SOPA – Tale of the Stolen Potato

A great dish is easily upended if you’re missing a key ingredient. Substitutes often will suffice but bring a noticeable difference in the quality of what you’re eating. This happened to me not too long ago when making red lentil curry, a quick family favourite. Now, whenever it’s on the meal plan for the week, I bear the curse of my kids asking, without fail, if I remembered to buy all the ingredients for it. It stings. Kids, I swear, I learnt my lesson.

Sopa: Tale of the Stolen Potato chronicles an albeit much more exciting version of my plight. It’s the debut traditional game from StudioBando, which has previously launched the mobile title Super Best Ghost Game. In Sopa, you play as Miho, which is probably the most clever English-language adaptation I’ve ever seen for the Spanish mijo, shorthand for mi hijo, a common term of endearment for kids. Miho is a pretty normal kid. He doesn’t love soup, yet his abuela is making one and needs Miho to go grab a potato. After putting up a fairly weak fight, protesting that he doesn’t like potatoes, Miho takes a slow walk to the back of the pantry to grab the potato bag.

But of course, things aren’t so simple. A frog has its hands on the bag and makes off with it, revealing a portal to a hidden world. And here we go. But wait.

Sopa’s introduction is a quick one, but it does not set expectations for pacing very well. After leaving the pantry, you see the frog blitz down a river. Miho must return back to his abuela’s house to find a suitable boat and oar. Once you’ve got what you need and return to the river, it feels like you’ve hit the rewind then fast forward buttons to restart the game. Coursing down the river in your makeshift boat is an extended mini-game in which you avoid as many rocks as possible. 

The section is a bit of a whiplash moment. The dodging mechanic in the boat is one that we won’t return to. The river will return but severely truncated in comparison to this opening piece, and aside from some collectibles, there isn’t much that the river contributes to the game. It does function well to situate the player in the general mythology of Amazonian rivers, where a dolphin guide will escort and encourage you as you navigate the rocks. In this way, Sopa is an incredible introduction to the folklore of the Amazon. I was reminded several times over of stories from Cuentos amazónicos, a collection of oral histories and stories compiled by Juan Carlos Galeano that detail folktales from the region. However, without having an idea of what to look for, I don’t think this will yield all that much insight for the unfamiliar player.

At the bottom of the river is the Black Market. And this is where Sopa begins to shine. You’ll continue through a linear chain of hubs in which you logically decipher linked fetch quests. It’s a lot of running around. There might not be anything mechanically new here, but the writing delivers some excellent comedy and memorable one-liners, and the NPCs have wonderfully exaggerated facial expressions. The animation work there is always delightful. 

Sopa’s writing reminds me of the sneaky quips that are baked into extended dialogues in Breath of the Wild, where eventually you realise that Link is hilariously impatient, and you wonder how much the writers were able to get away with. Couple that with the kind of charm you see in young Macaulay Culkin movies, and Miho quickly grew into an endearing protagonist. When you eventually leave the Black Market and go to other locations, Miho undergoes well-plotted characterisation as well, and he’ll make small asides to himself synthesising what he’s learnt. I couldn’t help but see my own kids in Miho, and Sopa becomes a kind of coming-of-age story in beautifully subtle ways. 

The writing snowballs as new NPCs show up in later areas. Sopa shines with more polish as you get deeper into the story, and things begin to unravel. However, as you reach the finish line, Sopa stumbles once again.

I’ll tiptoe around it for folks interested in playing the game, but there’s another pacing hiccup towards the end and then an unexpected and out-of-place sombre moment. For a game that is upbeat and humorous, the one, cleanly delivered gut punch made me really consider Miho’s reality. The narrative break here worked well to remind the player just how much of the game utilises magical realism to tell its story, but when placed next to a gearshift in pacing, the impact didn’t land in a way that made for satisfying falling action in Sopa’s narrative arc.

Aside from how the story flowed, I imagine the general jank across the board will be forgiven by most players. It wasn’t cumbersome, and my gameplay was never interrupted, but there’s still plenty. However, lighting, unruly camera shifts, and some bizarre clipping might annoy players, and there seemed to be more than what you’d expect. Keep in mind that I played the review version, and it’s possible that the majority of these wrinkles are hopefully ironed out in the final product. 

By the time the credits began, I was pleased with my experience with Sopa. Over the course of the game, a wonderful cast of quirky characters had assembled, and Miho rose to the top of that group. An inquisitive, loving, and dutiful kid, Miho stands among the many child protagonists that learn and teach something along the way to most everyone he meets, without being an annoying know-it-all. But I also felt like something was missing. The key ingredient of good pacing was glossed over with the game’s other charms, and it made for an uneven ride from beginning to end. Still, there’s a lot to enjoy in Sopa, especially for anyone who enjoys good writing and funny characters.