How Penny’s Big Breakaway devs moved on from Sonic Mania to reach new heights

A small team of just 20 developers, Evening Star already has a reputation of delivering out-of-this-world platformers. Newly formed after collaborating on the stunning Sonic Mania, Evening Star retains the pedigree of Sonic prodigy Christian Whitehead, designer Brad Flick, artist Tom Fry and many more for the new studio’s debut work: Penny's Big Breakaway.

When Sonic Mania released in 2017, it was a miracle. A band of Sonic fans from across the internet worked together to deliver one of the most stunning and satisfying 2D platformers around, but with the creation of Penny’s Big Breakaway came a new challenge — this wasn’t an established franchise, and it wasn’t 2D.

“With Sonic, I came into that as a bona fide developer, but also, as a Sonic fan as well, you’re sort of realising a dream of getting to look behind the curtain and put your mark on it as well,” art director Tom Fry told us. “It was exciting that way because you didn’t necessarily know what all the rules were and then learning about them and the reasons for why things are the way they are was really cool.”

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With Penny, Fry and the rest of Evening Star had a blank canvas to play with, a completely new world to create with its own influences to pull from. While some of the SEGA aesthetic is still obvious, that’s more ingrained in the team’s subconscious from childhood fandom than being purposeful. We all have influences, no matter how strong, and the personality and attitude of SEGA runs subliminally through Penny and Evening Star just as much as Mario Sunshine does for A Hat in Time.

For Penny’s Big Breakaway, the team used lessons learned from Sonic Mania’s development to create its own, wholly unique image. Just like a 2D platformer, Penny uses limited tilesets, albeit at a larger scale, and its stunningly unique paint-splatter depth-of-field unintentionally evokes the crunchy pixelation of SEGA Saturn’s rudimentary 3D style, almost as if the visuals are running through the generations of artistic inspiration as you speed on by.

“You grow up consuming certain media and invariably it means something to you and moves your heart in certain ways. I was speaking to someone who referred to [Penny] as a ‘Mega Drive game in 3D’,” Fry said. “I see what they mean in the sense that we’re using a refined set of assets and the graphics are essentially palette-based as well using a new 3D gradient system, but you have very artist-driven colour across the whole scene so lighting doesn’t impact it in the way it would in other engines.”

In general, the biggest influence for Penny’s Big Breakaway is the German Bauhaus art movement of the 1920s. An abstract art form of strong shapes and bold, saturated colours, the Bauhaus aesthetic fuelled the colour palettes and strong shapes of Penny’s world all the way from textures and UI down to the title character’s Jester outfit.

“There’s a performance piece called The Triadic Way which is a ballet performance with these very geometric costumes that are quite abstract and surreal,” Fry explained. This, combined with an extreme deep dive on the history of the yoyo, led to Penny’s puffy pants, ballooning cuffs and her signature bicorn hat.

When working in 3D, Evening Star had a lot to consider. The talented engineers built a proprietary engine instead of building in Unreal or Unity to ensure everything was made with a purpose. The engine was made to suit the art and the gameplay, and to ensure that Penny ran like a dream on all platforms — which it does.

“We’re particularly proud of the fact that it’s our bespoke technology. There’s a number of plates to spin when it comes to that approach, but it’s a fantastic thing. I can speak directly to the brains behind that technology to make requests or get an understanding of what they want to achieve and have that dialogue.”

Unlike a lot of game studios, Evening Star is entirely collaborative, and a lot of the team is multitalented. When designing the gorgeously animated UI, Tom Fry created a template in After Effects which was handed to engineer Justin Akan-Etuk who was able to recreate it in the engine. Creative Director and Lead Engine Architect Christian Whitehead also has an artistic background, allowing him to engage with the art team on a personal and technical level.

This has led to the creation of an engine that is designed around collaboration. The proprietary tech fuelling Penny leans into the “uniquely iterative” design usually found in the modding scene. Unlike most modern games, there’s no gray box blackouts of finished levels that get textured and polished later, but a clever level editor that allows the team to come back in and fix up or change whatever they need.

“The designers can iterate and update levels very, very late in the process and it doesn’t upset things. We use a procedural generation system for our level design so, on the art side, it’s about ensuring things are as beautiful as they can be while not blowing out timelines.”

Unfortunately, there are no plans to release Penny’s level editor to the public yet, after all there may be plans for the character still in the bag, but hopefully one day modders will be able to open the toy box just as Evening Star did with Sonic in the past.

For Fry, Penny’s Big Breakaway is something that he would love to explore further. While nothing is confirmed, the adoration for Penny and the wacky world she lives in has the same limitless potential you see in Mario, Sonic, Nights and more.

“I think it has huge potential,” we’re told. “We have such a strong cast and an unusual, memorable world. We would certainly like to explore more.”

Penny’s Big Breakaway is available right now on Xbox, PlayStation, Nintendo Switch and PC.