Papo & Yo or Father and I markets itself as a puzzle, action, platformer set in a dream world of a Brazilian favela. You play as Quico a boy who has to help a monster who has a strange addiction to poisonous mushrooms that enrage the beast upon consumption. The only way to temporary calm down the monster is to feed him some blue, rotten fruit. Following the advice of a mysterious girl named Alejandra, you must navigate the favela by manipulating buildings with chalk magic and bring the monster to the temple to cure him of this unfortunate addiction.

Papo & Yo is also tagged as story rich, but it isn’t shown on the steam page and I truly believe that is the greatest asset of the game. Papo & Yo is not only about escaping the big bad monster and rescuing the femme fatale, but also contains lots of metaphors and symbolism.



One of Papo & Yo’s bestselling points is the amount of visuals. I’m not only talking about graphics options and textures, but also about the backdrop and wall art. Throughout the game there are some amazing looking graffiti art, which I can only guess is a digital rendition of something that already exists in the real world. Each piece of art is not only eye candy, but also contributes to the game experience because the art follows the progression of the story. If one takes the time to look at the graffiti, while making connections to the game, the game as a whole becomes much more pleasant and enjoyable upon completion.

The game is also linked and joined together really well. There are no ‘fade to black’ scenes and the whole game seems to be made on a single map. The goal of the game is simple enough, with level progression usually locked away by a metal gate, out of reach, or just requires the weight of the monster on a pressure plate. Camera work is superb when it takes over control from the user, and it really does the map justice with its long pan-overs and high angle shots. This is also an extremely important step because it allows the player to quickly look at the layout of the map since there in no in-game mini-map.

In terms of audio, the accompanying composition features 2 main soundtracks. One with the slower ‘wild’ music that plays when monster is calm which really fits in with the Brazilian favela setting and the rushed rapid drumming music when the monster is poisoned by the frogs. In particular, the latter sound piece is composed in such a way that actually promotes urgency. The quick fade between the first piece and this other composition, along with the rapid change in colour scheme of the map when the monster becomes enraged really feels like something out of Pompeii.

The voice acting was great and you could really sense the great sense of urgency in the tone of the voices between Aljandra and Quico. I personally think going with subtitled text was the much better option in terms of localization rather than a voiceover since there are often certain vocal ticks that can’t be transferred from one language to another. That is why I always prefer spoken dialogue in its original intended language even if I don’t understand what they’re saying.

However, Papo & Yo’s greatest selling point is the story. It’s definitely not a story everyone can relate to, but it definitely shines a lot more light on some real life situations that are still happening in this day and age. If you hadn’t guessed what the story and the metaphoric actions meant throughout playing the game, you will find out at the end as the story crosses between the two realities that it exists in.



Since the game is story-driven, and it tells you pretty much everything in the last chapter, the game loses out on replayability value, even if the option is given in the menu to start from every single checkpoint save.

Another thing I really disliked about this game was the puzzle aspect of this game. This game had nearly no puzzle aspect. It wasn’t like the Talos Principle or the Portal series, but more like a point and click game. You just had to trial and error to find the next gear or pressure plate that allowed you to advance to the next stage of the game. Ultimately, the game was more of a walking simulator mixed into a movie for me. I would have finished it much faster if there weren’t a lot of forced ‘walking back and forth’.



I give Papo & Yo a score of 9/10. I truly enjoyed this game because I am a huge fan of strong story based games that make you think and make connections to real life scenarios. Apart from mediocre puzzle and some useless features a la the ability to walk in the game, this is one of the best games I’ve ever played and is definitely worth a buy just to play if not just for the art and music.