Pipistrello and the Cursed Yoyo

Every few years a game arrives that doesn’t just execute the retro-revival playbook but rewrites a page of it. Pipistrello and the Cursed Yoyo is that game. Developed by Brazilian studio Pocket Trap and published by PM Studios, it wears its Game Boy Advance influences on its sleeve — the pixel density, the color palette, the top-down grid all scream 2003 — and then proceeds to do something no GBA game ever could.

The premise is pure pulp cartoon. You play Pipp Pippit, a mischievous young bat whose aunt’s spirit gets bound to his yoyo after things go sideways. That yoyo becomes your sword, your grappling hook, your pogo stick, and your puzzle-solving multitool all at once. Your enemies? Four corporate crime families running a sprawling, stratified city — a setup that lets the writers slip sharp socioeconomic satire in between the slapstick.

Positioned squarely in the crowded “love letter to classic Zelda” market, Pipistrello had every reason to be forgettable. It isn’t. It landed at 87 on Metacritic, and those numbers aren’t nostalgia inflation. They reflect a game that understood its central mechanic could carry an entire design philosophy, and built a vast web of interconnected screens around it. The GBA aesthetic is the costume. The yoyo is the soul.

This is a small studio operating at a level most mid-budget publishers can’t reach. It punches far above its weight.

• The Yoyovania System: A deep roster of distinct yoyo tricks — ricochets off walls, mid-air spins, “walking the dog” across deadly gaps — that chain into momentum-based parkour combos. Traversal and combat are the same verb.
• Deep Customization: A large set of equipable badges and passive upgrades lets you fundamentally rewire how Pippit plays, from combat-focused builds to traversal specialists.
• A Yoko Shimomura Soundtrack: The Kingdom Hearts and Street Fighter II legend contributes guest tracks to a score that earns the nostalgia it trades on.
• Authentic GBA Presentation: Vibrant pixel art with optional simulated LCD screen filters — a skeuomorphic touch that goes further than most retro throwbacks dare.
• A Sprawling, Reactive City: Four crime-family districts stitched into one continuous, secret-laden overworld packed with hidden collectibles.

The Gameplay Loop

Here’s what separates Pipistrello from the pile of Zelda-likes it superficially resembles: the yoyo collapses the wall between how you move and how you fight. In most top-down adventures, traversal and combat are separate systems that occasionally shake hands. Here they’re the same system wearing two hats.

You throw the yoyo. It ricochets. You use that ricochet to reach a ledge, and the same throw clips an enemy on the return. String enough of these together and you’re not solving a room — you’re performing it. The game rewards fluency the way a fighting game does. Early on, the yoyo reads as a quirky tool; by design, it grows into an instrument worth learning to play.

That learning curve is the whole design thesis. Pocket Trap front-loads simple throws, then layers tricks on top — wall bounces, mid-air spins, the “walking the dog” tightrope across hazards — until the moveset becomes genuinely expressive. The badge system amplifies this. With the breadth of badges and passive upgrades on offer, you’re deciding what kind of player you want to be. A build that maximizes ricochet damage plays nothing like one tuned for aerial mobility. This is real character progression, not a stat-inflation treadmill.

Where the Loop Frays

It isn’t flawless. The overworld combat gets repetitive. Crossing districts already cleared, the moment-to-moment encounters read as busywork between the game’s brilliant set-pieces and puzzle rooms. The yoyo is so good at expressive play that mowing down basic overworld goons — where expression isn’t required — exposes the ceiling of the trash-mob design.

There are also localized difficulty spikes. The curve mostly climbs gracefully, then occasionally throws a wall calibrated for a player two upgrades ahead of where the critical path puts them. It’s the kind of friction that a difficulty toggle or a slightly gentler badge economy would have smoothed. Neither breaks the game. Both are worth naming, because a review that only lists strengths is a press release.

Level Design as the Real Star

The sprawling interconnected map could have been filler. It isn’t. The city rewards the same lateral thinking classic Zelda dungeons demanded — a trick you unlock in one district retroactively opens secrets in another you passed long before. That “oh, now I can reach that” dopamine hit is the beating heart of Metroidvania design, and Pipistrello is built to land it repeatedly. The satire embedded in the four crime families gives the map narrative texture most retro throwbacks skip entirely. You’re clearing rooms to dismantle a corrupt economy. You’re dismantling a corrupt economy, one yoyo trick at a time.

The pixel art is immaculate. Pocket Trap didn’t just imitate the GBA look — they understood it. The color choices, the sprite readability, the animation weight all feel like artifacts pulled from a cartridge that never existed. The simulated LCD screen filter is the flex: an optional layer that recreates the slightly washed, non-backlit look of the original hardware. Purists will adore it. Everyone else can turn it off and enjoy the vibrant native palette.

The soundtrack matches the visual craft. Yoko Shimomura’s guest contributions make an already catchy score linger after the credits. And as a 2D game of this scope, it’s light on hardware by design — the kind of build that should run comfortably on modest setups.

Available on Steam and Nintendo Switch, Pipistrello is a game that arguably belongs on a handheld. The GBA DNA makes the Switch — especially in portable mode — feel like its natural home. A small screen, on the couch or in transit, closes a loop the aesthetic keeps gesturing at.

That said, the Steam version is the natural pick for anyone chasing frame-perfect trick chains. PC offers resolution scaling that makes the pixel art pop on a large monitor, plus precise controller or keyboard mapping — and the yoyo’s momentum-based play is built to reward precise input. Neither platform compromises the experience. Choose the Switch for atmosphere and portability; choose Steam for precision.

Pipistrello and the Cursed Yoyo is the rare retro throwback that earns its influences instead of borrowing them. The yoyo isn’t a gimmick stapled to a familiar template — it’s a genuine reimagining of how movement and combat can be the same act. Pocket Trap built a subgenre and had the confidence to name it. The repetitive overworld encounters and uneven difficulty keep it a clear recommendation rather than an unqualified one — the complaints of a great game measured against a legendary standard. Buy it. Learn the yoyo. Then watch the top-down adventure genre quietly bend to accommodate what this small studio just proved was possible.