands.