January can be a difficult month. It sees a return to routine after a restful period – a routine that’s often made more difficult or exhausting by recently implemented new year’s resolutions. Factor in the lingering financial strain of December and you can see why it’s not a month that ranks highly for many people. You may be questioning the relevance of all of this, but this is all to say that January can so often be void of fun. The party season becomes all but a distant memory, but if you’re looking for a new source of joy, entertainment, and comfort, my month has been made all the brighter because of Big Hops.
Developed by indie studio Luckshot Games, Big Hops is a 3D platformer that centres around Hop who can use his tongue, as well as a number of helpful items, to jump, swing, and race his way through the game’s various worlds. When Hop is kidnapped by the mysterious Diss and thrust into a strange alternate dimension, he’s tasked with somehow finding a way back home. A friendly raccoon soon appears with assurances he can build an airship, if you travel through the desert, mountains, and ocean in order to unearth the right parts.
Big Hops is beautifully crafted. It’s more than just a solid platformer, weaving surprisingly original gameplay with memorable characters and a charming story in an experience that very much caught me off guard. I expected to have fun with this title, but I came away far more impressed than I anticipated given just how small of a studio Luckshot Games is.
The platforming genre’s gameplay formula is tried and tested which can oftentimes make originality hard to come by, but Big Hops offers a fun take on it all. The basic movement set of running, jumping, diving, and swinging is all very intuitive. In fact, there’s not even a traditional tutorial because Big Hops controls as you expect it to, especially if you’re a platforming veteran. Of course, there are signs dotted around the opening levels with instructions should you need them.
As you delve deeper into Hops’ adventure though, the little fella will gain a backpack revolutionising, really, how you approach the rest of the game. Hop’s tongue has many uses, if that’s not an odd thing to say. Outside of using it to swing and pull levers, he can also collect various items from around the game’s map that when thrown, present possible solutions to platforming problems. A thrown acorn, for example, will prompt a large vine to grow upwards. A chilli pepper will start a fire, whilst a mushroom will create a bounce pad.
I’d be here a long while if I were to name all of the title’s various options and honestly, unearthing them is part of the joy of playing Big Hops. The discovery of new items throughout your journey constantly forces you to switch up your approach to platforming. Typically, these items grow on trees – don’t question the logic of mushrooms growing on trees – with trees of a certain item located near to where that item is required as a solution. You can, however, also store items in Hop’s backpack. This becomes very fun as you progress through Big Hops because eventually, you might be able to think up a solution to a platforming segment that isn’t exactly what the game intended. The more tools you have at your disposal, the more off-piste you can go.
It’s here that it’ll say that Big Hops isn’t wholly linear. You will experience a fixed narrative but each segment of the story is set in somewhat of a mini hub world. It may take you a while to find your way forward as it’s easy to get distracted looking for secret challenge levels or ‘dark bits’. It somewhat reminded me of Super Mario Odyssey in that regard. Developers really have thought out those hub worlds too, rewarding curiosity. There’s a distinct awareness at play; great care has been taken to ask, say, ‘Where will players want to climb? And how can we reward them?’
Those ‘dark bits’ I mentioned are important. Gather enough and you’ll gain a ‘dark drip’ which Diss will take and allow you to choose one of two trinkets which rotate every time you visit one of his pop-up stops. Trinkets are essentially power-ups. You can only equip so many which you adorably pin to Hops’ backpack like a pin badge, although you can also exchange a dark drip for an additional trinket slot. Trinkets may offer discounted store prices, increase stamina, or provide health buffs, for example.
Health is very forgiving. There’s plenty of food around the map that Hop can eat to replenish his health. In fact, I often equipped a trinket that made anything edible, so even eating a rock would boost my hearts. Even if you do reach a ‘Game Over’ screen, you’ll respawn during the segment you perished in, so there’s no major stress involved in playing. There are other collectibles too, including bugs, blueprints, and boombox tracks which have less of an impact on the game but are fun additions nonetheless.
One of the things that most impressed me about Big Hops beyond the constant self-reinvention of its gameplay is its character building. The game is fully voiced which was a pleasant surprise, and each biome or world features its own self-contained story, really adding to the feeling that you’ve stepped into an entirely different chapter. It makes for an experience that is utterly joyous and refreshing.
There’s very little that I can criticise, although I did encounter some minor bugs during my playthrough. These didn’t ruin my experience by any means but I did glitch through the floor at one stage during the infiltration of a gang hideout, prompting me to backtrack so that the story could actually progress as it was intended. And whilst most of the controls are very intuitive, there are a few items that are a pain to handle. I’m looking at you Goo Balls.
Platforming fans will be hard-pressed to come away from Big Hops though with anything other than a smile on their face. It shows a strong sense of vision. Here is an end product that pays homage to the greats of the genre whilst carving out its own identity. With several varied worlds, creative gameplay, and a respectable 10 to 12 hour runtime, there’s very little else I could ask for from the title. Big Hops is a ribbiting, sorry, riveting adventure that’ll kickstart your 2026 in the best way possible.
Pros: Intuitive platforming, charming worlds and character design, nicely voiced
Cons: Can be fiddly in sections, some bugs
For fans of: Astro Bot, Mario, Crash Bandicoot
8/10: Excellent
Big Hops is out now on PlayStation 5 (version tested), PC, and Nintendo Switch. A review code was provided by the publisher. Read a guide to our review scores here.
