Kurupi game when? Yasy Yataré? Let’s do a Paraguayan mythological creatures dark universe.
My time has come. My entire life has been orchestrated to lead to this moment: my love of bad videogames, owning an Xbox, being on backloggd, my love of cryptids, and probably that time I lived in Paraguay for a few years in the mid 2010s. I was shocked and delighted to see this pop up on the Xbox store page.
Something this game doesn’t quite explain to English speaking audiences is the entire situation revolving the whistling, tobacco, and alcohol. It boils down to “hey kids, don’t make too much noise at night or a scary monster will get you, and the only way to appease him is to leave out booze and cigarettes.” Just like Santa’s cookies, the alcohol and cigarettes are magically gone in the morning.
I believe it’s Kurupi who gets unmarried women pregnant with his preposterously long (to some guys) penis, but Pombero has the massive balls (I’ve heard this isn’t normal). Look I’m not making this up. There’s a totally bomb cryptid museum with amazing statues, photos of which are online although the pictures don’t really do them justice.
But I want to stress something about else that’s important. The protagonist of The Lord of the Night makes a comment early on about how “ignorant people” believe the legends. I have met - nay - I am Xbox live friends with people who told me with 100% sincerity that they’ve seen Pombero. The culture of Paraguay is steeped in the history of the indigenous Guaraní, heavily adopted Catholicism, and matriarchy (almost all of the men died in a war which left the country in a real “A Boy and his Dog” situation). The whole “harboring Nazis” thing became a factor a little later.
What I’m trying to say is that to someone who isn’t familiar it might not be apparent just how every element of this game’s story and aesthetic, while heightened, is very consistent with Paraguayan culture and folklore.
Ok but how is it as a game?
Hendy kavaju resa. Man, it ain’t exactly AAA. Once the game got going I was actually pleasantly surprised to not be staring down the barrel a of Banban scenario, but it’s not that many notches up. This is a technically buggy game with generic walking simulator gameplay and poorly conceived puzzles.
Unfortunately some of the assets are very obviously AI generated, but look, how many Paraguayan videogames have you played? How many are there? They gotta do what they gotta do. All anybody plays in Paraguay is PES and San Andreas (a slight exaggeration). I’m beyond stoked that someone in Paraguay is even putting out games, even if I am docking some points. I don’t mean to fetishize them or act like I deign to try their little slenderman game or something, I really am just friends with lots of Paraguayans who I know would naturally look past the rough edges and see entertainment in the entire concept and the many in-jokes and references made in the game. It makes me happy.
Back to the game, the story itself is also highly predictable, the scares are cheap, and the already wonky puzzles become far more obtuse when compounded with the aforementioned technological problems. At one point I had to get Pombero unstuck from some level geometry in order to progress. The final boss is a travesty by nearly every metric.
But it was good to be back in the true free world. This version of the game looks miles better than the original Steam release; it truly makes you FEEL Paraguayan. It’s the Dark Souls of Paraguay games. For real though, to say this game owes itself to Resident Evil VII would be the understatement of the century. It’s like someone made a weirdly high quality school-computer-accessible browser version of RE7 without guns.
Rohayhu Paraguay. Waraní studios, keep em comin. I’ll be there no matter what.
Edit: in the hypothetical kurupi game you would control his long penis like snakepass. Also this game doesn’t have any control settings; no y or x inversion. Never a fan of having to use a controller profile.
My time has come. My entire life has been orchestrated to lead to this moment: my love of bad videogames, owning an Xbox, being on backloggd, my love of cryptids, and probably that time I lived in Paraguay for a few years in the mid 2010s. I was shocked and delighted to see this pop up on the Xbox store page.
Something this game doesn’t quite explain to English speaking audiences is the entire situation revolving the whistling, tobacco, and alcohol. It boils down to “hey kids, don’t make too much noise at night or a scary monster will get you, and the only way to appease him is to leave out booze and cigarettes.” Just like Santa’s cookies, the alcohol and cigarettes are magically gone in the morning.
I believe it’s Kurupi who gets unmarried women pregnant with his preposterously long (to some guys) penis, but Pombero has the massive balls (I’ve heard this isn’t normal). Look I’m not making this up. There’s a totally bomb cryptid museum with amazing statues, photos of which are online although the pictures don’t really do them justice.
But I want to stress something about else that’s important. The protagonist of The Lord of the Night makes a comment early on about how “ignorant people” believe the legends. I have met - nay - I am Xbox live friends with people who told me with 100% sincerity that they’ve seen Pombero. The culture of Paraguay is steeped in the history of the indigenous Guaraní, heavily adopted Catholicism, and matriarchy (almost all of the men died in a war which left the country in a real “A Boy and his Dog” situation). The whole “harboring Nazis” thing became a factor a little later.
What I’m trying to say is that to someone who isn’t familiar it might not be apparent just how every element of this game’s story and aesthetic, while heightened, is very consistent with Paraguayan culture and folklore.
Ok but how is it as a game?
Hendy kavaju resa. Man, it ain’t exactly AAA. Once the game got going I was actually pleasantly surprised to not be staring down the barrel a of Banban scenario, but it’s not that many notches up. This is a technically buggy game with generic walking simulator gameplay and poorly conceived puzzles.
Unfortunately some of the assets are very obviously AI generated, but look, how many Paraguayan videogames have you played? How many are there? They gotta do what they gotta do. All anybody plays in Paraguay is PES and San Andreas (a slight exaggeration). I’m beyond stoked that someone in Paraguay is even putting out games, even if I am docking some points. I don’t mean to fetishize them or act like I deign to try their little slenderman game or something, I really am just friends with lots of Paraguayans who I know would naturally look past the rough edges and see entertainment in the entire concept and the many in-jokes and references made in the game. It makes me happy.
Back to the game, the story itself is also highly predictable, the scares are cheap, and the already wonky puzzles become far more obtuse when compounded with the aforementioned technological problems. At one point I had to get Pombero unstuck from some level geometry in order to progress. The final boss is a travesty by nearly every metric.
But it was good to be back in the true free world. This version of the game looks miles better than the original Steam release; it truly makes you FEEL Paraguayan. It’s the Dark Souls of Paraguay games. For real though, to say this game owes itself to Resident Evil VII would be the understatement of the century. It’s like someone made a weirdly high quality school-computer-accessible browser version of RE7 without guns.
Rohayhu Paraguay. Waraní studios, keep em comin. I’ll be there no matter what.
Edit: in the hypothetical kurupi game you would control his long penis like snakepass. Also this game doesn’t have any control settings; no y or x inversion. Never a fan of having to use a controller profile.