Hop is a little frog with big dreams. He wants to explore life outside his forest, and his call to adventure is rewarded with the unexpected ability to leapfrog between worlds and even dimensions. Luckshot Games, the developer and publisher of Big Hops, appears to be similarly ambitious, if this game is any indication. Big Hops is a modest 3D platformer that takes on some of the biggest in the industry, on their own turf, with confidence and poise. Even when it very occasionally falls just short, you can’t help but respect the pluck it took to aim so high. Big Hops is a game centered on joyous movement that should put Luckshot on players’ radars going forward.
From the very start, before Hop even leaves his homey little forest dwelling, you can sense Big Hops’ inspirations. Hop’s movement and (ahem) hops feel reminiscent of how Mario moves in Super Mario Odyssey, even including a belly slide that you can use to keep your forward momentum going. But on top of that, it layers in a few other elements. You can wall-run like in Prince of Persia or Titanfall. You can climb any wall a la Zelda: Breath of the Wild, complete with a stamina meter that determines how long you can cling to a surface. Your stretchy frog-tongue acts as a grapple to swing on hooks and grab handles, and it also makes it easy to grab things like bugs or fruits out of trees. It all feels so immediately natural, and part of the fun of Big Hops is learning how to connect your suite of movement options together.
Before long, Hop meets Diss, a strange extradimensional imp with a snarky attitude and questionable motivations. Diss spirits Hop away to The Void, a bridge between realms where gravity is strange and twisting upon itself. I couldn’t help but be reminded of the flexible gravity system of Super Mario Galaxy, as Hop made a jump and suddenly landed upside-down with a changed perspective, but by this time the natural movement felt so smooth that the shift was easy to navigate.
