I wouldn’t call myself a big platformer buff, per se, but I do like to partake on occasion—I simply cannot resist the allure of kicking back with a controller and collecting something. I’ve especially become a fan of the wave of indie platformers that’ve cropped up as a mainstay of PC Gaming: Games like A Hat in Time, which distil the essence of ‘do movement tech until you’ve got a hundred gubbins’ until it’s basically dopamine moonshine.
From the hour and change I’ve played Big Hops looks to be joining that proud tradition. Developed by Luckshot Games, Big Hops sees you playing as Hop. Who, contrary to the game’s title, is just a little guy—perhaps the littlest guy to have ever done it.
Alright, they didn’t actually say any of that—what they did do was suck me into a big portal to be introduced to the game’s antagonist-come-taskmaster, Diss, who wants me to collect them some drip. Not the clothing, but the void-goo that’s your bog-standard collectible for the game’s runtime.
Get enough, and you grab a trinket—think charms in Hollow Knight. At the start you can have two equipped at a time, and they fiddle with your gameplay in a variety of ways. I got offered a choice between two: One let me attack coins with my tongue, the other made my belly-slides produce less friction.
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What’s really stuck with me so far is the fluidity of movement. From a control perspective, Big Hops is a tightly-designed game. You’ve got a jump and an air-dash that combos into a slide, which you can chain together with consecutive jump-dashes and rolls to build momentum. You’ve got your tongue, which is essentially just a grappling hook—and lastly, you’ve got your Breath of the Wild-style climbing system, complete with a lilypad-shaped stamina clock.
You’ve also got items that you can store and throw to mix things up, letting you create your own bounce pads, climbable vines, burn stuff down, or just… throw them. The rock doesn’t do anything when it lands; it’s a rock. But you can use it to hit things you would want to hit with a rock, like buttons.
It all feels immediately good to control, and I had to bounce my way off playing it to write this article because I was just having such a jolly old time figuring out how to chain moves together. If I’ve got one complaint, the game doesn’t do much tutorialising—which, hey, I’m a kinesthetic learner so that’s fine. But if you don’t like to frog around and find out, you might have some trouble.
What helps is the presentation: The textures get a little blurry, but it’s all rather nostalgic, complete with corny (and I mean this as a compliment) voice performances which feel like they should be coming out of a PS2 disc. It’s a deliberate vibe that it more-or-less nails.
Oh, and you can rotate bugs to identify them, so basically what I’m saying is it’s the best videogame ever made.
In all seriousness—Big Hops is well worth a look if you’re into this sort of thing. My only real complaint is that, as it stands, it’s a little buggy: Even in my short hour of bouncing around, I built up enough momentum to clip right through a ledge I should’ve bumped into and went plummeting to my doom. But for a cheap and cheerful indie, I’m confident it’s worth looking over the warts.
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