Don’t be surprised if The Next Penelope has somehow slipped under your radar. This indie-developed Racer/Shoot ‘Em Up arrived on Steam Early Access earlier last week, and captured my attention from the very first moment I laid eyes on its gorgeous colorful visuals. Handling everything from coding, art and music for the first time in his video game development career, French developer Aurelien Regard has combined ideas from Micro Machines, F-Zero, the Velocity franchise and even Greek mythology to deliver an extremely challenging, yet incredibly satisfying top-down sci-fi Racing experience with The Next Penelope.
Penelope’s central game mechanic is fairly simple, if you think about it: you are essentially only controlling the direction of your ship with the D-Pad or Triggers, trying to keep your energy stable as you complete your objective. However, the amount of depth present in this F-Zero-like adrenaline-inducing space odyssey is staggering, creating one of the most balanced risk-reward systems I have ever seen in a video game. Now, I am not going to lie, The Next Penelope is a very hard game to master (it even has levels where the difficulty is labeled as Impossible), even throughout its initial parts, as it takes some time getting used to the feel of your ship and its controls, which, as simple as they are, can ruin your entire run just because of a single mistake. It doesn’t give you that much time to experiment around with them either, throwing you into complicated set pieces that lead to your imminent death most of the time. That being said, the feeling of successfully completing an area after continuously retrying for hours on end is just amazing, and is one of the reasons why you’ll find yourself instantly hooked to the action-packed gameplay.
As I mentioned, the main reason why The Next Penelope is so great is because of its risk-reward element. You see, not only does Penelope involve some fast-paced Racing scenarios, but it also integrates weapons and abilities to add a whole lot of variety to the gameplay. The thing is; you have to find a way to balance the uses of those special abilities because they are directly linked to your ship’s energy, meaning losing races can be entirely your fault because you did not manage your energy efficiently. Additionally, to not make the game too easy for the player, you only unlock your weapons and abilities after completing the second lap of the race, giving you less time to make your way to first place. Though I have to admit, I found it extremely annoying to see my opposing NPC racers always find ways to somehow catch up to me by the last lap. Even though I was consistently tossing around a couple of mines behind me or smashing into them with my boost, the outcome of the races was always coming down to the wire, making me want to just abandon everything when losing at the last second – but, I didn’t because I simply could not stop without gaining closure.
Although Penelope is essentially a “Racer”, it puts in multiple different scenarios that switch up your central objective to add even more challenge to the already difficult gameplay. While you are not racing through futuristic-looking lanes with stunning colorful backgrounds, you’ll face challenges that involve nailing down how you must use your ability, collecting a certain amount of items scattered throughout the racetrack, escaping from the hands of a deadly monster chasing your or even fighting excessively difficult boss battles. Yes, oddly enough, The Next Penelope features some cleverly designed fights and, although they are more frustrating than exciting like the races themselves, they still keep you on your toes, as they are never quite the same. Moreover, if you are struggling with a specific boss fight because you feel underpowered or think you are missing a certain ability, you can always come back to it after exploring the six planets it has to offer as the game doesn’t force you to go through defined paths. It’s strange to say this for a Racing game, but The Next Penelope is a non-linear adventure. Additionally, you can also enhance your ship’s capabilities by adding in an extra shield, making its speed faster and even allowing the perspective to be zoomed out a little more with the game’s upgrading system, but you’ll most likely never be able to obtain any of these until the later portions of the game. They require an excessive amount of XP points and you must fill up an entire upgrade gauge just to acquire the one desired, which was awfully disappointing because I didn’t feel like I was becoming more powerful other than by having additional weapons to use.
The Next Penelope also tries to insert an interesting storyline in the midst of all the crazy action happening on-screen. Based on Homer’s Odyssey from the ancient Greek era, Penelope takes a very different approach with its space-y and sci-fi tone to depict this epic tale, and, unfortunately, it falls flat. It’s not because Penelope, herself, and the other races she encounters are generic or unappealing – it’s because the story doesn’t have that much to do with the actual gameplay. Seeing occasional text cutscenes before jumping into levels may add to the player’s immersion and investment to the game, but for me it was just something holding me back from going straight into the action.
Since the title has only been available through Steam Early Access for a few days now, you’ll still encounter some occasional technical hiccups with this pre-release build. The biggest of all was clearly the significant frame drop whenever I would die, as I was always under the impression that the build was going to crash on me – at least on the Mac version, which is the one I played through. Although it’s a nuisance because it slows down the action and recovery time, it doesn’t affect the gameplay itself, so you don’t need to worry about bugs ruining your experience. Speaking of which, I was incredibly surprised to see how robust this build was for an Early Access game. Sure, the developer still has some stuff to fix and tweak, but the solo campaign is meaty enough that it could be a final release.
That being said, I am extremely excited to see what Aurelien has in store for the final version as he plans on adding Extra Hard Bonus Missions (as if the game wasn’t already hard enough) and a 4-player local Multiplayer component, which has me completely intrigued as I cannot wait to see the crazy ideas that are implemented in this mode. Though I would love for it to support online as playing splitscreen on a computer isn’t the best way to experience Multiplayer, it’ll be interesting to see how it turns out.
In short, if you are looking for a challenging Shmup, sci-fi looking and fast-paced Arcade Racer, The Next Penelope will certainly hold your attention with its familiar, yet exceptionally fleshed out and varied game mechanics. For a game that was developed from the ground up by a single person, you should definitely check out and support Aurelien Regard with The Next Penelope.
The Next Penelope is currently only available through Steam Early Access (Playable on PC, Mac and Linux) for $9.99, with a Wii U version currently in development for a scheduled 2015 release.
Original Author: Maxime Chiasson