Pipistrello and the Cursed Yoyo is a wonderful little indie GBA-core top-down action/puzzle game. It’s set up sorta like a mobile Zelda game where you’ve got an overworld, dungeons (which you can somewhat tackle in an order of your choosing), and various yoyo “moves” in place of the typical kind of items you’d get in a Zelda game.

I unfortunately don’t really have a ton to talk about with this game. It’s great. The puzzles are great, the combat is great, the traversal is great, exploration is great, it’s all just great! The dungeons are all perfect lengths, they never overstay their welcome, and they’ve got a solid balance between “combat rooms” and “puzzle rooms”, and similarly the bosses have a good mix of puzzle mechanics and straight combat execution.

It’s got optional stuff to hunt down, but it’s not an outright collect-a-thon. Major upgrades in the game are handed out one per dungeon, but along the way you’ve got badges, health expansion, badge point expansion, etc. There’s also an interesting system of a minor perk tree, where you pick a perk but then go into debt two ways: cash and an anti-perk until you pay it back. So like, you go in debt $1k coins to get +1 health / +1 base damage… but while you’re paying off the debt you’re down 2 health and 4 badge points. Cash is pretty plentiful, but the negatives – especially the later ones – can make the game quite challenging.

It’s also very reasonably priced at ~$20! So go get it! I Highly Recommend this game!