One of the great magic tricks of the art or perhaps only the human brain is the ability to transform something hyper-specific and personal into something universal. Pious is an autobiographical, semi-documentary game about being a child in Ecuador during the country's first successful qualification run for the 2002 World Cup. It is also just a game about the whole of being a child: the piece, boredom, the obsession, the myth production, the view of the outsiders of the adult world and the way adults inform you about who they are. It's really nice.
Pious is from Julián Cordero and Sebastian Valbuena. It is based on Cordero's childhood in Ecuador's capital Quito and its intensive relationship – a large part of the country's intensive relationship at that time – with football (which for the rest of this article will call football, as the rest of the world outside the USA). Then it's a memorial – but memory is a difficult thing. Late in the game, Cordero admits in a voice -over that Ecuador's successful qualification for the World Cup is his first memory when he was four years old. His memory of this is alive, but he wishes it would be more expansive – so he is careful in the game. Pious Is the memory he wishes he would have done it.
Nevertheless, it is communicated with authenticity and a detail that is completely immersive. Pious Is a short, deceptively simple narrative game from the first person who takes a few hours to play. (It is now available on Steam, Xbox and PlayStation with a Switch version.) When Julián roam your family home, school and the local park and kick a ball with your friends. They take part in a wedding and fall balloons on the ceiling fans. They listen to their parents' conversations; You play hidden with your sister. Your mother pulls you to places, send you out, order you home and asks you to stay set.
Image: Julián Cordero, Sebastian Valbuena/panic
It is the late summer 2001 and the entire Quito is obsessed with Ecuador's series of qualified games against other South American nations. Julián's memory hops from one agreement to the next, but instead of being the focus of the campaign, the matches are an omnipresent context that buzzes in the atmosphere of the city. Video film material plays on TV in Shop Windows, while adults discuss the strategy and goal line everywhere.
As a child, Julián's relationship with football is more tactical. He kicks. Cordero and Valbuena designed a sensationally liquid and intuitive football control scheme from the first person, which is automatically, but still finesse (especially when running with R2) and kicks that are delivered by holding and cutting the right stick. The system works just as well in top-down football video game that Julián plays on his console at home. Tino Tiis Football 99 (A tribute to the Britsoft Classic from 1993 Dino Dinis football). This extremely playable and funny game within a game is more breathtaking in a row in a row, but firm shifts of perspective, which are ambiguously blurred by the boundaries between the author, player and avatar. As Tino Tiis Football eats into the life of the young Julián, so PiousA game that an older Julián made about his life eats in ours.
Despite the tiny scope and budget of the game, the reproduction of Quito 2001 is covered and fully realized. Visually, it is made up of 3D models with low polishing, which in a granular pastellonochrome such as a zine print with simple but lively caricatures of black and white figures that represent people and important things, and important things, with only alive caricatures. It is like a fatty photo that is overlaid for understanding a child for what is important. She draws brilliant audio design deeper into this world and builds the city as a laundry of ambient noises and layers of overlapping dialogue about life in Ecuador, since it is exposed to both financial disasters and an inclusion on the sporty glory. The result is impressionistic, but also really realistic – as in the reality of our world – in a way that only a few video games can achieve. If you play it, you feel like you have been moved at a different time and another place.
Image: Julián Cordero, Sebastian Valbuena/panic
That doesn't mean that Pious stays in the same time and in the same place. Like some of his biting narrative indie ancestors-especially Blendo Games' Jump-cutting mini masterpiece, Thirty flights love love – Pious Adds cinematic editing and side -side position to great effect. (The cinema is in Cordero's blood; his father Sebastián staged the 1999 crime film Rats, mice, thief This was the first Ecuadorian film that was recognized at international film festivals. His parents can be entertained about the state of the Ecuadorian film in the game.) Occasionally, the game jumps in time to the experience of a rootless Julián in teenage age. later, Pious The fourth wall smashes to take a documentary look at your own mechanics.
So yes, among other things, Pious is a meditation about the creative process, a reminded documentary about life in the year of the Millennium Ecuador and a playable essay on the way in which sport combines with both individuals and companies. Above all, however, it is a game to be a child, step a ball and observe how he sails into the future. It's a miracle.
