BIG HOPS Review

I steer my frog friend, Hop, off the edge of a platform with a jump and immediately hit X to dive. That gives me just enough momentum to get within reach of a nearby green balloon, so I tap and hold R2 and Hop’s sticky pink tongue shoots out, grabbing it like a grappling hook. He snaps to the balloon as it pops, launching him up and forward.

Mid-air, I spot a wall angled at a ledge. As soon as I’m close enough, I hold A and Hop starts wall-running. He’s bleeding speed and drifting downward, but I still manage to land him cleanly on the edge - right next to a Dark Drip, one of the game’s collectibles.

BIG HOPS is a 3D platforming adventure from Luckshot Games, the indie studio's second Kickstarter project after 2018’s Sausage Sports Club. The pitch here is simple: Froggy parkour, collectibles, and tongue action. But BIG HOPS’ endearing art style (from designer Steven Sugar), masterful platforming controls, and inspired system interactivity help the game leap past initial expectations.

The controls here click very quickly with clear Super Mario 64 inspiration: jumping, diving, crouch-jumping for more height, collecting coins and drips, and even an adorable animation when Hop captures a Dark Drip, the analogue here for a Star if we’re continuing the SM64 comparisons. Once in a while I could see the seams holding the controls together - sometimes Hop clipped through the environment after diving, or the camera wouldn’t behave when needing to jump between walls while running on them - but the checkpointing and autosaves are extremely generous and avoided giving me any real headaches over lost progress.

The worlds Hop explores are distinct, sprawling, and vertical - there's a lot tucked around corners, on pipes, behind bushes, but I never felt overwhelmed or pressured to complete everything (Important Note: Collecting every dark drip has an effect on the end of the game). Each area is inhabited by cute animal friends like rabbits, otters, and bats. Hop is able to talk to nearly everyone, and once in a while I’d get a ‘quest’ - a one-off task that felt more like an invitation to engage with the personality of the game rather than something substantial contributing to the story.

Hop also has access to stores & trinkets, providing him perks, gadgets, cosmetics, and food. Vegetables and fruit, namely, play a HUGE role in the gameplay and interactivity of BIG HOPS. There are fruit and veggie trees everywhere, and each type has unique properties that Hop can take advantage of in order to navigate the environment. Peppers burn hay bales when thrown, acorns grow tall vines that can be climbed without expending stamina, and the dimpled blue “balloon fruit” grow large balloons where they’re thrown, which pop after a short amount of time. Off the top of my head I can count at least ten different types of fruit or veggies that can be eaten or thrown for different benefits. 

I completed the game’s story in around 10.5 hours, which included a handful of side tasks that I did for the fun of it - the collectibles (dark drips, and bits that can be combined into drips) left me a little lukewarm, but they can be exchanged for trinkets, which provide different perks that can boost stamina, increase backpack space, and generate more coins, among other things. Hop’s trinkets are attached to his backpack, and can be tactilely rearranged and replaced. As the game progresses, you can acquire more slots on the backpack which allow for further stacking of their benefits, in addition to being able to get upgraded versions of trinkets you already own. When turning in a dark drip, you’re given a choice between two trinkets - but no worries, any that you turn down eventually make their way back into the rotation.

BIG HOPS is a platforming sugar high, mixing tight controls with delightful system interactivity that left me craving more to do. The ending sequences have strong ideas, but slightly miss on execution whenever I veered away from the ideal player pathing. The hallmarks of a game developed by a small team are all here (good and bad), but any friction I felt when bumping into bugs or restarts was swept away by how confidently it plays with its ideas. BIG HOPS succeeds because of the developers’ understanding of momentum, accessibility, and expression through movement: its systems constantly invite wacky experimentation with generous restarts, rather than punishing the player for failing, all of which reinforces a core philosophy of playful improvisation.