When Vander Caballero expressed that Papo & Yo would "tell the story of of his abusive father", a few people actually believed that it was for shock value and "just a hipster indie dev shoving his childhood down our throats just for the sake of it". What Minority Media ended up delivering was an immersive experience that allowed us to emotionally connect more gradually and accordingly.
Papo & Yo starts off with a scared little boy named Quico hiding from someone in a closet only to see and go through a portal to what may be a dream land and psychological escape from his current situation. Along his traversing, he solves puzzles with imagination in a way that would give 'Inception' fans an interest pique. He also does a lot of oldschool platforming to get from one place to another. He also meets others that may help or hinder his progress (or both in some case), plus at certain times he has flashbacks to the real world to give more understandable meanings to situations at hand, all the way to the end.
Papo & Yo have a lot going for it as Minority's first title, the world is lush and beautiful with gorgeous lighting and scenery combined with great retro art style and animations that once again prove that you don't need realism to have a beautiful experience in game visuals. The sound also adds to the atmosphere, with clean sound bytes from the voice acting to ear pleasing music that when combined with everything else gives a real feeling of being in a mystical Favela and the world beating a beautiful latin heart.
No game is perfect, and for Minority, most of the problems with Papo & Yo are technical...
There have been VERY FEW Unreal Engine games that do really well on the PS3 (Rock of Ages off the top of my head), and unfortunately, Papo & Yo sits with the almost norm for UE on PS3. Screen tearing is very apparent, Anti Aliasing is lacking and lots of glitches can occur in some places. Other problems are the ease of most puzzles and the length of the game (although trophies and extras for multiple playthroughs help, if only a little), it startled me to find out when I actually beat it because I was so into the story and wanted to keep the flow going.
All in all, Papo & Yo is a great first attempt by Minority Media, that can really suck you into the experience despite it's faults, if only to cause that one last fault because of it's immersive ability. The team deserves a lot of praise for their work, and hopefully, the success they can attain can provide them with better tools to achieve a more technically stable process in their next project.
PSLS: "Five years ago indie studio Minority Media released Papo & Yo on the PlayStation Store. The 3D puzzle-platformer features contrasting settings of a fantasy world where monsters exist and the broken down favelas of Brazil. As the player continues solving block puzzles and attempting to keep their friendly beast of a partner away from the frogs that enrage him, they start to learn that this isn’t a story of fantasy, but of a young boy trying to find an escape from an alcoholic and abusive father."
This game and it's meaning are very deep. If you know the developers story and depending on your own childhood playing this game can be a healing or scar opening experience.
It's great that this excellent game helped you grow. I never had to deal with the things this game portrays in my home, but one a dead on analogy for one of my friends and his Dad. It was scary when he'd come home drunk at 1 or so in the morning. The guy I talked to at dinner with the nice smile and kind eyes was gone replaced by a beast of a man who was willing to scream at and hit his family for apparently no reason.
I find it odd that videogames as a medium are so disregarded as an art form/medium that can convey powerful messages. I almost feel like movies lately have lost that touch because they are just being churned out to be churned out. Meanwhile, there seems to be more videogames that have made made me go through a broad range of emotions and sometimes connect with in game characters on a more personal level. I also love how music and sounds in videogames has come so far to become very effective for setting moods and eliciting feelings as well.
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While dementia and Alzheimer’s impact the lives of millions, it’s a relatively rare subject in the escapist fantasy worlds of video games. Not surprising. Who wants to be reminded of a disease that has no known cure and that robs people of their memories and identities?
You should do some reviews on your Youtube channel
Good job.
Metaphors should be spelled without that last E at the end. Besides that, lovely review!