Papo & Yo

Papo & Yo (German: Papo and I ) is a computer game from the Canadian developer Minority . Despite the high proportion of puzzles that have to be solved, it is assigned to both the Adventure genre and the Jump 'n' Run . It's about the journey of a little boy through a seemingly surreal favela . Papo & Yo was released for the PlayStation 3 on August 14, 2012 .

action

On the run from his violent, alcoholic father, the boy Quico hides in a closet. There he discovers a strange chalk drawing. When he touches her, he finds himself in a dreamlike favela. He meets the girl Alejandra and his toy robot Lula, who has come to life, who both help him to orientate himself in the dream world and to traverse it. In the further course of the game, Quico meets a being simply called "monster", against whom Alejandra and Lula warn him urgently. Quico befriends Monster and explores other areas of the favela with him. It turns out that Monster craves frogs, but after consuming them, goes into a frenzy and attacks Quico. The boy wants to help (or heal) monsters and on Alejandra's advice, he and Monster set off to see a shaman . During another fit of rage, Monster kills Lula and later Alejandra. Quico realizes that Monster is an allegory for his alcoholic father, that he cannot help him and has to break away from him. He plunges the sleeping monster into an abyss and returns to the real world.

Gameplay

The game world is presented from a third-person perspective , that is, the camera is positioned behind the protagonist Quico and follows him through the game world. In the PC version you can look around by moving the mouse , Quico is moved using the WASD keys. He can jump using the space bar and pick up and put down objects using the left mouse button. In the Playstation version, it is controlled using a gamepad . The player walks with Quico through individual areas of the favela, which is deserted except for Alejandra, Lula and Monster. Each sub-area is a closed area and can only be left at a certain point, which is blocked by an obstacle, for example a locked gate, a house roof that is too high or a gap in the floor that is too wide to jump. The player must remove these obstacles by manipulating the environment in order to advance. First of all, there are chalk drawings in some places in the game that symbolize switches, keys or gears. These can be used as if they were real and change the environment: stairs appear, walls disappear, bridges form, entire houses change their position and open up new paths. Many changes happen at some distance from the location of the manipulation, and some are only temporary in nature, so that the player has to consider which manipulations to carry out in which order and what effects the manipulations have on him. In the course of the game, monsters are added as a puzzle element, whose behavior can be rudimentarily controlled by providing them with fruits or frogs.

Development history

Papo & Yo is the debut of the studio from Montreal, Canada. The Bogotá- raised minority managing director Vander Caballero, formerly design director at EA Montreal, was responsible for the design . The Sony Pub Fund was used to finance the project , a program run by the PlayStation manufacturer Sony , which provides financial support to independent development studios that have to grant PlayStation exclusivity. Caballero processed his own childhood experiences with the script for Papo & Yo and dedicated it to his mother and siblings, "with whom I survived the monster in my father". Caballero names the magical realism of the Colombian writer Gabriel García Márquez as an important influence on the design of the game world . For the soundtrack, Brian D'Oliveira was hired by the Canadian studio La Hacienda Creative, which otherwise primarily composes music for US TV series.

The game was part of the Humble Indie Bundle X , where it was first offered for Mac and Linux. All versions were available both DRM- free and Steam- bound.

reception

Papo & Yo found a mixed response in the media world. The extraordinary story, the fears and losses, the atmospheric graphics and the matching musical background were praised almost everywhere. Jörg Luibl from 4Players noted “magical situations when the child's imagination simply creates its way”. The game world was particularly well received, Daniel Liebeherr from DLH.NET judged: “The world of the game resembles the ambivalent monster. It seems romantically dilapidated, offers extensive graffiti and seems to have fallen into permanent twilight. Her background, however, is a real one. These favelas actually exist and nobody would like to live in one of them voluntarily. ”On the other hand, the lack of variety and complexity of the puzzles, minor technical defects, the storage system and the short playing time were criticized.

4Players: 85
AdventureCorner: 73%
Gamezone: 8/10
Gamona: 80