Papo & Yo Review

A treatise on the concept of fun.

I have played sentimental games, and I have played games with true genius behind them, but rarely have I witnessed the two intertwined successfully. Often, games with raw emotional experiences sacrifice gameplay for storytelling, and some games with clever mechanics have lackluster stories. Depending on how you judge common gameplay devices, you might consider Papo & Yo, a new PSN exclusive from Minority Media, to be the perfect blend.

Papo & Yo acts as an allegory about a boy and his alcohol abusing father. Creative director, Vander Cabellero, is not simply content with letting the metaphor run by itself, so the game will wear its origin on its sleeve multiple times until it becomes readily apparent during the final few acts. Unlike Braid, this creator's vision will not remain hidden or argued about over internet forums. Caballero sought to share his own experience growing up with an alcoholic father through Papo & Yo, but while the purpose is clear, he is not pandering towards a specific population. This is a game one can easily enjoy, metaphor be damned, but the hope is the player will come away with something new to think about by the end. Without being didactic, Papo & Yo's story leaves the player to make his or her own conclusions about how to feel towards the characters.

The father in this game is represented by Monster, a large aptly-named creature that follows the main protagonist, Quico, a preteen boy, through a fantastical version of the favelas of Brazil. These shanty towns, built by arbitrarily stacking box-like houses on top of and around each other, serve as the perfect backdrop to this well-imagined tale. In contrast to an action game's typical tour through South America, often involving gangs and drugs, the favela is a colorful and benevolent landscape rife with puzzles to solve. The game largely appears to be imagined, and many of the puzzles Quico encounters take this real-life environment and show the player how a child might think it came to be. The mechanics behind solving them typically involve chalk drawings of levers, gears, and keys that Quico must use to literally move the homes of the favela around in order to proceed. Quicio, himself, acts as a serviceable platform navigator, being able run at a useful speed, withstand long jumps to the ground, and eventually cross larger gaps with the aid of his toy robot, Lula. Monster may be the primary antagonist, but like any human being, he isn't pure evil, and the game never paints him as such. The majority of the time, Quico can seek his aid with stepping on large switches or by using his tummy as a trampoline while he falls asleep against some propped-up boards. It is obvious that Quico and Monster are or should be friends, but Monster's weakness for frogs steps in the way of building that friendship to a fruitful level. When consumed, these frogs send Monster in a fiery rage, and the only target is the boy, who must run away and find a way to calm him in order to proceed. However, this is not a giant escort mission, and unlike Ico, neither character is helpless; theirs is a sad tale of codependence, but the wedge between them grows ever stronger.

A larger than life puzzle being solved with cardboard boxes.

The game is very linear and playable in 4-5 hours, but these qualities work to its credit. Every part of the environment the player can access is a room where a puzzle or land traversal will occur, and there are no notable forks in your path. There is one way to proceed, and if you enter an area initially of no use, you'll be back there in five minutes once you do some work elsewhere. Normally, when you play a game enough, these characteristics can become negatives, but in Papo & Yo, I would argue that they contribute to the genius I mentioned previously. Quico is not wandering the favela with Monster by coincidence. Unlike Mario's sisyphean trials and tribulations, which put him in an arguably confusing and unexplained land with each iteration, there is nothing random about this world. It is what Quico knows, and though it is not immediately apparent when starting a new game, he makes his way to each new section with purpose. Sidequests would only serve as distractions from the primary focus, and the game doesn't grant any trophy-rewarding collectibles until the second playthrough. Many of the questions the player may have during the beginning will be answered during play save for those most philosophical. The game is short because it has to be, and in a world where players increasingly demand bang for their buck, they need to accept the esoteric immediacy of the story's larger concept as the treasured bang.

The favela, both real and impossible.

All the puzzles Quico solves are organically incorporated into the favela environment. While the keys and levers that move the puzzle pieces may be inorganic, and the player doesn't see what put them there, their necessity becomes understandable. The world isn't telling Quico what he needs to advance so much as Quico imagined it himself. They start small, but eventually you will enter large areas with large machinations to use. These room-filling puzzles made up my favorite moments in the game, involving stacking homes to build a bridge or using the land as a large trap for a raging Monster. It is not long before the recognizable objects give way to abstractions protruding from the landscape, and the journey reveals larger instabilities in the environment, which beautifully reinforce both the reality and the fantasy behind the main character's trials.

Despite taking place within the imagination of a young boy, Quico is limited. He cannot fly, and, Lula notwithstanding, he cannot perform any grand feats. It begs the question of why a child would imagine himself in a world with limits, but self-sabotage is not a new concept to a victim of abuse. It is worth considering here. That said, pondering why Quico can't pick up a simple flower pot will only reveal design flaws. If it's not related to the quest at hand, Quico will not be interacting with it, and even in AAA games, frivolous accessible objects are becoming harder to explain. Additionally, although it only becomes obvious in a few scenes, characters' mouths don't move when they speak. Despite the fact that many gamers built emotional bonds with characters who often lacked fully-developed mouths entirely, when the camera zooms in on the face of a speaking person, it is rather unsettling to look at a frozen face. Unfortunately, there are real technical flaws to be witnessed, as well, the most common of which is collision detection. Monster's hulking frame and other objects in the environment intersect each other in unnatural ways that do not fit the fantasy. Though largely benign, these issues become offensive when Monster becomes frozen and unresponsive because of them, thus prohibiting the player's ability to proceed through the game. I finished the game twice, and this happened three times, only during my first playthrough. Thankfully, the third instance happened while Monster was already where I needed him, and activating the next puzzle mechanism set him straight again. Luckily, Papo & Yo's short chapters lead to relatively frequent checkpoints, and quitting and reloading takes under thirty seconds. It is worth noting that I played only after the Day 1 patch was released, which resolved some often cited clipping errors; I am happy not to somber this review with any further bugs.

Quico using Monster's belly to get to higher places.

Faults aside, the presentation is commendable. The bright colors of the homes jut out of cobblestone roads and lush greenery. Many objects and textures are repeated, but each chapter rearranges, manipulates, and abstracts them in imaginative ways, and the confined spaces of the residential areas are often interrupted by huge environments containing water bodies and pitfalls. Visuals in Papo & Yo are both done before and completely original, creating a juxtaposition that keeps the player interested and motivated. Almost every chapter also features gorgeous graffiti, drawn with stark lines and bold colors. Some seem random, but advancing past them frequently reveals the relation to a story or gameplay element. There is no HUD, and on-screen cues are usually reasonably sized and clear, such as a tree with a word bubble containing a square to indicate how to interact with it. Dialogue is presented in black word bubbles with white type, but the spoken language is indiscernible and made up, increasing the global accessibility. Filling the aural void further is refreshing music with a heavy South American flair. Composed by La Hacienda, the songs you hear build drama behind the puzzle solving, and it all culminates in a beautiful track before the credits, featuring an angelic choir of children. The studio also recorded all the voice work and sound effects, which are all executed gracefully.

I am burdened with the fact that I cannot further discuss the concepts and metaphors that make this game such a work of art without revealing too much. I have already made too many conclusions here, but there are so many more to make. Suffice it to say that this game is very fun, with each drawn device building the fantasy and activating previously unseen ways to manipulate the environment, but fun comes at a price. Vander Cabellero and his Minority Media team make the player think about why we do fun things, what we ultimately stand to gain from having fun, and why fun isn't permanent. This is not a hero story. The plot twist is both completely unexpected and right in front of your nose. Before the game reveals it to you, it forces the player to sit through a truly heartbreaking moment of pause. This is a story about a very real boy and a very real situation. Via the element of play, you are drawn into his reality without your permission. Play it. Play it again. The final genius stroke may be that replaying the game makes sense within the context of the story.

Well played, Vander.

All images taken from GameInformer.com.