Penny's Big Breakaway Dev Downsizes Due To "Volatile Market Conditions"

Aww that sucks. Love the game though. I hope things improve for all involved.

It is a truly messed up world when my first thought to this is "well this seems reasonable". A company that isn't run by massively rich people (AFAIK) would actually have only so much money so layoffs would actually be necessary (or necessary for reasons beyond insane overspending by any reasonable standards).

Shame because this game seems very cool, but I feel like "vaguely Saturn-like 3D platformer" was obviously not gonna be the next Hades.

Really sad. Wish that Sega would buy the company and pay them to make more Sonic.

@locky-mavo The Switch port is an utter mess. Wait for a patch or look elsewhere.

@Pigeon I don't think these people want to make Sonic forever....

The economy is hurting everybody in one form, or another. The exceptions would be certain rich individuals, and certain groups of rich individuals. It must also be stated that not all rich are villains.

Too bad for these individuals. Prayerfully, & hopefully, they'll soon enough find work elsewhere.

It's been said that there isn't evidence of a video game industry crash, and it's been said that the industry is creating jobs and experiencing growth.

...I really don't know how believable that is when news like this has been popping up every day.

Yeah, they really made a bad call when they chose Private Division as the publisher, the publisher tax made the game too pricey.

I personally won't buy the game until it's 60% of, but because the publisher is trash and didn't add regional price for my country.

@LadyCharlie Because there's still financial interest in the industry. The Atari Shock was motivated by one company having too much of the American gaming industry in their grasp, who made boneheaded decisions regarding manufacturing and undercooked development in an era where the consumer was never expected to know how the industry works, not even hardcore enthusiasts, using an IP that became instantly beloved as the driving stake in all of this.

As a result, consumers lost interests in games and retailers became distrusting towards the concept of "video game".

We are not in that era anymore. People will knowingly buy confirmed junk on one hand and expect devs to fix it later/laugh at it, or will make more informed decisions based on what friends and the net are saying on the other hand.
If anything is having a crash, it's the job market for the gaming industry, although this scenario is different from your conventional greedy CEO trying to get investor approval by nonsensical firings, and more of a small startup company born from indies that couldn't quite hold itself together.

I think that there should just be a red phone in their office for when times are getting hard where they can call Sega and say they'll make another Sonic game.

I wouldn't want to be stuck doing the same thing my whole life either, but it's hard to deny the love and craftsmanship of Mania. I'd love if they did another, and help pay their staff!

Not saying Sega is made of money, but at least they'd be putting that money to good use.

@Pigeon yeah because if we learned anything from this industry imploding in on itself in the last few months, smaller studios being bought by a bigger company automatically means nothing bad will ever happen to them

I wish them the best. The demo was really fun. I am waiting for the physical edition though.

@N00BiSH It's a miracle that Tango gameworks got saved...

This is sad. A small studio created a new IP that is actually good (imho) but can’t sustain their team and has to make hard decisions to survive.

It’s a much different scenario to the likes of Microsoft who could easily afford to keep the staff they laid off but need to keep the shareholders happy.

It's a great game people and the switch version's performance mode is perfectly fine. I'm sad it hasn't done well enough for them and I hope they'll be able to recover.

The camera and the game's approach to enemies were both frustrations in an otherwise excellent game. Its just tough for me to enjoy a 3D platformer where I can't look around the world from different angles. That's one of the big reasons I live games. Escaping to somewhere else.

@LadyCharlie I mean what exactly can we do about it? People are laid off everyday. It's a problem bigger than all of us. Every other week NL is giving us another story about studios closing.

As disappointing as this is, I really can't say that I'm surprised. PBB was a niche game with some big problems, despite being creative and very impressive technically. Like a lot of other indie titles, it tried to re-invent the wheel for no good reason, and ended up being painfully cumbersome as a result. The gameplay has a steep learning curve. So steep, in fact, that I don't know how I managed to push myself through it. And it still felt like I didn't fully get it, even by the end.

The odds were always against it being a financial success. And was it the publisher's decision to shadow drop the game one day after a Nintendo Direct? Cause that was almost certainly a bad idea too. The game had limited appeal, and with a shadow drop you take a huge gamble hoping for viral success whilst also bringing your marketing campaign to an end. PBB was not the right game for that.

I hope that the studio and these now-former members can find success in the future because they deserve it. Should Evening Star want to work with SEGA again on Sonic (or other SEGA IPs), I'd be so excited for that. But the studio is full of creative talent who don't want to be tied down to and known for working solely on someone else's property. PBB was a swing and a miss though. A very valiant swing, but a miss all the same.

Also, I have to put this out there - the character design for PBB was dire. I don't think Penny was a great a mascot for the studio to launch themselves with at all.

@LadyCharlie game companys and devs have been shutdown/laid off all the time. Its a business and the products need to sell if they dont then it is what it is.
there sure is potential tho, take a look at black myth wukong, 20 million sold in just two weeks. and then u have ubisoft whose shares have plummeted even further over the last few days after the star wars outlaws flop. Not every game will be successful.

@BlueBCA Ima level with you, I couldn't make heads or tails what the studio was trying to accomplish with it's main character design. It reminded me of those cheap platforming games from the Sega Genesis days.

@LadyCharlie adding to @Poco_Lypso's point, I would guess both are true. It is likely case that the positions that are being cut are not the same ones where growth is occurring; while I suspect the folk at Evening Star won't struggle to get rehired, the severe concentration of layoffs in QA means that it is completely conceivable that some sections of the industry are growing while others are reneging.

@Poco_Lypso What I learned from Myth Wukong is controversy sales. All you have to do is let the consumers create an imaginary supervillain, ride that train until release date, generate massive sales, and any nuance honest criticism will be met with swift condemnation. Just as long as you're "winning" against the "bad" guy that's all that matters.

@WaffleRaptor01 The create part is a problem, because people will absolutely turn on you if you fake yourself to be a victim to get people on your side.

I'm sure Take-Two is to blame

@Samalik I don't think them getting bought is them getting save, if anything their new owner may even be worst. Let's just see how long that'll work for them.

Also waiting for the physical edition.

@Serpenterror Fingers crossed.

@BlueBCA Yeah…I didn’t get past maybe the third world I think? I liked a lot about it (and I actually didn’t hate Penny’s design) but I could never fully wrap my head around it- especially the controls. I regret paying the full £25 at launch before any reviews came out because I was so sure I’d love it. I should probably try it again sometime though and see if it clicks; I know there’s plenty of people who adored it.

This is such a shame. PBB is £16 on PS5 and Steam at the moment, in case you've been on the fence and have either of those platforms. Just bought it and added it to my ever-growing backlog. Wish every success to these guys in the future and hope those affected land on their feet.

@WaffleRaptor01 Not sure about any controversies. If ur talking about the 'modern audience', woke reviewers, etc. I doubt it had a huge impact on sales

I really liked the look of it at first but the more I saw the more it felt like a platformer for people who speedrun Mario 64 and get every inch of utility from the characters moveset and not really for casual play. My partner loves a colourful platformer too but after seeing gameplay addmitted it looks a bit too technical for her.

That's cool and I respect them making the game they want to make but I always think thats a difficult niche to thrive in as the players you are going for are already highly invested in 'their' games so you need to really be exceptional to have those players get into your game rather than go back to the one's they always play.

@larryisaman I've seen plenty of people who absolutely adore Penny's design, so it's not something that's totally unlikeable. It's just something that's got, you know, a divisive and limited appeal.Just like the rest of the game.

Personally, I didn't start to "get" the game until the 4th World (the volcano/food/restaurant themed place), which would have been either the 15th individual level. Really, 15 levels in before a game even began to find it's footing! That's not great design. Players should not have to invest so much time before a game starts to become enjoyable. I only stuck it out because I bought it whilst waiting for TTYD to be released earlier this year.

@Druidsbrook You've got it right. It's designed for technical play, and casual play isn't even considered. It's rare that a game has such a high skill floor. Standard movements, like running, jumping and the most basic of Yo-yo moves, are really, really slow. They're tedious and boring, but advanced movement in PBB is unique, so it's fairly difficult to transfer skills from other casually-played games into it. The game will not be fun unless you're an expert. I get the impression that there was a lack of diversity in skill levels during play testing, or that the team was just too focused on being technical.

@BlueBCA Yeah I'd say thats a fair observation, PBB only looks fun when the player is skilled whereas the best platformers feel fun just running and jumping with basic moves. It was impressive seeing what other players could do with the moveset.

I think you're right on the play testing, as an indie company they won't be able to play test on the scale of a bigger company but it's still important to get a broad range of players. I imagine the developers are all deft hands when it comes to platformers but that skill level won't be common among average players.

Gutted for the Team that this has happened.

I too was an early adopter of PBB on day one. I wasn’t sure on it after the announcement of the game and regretted the plunge immediately. TBH my basis of purchase was purely on their previous Sonic efforts which didn’t translate nearly as well as I’d hoped here.

Thats not to say the game is “bad” however my take on the title basically echoes @BlueBCA & @Druidsbrook and I never really “got it”.

Whilst I made it all through to the end, I was practically fighting the controls, camera angles and numerous bugs presented the entire way through. Their last major update fixed some of the grievances I had, but at its core this is a very technical game and to have fun you really have to do your homework on the abilities and spend a lot of time mastering them - which isn’t my personal idea of a fun time.

Considering it’s their first 3D entry it’s still impressive - and I’m sure they’ve got lots of notes and lessons learnt for their next game. It’s just a shame they’ve been impacted with losses.

That's a lot of words for "we don't care about our employees"

@Pigeon Yeah no kidding Columbo

@mikegamer Evening Star are a very, very small indie developer with only a single game to their name as a studio. And said game was likely not much of a commercial success. Having to make staff redundant does not mean that they don't care.

I'll be honest, this game was slightly underwhelming. I echo the concerns about fighting with the controls the entire time I was playing. It just never felt "good" to play if that makes any sense at all. Shame, I think their second go at a similar title they would have nailed it.

This industry really is struggling, isn’t it?

I like 3D platformers but didn't buy it. The character designs just made it unappealing which is bad when 3D platformers is a genre that isn't short of well designed characters. So weak designs is not something that can be gotten away with regardless of game quality.

IMO Penny looks like the female version of Oscar from those shovelware games on the DSi. While a lot of people think SEGA needed Evening Star to make Sonic good, its pretty clear Evening Star needed Sonic attract people to their gamem

If I know I won't ever have time to play a game, but I want to support the talent pipeline and innovative game ideas I read about, I'll often buy a game on deep discount down the road.

This might cause developers or potential developers to make mistaken entrepreneurial calculations when they hear that a certain game sold a million copies. There's a big difference between a million full priced copies and a million at 75% off in terms of what signal that sends to others.

Perhaps the industry needs a metric like "unit equivalents" which could also account for alternate forms of monetization such as DLC, passes, or collector's editions.

@Poco_Lypso I think it’s something about Wukong devs not listening to Sweet Bee or whatever that inclusion consulting organization is called. And that’s their right. Not sure what their input would add to a fantasy game about a monkey man anyway

@Antraxx777 It's a nothing burger. Sweet Baby offered their services, Wukong devs declined. End of story. It's no different than any other consulting offering a service and being declined.

That's like just how consulting companies work. Pretty boring when you take away the mythology people have created around Sweet Baby eh?

Yeah I hate how it’s starting to become the new Gamer Gate conspiracy and that there’s an active campaign against it

I never took the plunge with PBB simply because I'm a frugal guy and wanted to wait for a discount. But from what I see in the comments I can see why it never gelled with people.

Penny is a design that unfortunately doesn't hook players. Strange proportions, a weird face with teardrop eyes, a mish-mash of colours and... well... not particularly appealing for many fanartists. Having an in-depth movement system is great too but having a high skill ceiling doesn't mean the floor can't be low too.

I mean, another 3D platformer that came out recently is "Pseudoregalia" which had an easy-to-learn, hard-to-master movement system and a main character that very much appeals to an audience and sold many copies, I imagine.

On another note, I find that many "speedrunner" games where you only get to feel the enjoyment once you have mastered a level don't tend to catch on. Sonic is an exception because he was probably the first major one and it was back in a time when kids didn't get many new games, so being able to replay it constantly to get better was a selling point. Most games that get speedrunners interested are games with good base mechanics that anyone can enjoy and then the dedicated can break that game's back like it owes it money.

Paradoxically the more you cater to speedrunning, the less appeal it can have to some speedrunners. There's an inherent joy to playing a game in a more optimal way than most players or breaking games in ways that the developers may not have thought of before. If the game already expects you to do that then you're not doing something special, you're just playing the game as it was intended to be played.

The devs made a few missteps with Penny's Big Breakaway. The art for one, both with the design and the intense palette, making it difficult to even look at for long. Next, the constant barrage by the penguins feels like something that should be in a challenge mode, not the main game. The timed challenges feel like a 'for speedrunners only' thing, being strict to the point that I felt punished for even trying. The controls are also difficult to keep a handle on.

I was excited for it going in, but I didn't make it very far.

@mlt I'm still waiting for the Physical version. Not sure why they have taken so long to offer this game physically on Switch...

@Antraxx777 IMO Wukong just cant be compared to any other game largely because 90% of it'd sales were from China and there was state ran advertising for it.

It'd be a bit like if the UK government advertised Hogwarts Legacy to make sure that everyone in the country was aware of it, obviously It'd have performed immensely better in the UK than it already had. When you have a game with that kind of advertising with basically zero competition, any actual game design decisions are inconsequential to its success.

@Pigeon They are not wage slaves. They are creators. Why must their entire lives revolve around sonic? Job satisfaction is important too!!! Especially for mental health

Principle 1 of the Toyota Way: "Base your management decisions on a long-term philosophy, even at the expense of short-term financial goals."

Nintendo gets this. All of the most successful companies get this. When big players like Sony release garbage like Concord and the industry as a whole chases trends like a cat chases a laser pen. This sort of industrywide destruction happens. And companies that stick to their philosophies like Nintendo feel none of it. Build today to have a castle tomorrow. Remember that folks.

I was looking forward to getting this game but for some unknown reason they didn't release it here in Australia. We get most video games here that are released on Nintendo, X Box and Playstation consoles so I am not sure why this one wasn't released in stores here. It is pretty disappointing and reminds me of when we couldn't get 'Kirby's Dream Collection' on Nintendo Wii.

@DollyrotsFan1 Nobody but america got that. But that was a different era of Nintendo not being equal with their IP treatment

@Antraxx777 Ok, granted, extorting a company, threating to cancel etc sounds controversial for sure. But I dont really see how this would lead to a massive sales success. The average gamer either doesnt know about sweet baby or doesnt care.

Imo it boils down to quality and fun. Star wars outlaws is neither. Just looking at a vid u will immediately notice, this is a ***** game. Even if they had made the protagonist less ugly, it wouldnt have helped.

@Samalik Ohh. Okay. Thanks for letting me know.

@DollyrotsFan1 that’s probably because this game wasn’t realised in stores anywhere worldwide.

PBB is an indie game made by a small team so is only available digitally. In the future a limited run physical version will (supposedly) eventually be released… but it will be super expensive (even then this will only be available to order online)

@Poco_Lypso I have been playing 'Star Wars: Outlaws' on X Box Series X and don't think it is that bad but it is not as good as good as the 'Star Wars Jedi' games and I can't wait for the third game in that series. The two 'Star Wars: Jedi' games are by far my favorite Star Wars games and Cal Kestis, BD-1, Merrin and Greez are some of my fav Star Wars characters.

@Sonicka Yeah. That would explain it. As a fan of Platformer games especially 3D ones I was looking forward to playing it and we get some Indie 3D Platformer games released here like 'Yooka Laylee', 'Ary and the Secret of Seasons', 'New Super Lucky's Tale', 'A Hat In Time', 'Clive N Wrench' and ''Koa And The Five Pirates of Mara' so I just assumed we would get this one especially since it was made by the same developers of 'Sonic Mania' which was a popular game.

@DollyrotsFan1 admittedly I am a bit biased against ubisoft and (almost) never buy their games (mario rabbids being the only exceptions).
Its a so-called AAAA title, big budget etc. not that bad wont cut it imo.

@DollyrotsFan1 with the list of titles you provided… that’s actually a pretty fair assumption to make of it being in stores actually.

I guess in this case it comes down to the Publisher, since it would involve them seeing value in a physical release (eg, spending out on the cartridge manufacturing and shipment etc…)

6 staff members. That’s certainly a number.

What does it mean? Is it a lot? I can’t imagine it’d be newsworthy if a developer employed 6 people but this probably happens all the time.

I’m just wondering what the wider picture is here. Games are still being made, AAA and indie. Is this a sign of a completely changing industry or is it just that sales are driving publishers to change their priorities. Games are so diverse these days, with such a huge back catalogue of games that I think everyone still has plenty of options to buy.

I’m surprised the comments are so concerned considering this is a website for consumers, not industry.

@Quiet2down tbh, I think its less about sweet baby offering and wukong devs declining and more about Sweet baby threatening to cancel and trying to extort $7 million.

@Drew250 It's a website for intermediate and hardcore enthusiasts of the hobby. Knowing how the industry runs lets you know what it may be brewing currently, or whether the hobby will show signs of getting better or worse in the coming years. Or even what was going on in the creative process.

If you wanted an exclusive consumer-only mentality website, you'd probably go to something more normie than a proactively known gaming website.

@BlueBCA If you say so

@Ultimapunch Maybe they should have factored physical sales in those long term philosophical management decisions...🤷‍♂️

@mikegamer Yes I do say so.

They're a studio of currently 19 people. Before letting these six staff members go, they were still only 25 people. They have had one product, and said product was likely a financial flop. What else do you expect them to do when they have no money left?

The CEO of Evening Star announced this news publicly and is personally vouching for every single one of the team members he's had to let go. That's not behaviour you'll see elsewhere from companies that don't care.

@Drew250 I think a lot of people here have something of a soft spot for both indie studios and Evening Star in particular because of their history with Sonic. This news has struck a chord because it's upsetting to a lot people that a studio that they root for has fallen on hard times.

this was one of my most anticipated games at the start of the year but then i just didn't really have the money or time for it when it came out and then when the pretty muted word-of-mouth started to hit the game just fell off my radar completely. probably one of the most heartbreaking examples of wasted potential in recent memory, feel bad for the devs who've been caught up in all of this

@BlueBCA Yeah exactly. A small company like this having to make moves like this isn't a corporate greed argument at all as they aren't big enough to be some corporation anyways. This really just speaks on how bad the market and economy has become.

@JayJ - It's unfortunate that it's all about who is promoting you and how visible is that promotion worldwide. How big of a deal they make for big-name games (like what we see with many games, yet they turn out average). It's all about marketing.

I would love to see Steam, GOG, Epic Games, and others promoting those smaller studios on a weekly basis. Not just one time but numerous times.