Penny's Big Breakaway Is A New 3D Platformer From The Sonic Mania Team

Today's Nintendo Direct presentation was filled with new Mario games, but tucked in there amongst the rest was another new platformer coming to the Switch early next year: Penny's Big Breakaway, which is being developed by the team behind Sonic Mania.

Penny's Big Breakaway is a 3D platformer which will see the titular Penny battle against hordes of penguin enemies using a unique yo-yo weapon. The debut trailer showed off her yo-yo's many abilities, which include swinging and dashing in mid-air, and expanding into a giant ball which Penny can ride to barrel through walls and enemies.

The game is being developed by Evening Star, which is made up of the team that developed Sonic Mania for Sega in 2017, with Private Division set to publish. The studio includes multiple names that worked on Mania, including its art director Tom Fry, audio director Hunter Bridges, and creative director Christian Whitehead--who also served as director for Sonic Mania.

This will make the first game for Evening Star since becoming its own independent studio. Evening Star's website calls the studio a "boutique game studio founded in late 2018" which is based in Los Angeles, and it has operations out of London, England and Melbourne, Australia as well.

Penny's Big Breakaway will launch for Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, and PC early next year.