Big Hops is a charming 3D adventure that wears its inspirations proudly, pairing gorgeous visuals with a movement system that is clearly aiming for something special. Drawing from the likes of The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild and Super Mario Odyssey, this is a game full of ambition.
At its best, platforming feels tight and expressive, encouraging playful experimentation. At its worst, finicky controls and moments of frustration can cause an otherwise promising leap to fall a little short. Even so, for fans of 3D platfomers, there is still plenty here worth hopping into.
Into the Void We Hop
At its core Big Hops tells a simple, earnest story about Hop, a young frog encouraged to look beyond his quiet forest home and seek something more. After initially setting out alongside his little sister, that sense of curiosity quickly turns unsettling with the arrival of Diss, a mysterious presence who reveals he has been watching your journey from the very beginning.
Promising freedom and a world beyond the forest, Diss draws Hop through the Void and into the wider world, where he helps a cast of curious characters while searching for airship pieces to get home. The narrative is light and quirky, and while it rarely surprised me, it gave purpose to exploration without overshadowing the gameplay.
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Tongue-Tied Platforming
Big Hops plays like a classic 3D platformer and when it clicks, it feels genuinely good to move through its world. Hop’s basic moveset of jumping, rolling, and crouch jumping, feels reliable and forms a strong foundation for exploration. Traversal leans heavily into climbing and parkour-style movement, Hop’s sticky webbed feet let him scale walls with ease, and his tongue does much of the heavy lifting.
Hop’s tongue is Big Hops’ defining mechanic, acting as a grapple hook and puzzle-solving tool rolled into one. Using your long, slimy tongue to swing through the air, pull levers, unlock padlocks, and even paint your way forward feels fantastic. When everything lines up, it creates some of the game’s most enjoyable moments and a strong sense of momentum.
That same system is also where frustration creeps in. Grabbing swinging bugs often felt finicky, while momentum could spiral out of control, occasionally sending Hop off course or even through walls. Limiting tongue use to specific interactable objects undercuts the flow and leads to avoidable deaths. I just wanted the freedom to use Hop’s tongue whenever I felt like it.
This is most noticeable when interacting with the vegetables that open up new paths through each area, like growing climbable vines or temporary platforms. While the idea is clever, the gooballs reveal how the tongue mechanics would benefit from a more forgiving implementation, as even small mistakes quickly derailed any playful momentum I had built up.
Badges, Trinkets, and Shiny Things
Being a big fan of early-2000s platformers, I was happy to see that Big Hops embraces its collectathon design, with Dark Drips positioned as the most prominent collectible. I enjoyed spotting them tucked away in the world or earning them through tricky platforming sections.
I appreciated that Dark Drips could be spent on trinkets handed out by Diss, boosting Hop’s abilities while quietly raising questions about his intentions. Rather than feeling like raw stat upgrades, these choices let you shape your own play style, making each upgrade feel deliberate rather than mandatory.
Beyond Dark Drips, you collect currency to buy outfits and upgrades in shops, which adds a welcome sense of personalisation. Extra stamina, hearts, and backpack slots make longer climbs and riskier routes feel more manageable without ever feeling mandatory. Blueprints unlock traversal gadgets like the rail gun, and experimenting with these tools adds variety to movement instead of simply smoothing difficulty.
Collecting bugs, though, was where the cosy gamer in me really smiled. Built around discovery and identification, they reward curiosity by letting you choose between eating them for extra stamina or saving them for upgrades, making detours off the main path feel worthwhile.
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Bright, Bouncy, and Beautiful
Big Hops is a joy to explore, with bright, stylised 3D art direction and environments full of personality. Each area is spacious and clearly built around exploration and vertical movement, encouraging me to poke around and see what’s hiding just out of reach.
The sound design adds to the charm, from gentle ambient details to Hop’s cheerful “hip hop” call with each jump. The soundtrack is upbeat and pleasant, even if it tends to fade into the background rather than delivering standout melodies.
The games’ performance is also excellent, running smoothly on PC and holding up impressively in handheld play on my ROG Ally, which is especially important given how often the game demands precise jumps and careful timing.
Is Big Hops Worth Leaping Into?
Big Hops comes very close to being the charming, adventure platformer it clearly wants to be. Its platforming foundation is strong, with a genuine sense of creativity running through its mechanics and world.
Some decisions, particularly around how and when Hop can use his tongue, hold the experience back from feeling as fluid and free as it could have been, leading to moments of unnecessary frustration.
All of that said, the care, ambition, and heart behind the game is so easy to see. Big Hops may stumble on a few jumps, but it remains a thoughtful and earnest adventure for fans of classic platformers.
Quest Daily scores Big Hops:
8/10
Big Hops launches on PC, Nintendo Switch, and PlayStation 5 on January 12th 2026, with a free demo currently available on Steam for players keen to hop in early.
A review copy of Big Hops was supplied to Quest Daily for the purpose of this review.
