I recently played and finished Winter Burrow, but I apparently hadn't had my fill of creative indie games, so I selected another title from the backlog and dove in. The next on the list? SOPA: Tale of the Stolen Potato, a quick and quaint narrative-adventure about a boy chasing a frog stealing a bag of potatoes.
That brief synopsis should be enough to tell you that SOPA is possessed of all the creativity I absolutely adore from these tiny gaming adventures. It took me just over three hours to reach the credits, and those hours were filled with whimsical puzzles, stories, and moments.
Like Winter Burrow, the game I played before, SOPA isn't perfect, and the ending does feel abrupt, but I'm still happy I gave it a chance. It helps that SOPA: Tale of the Stolen Potato is one of many games that launched into Xbox Game Pass this year, and it's also a full Xbox Play Anywhere title.
A wild feast of childlike imagination
You are Miho, which — as you may have already guessed — probably isn't your real name. SOPA is marinated in subtleties and seasoned with mysteries, such as why you're being raised by your grandmother, similarly vaguely referred to as Nana.
What is obvious in moments, though, is that you are a child. It's not just the way you see the world, but also how the world reacts to you and your actions. You can interact with everything with the curiosity of youth... but Miho will usually respond with the bored nonchalance of a soul that thrives on excitement and fun.
You can sprint, but your caution not to bump into your surroundings is seemingly ignored solely inside Nana's home, as things apparently react to your very presence as an energetic child — and Nana will scold you accordingly. You may notice all of this before SOPA even begins, as the game is setting the groundwork for the nonsensical adventure you're about to embark on.
You'll see SOPA lay the groundwork for the nonsensical adventure you'll embark on.
What an adventure it'll be, too, all because Nana asks for your assistance to make sancocho, a complex and flavorful soup (or stew, if you want to split hairs) popular in Latin America. Your objective? Obtain a single potato from the sack stashed in the rear of the pantry. Seems simple enough.
Until the pantry stretches into oblivion like you're trapped in a psychological horror movie, and the sack of potatoes at the end is being actively purloined by a purple frog wearing a hat, and fighting said potato thief drags you through the backrooms of the pantry and its ghost-y, chicken-y occupants, and you're cast onto the shore of a raging river after losing the Great Potato Custody Battle.
All of that, and this is where SOPA: Tale of the Stolen Potato finally begins.
Perfectly bite-sized, but a little abruptly ended
SOPA: Tale of the Stolen Potato is only a handful of hours in length, so I'm not going to dissect its story and gameplay until every enigmatic element has been eliminated. Instead, I'll tell you upfront that SOPA will likely surprise you.
It's a simple narrative-adventure game in that its controls are easy to understand (and often awkward). It's also not confounding or convoluting enough to fall into the "puzzle" or "mystery" sub-genres, but does retain just enough of both to bring them to mind.
To be frank, I don't want to spoil any more than that. Simply interact with everything and talk to everyone, and the solutions will likely come to mind — especially if you commit to thinking like a child does. SOPA isn't revolutionary for a video game, but the amalgamation of its ideas is absurd enough to make you think so... at first.
There's a grander story behind SOPA, but you don't see the full picture while playing.
SOPA encourages you to think outside the box in the most straightforward ways, in that the box we all live in tends to be influenced by such ridiculous concepts as "reality" and "adulthood." Ultimately, you'll progress in SOPA because you do something that a child would do without bias, and realize that it works because not everything has to have some profound, mature meaning hidden out of sight.
Except SOPA does have a deeper message underneath its chaotic world of childlike imagination — at least ostensibly. Even the game's official description on the Xbox store will inform you that you're following in the steps of a "mysterious great traveler."
The issue here is that SOPA: Tale of the Stolen Potato is simply too vague in delivering this message, to the point that it absolutely feels like an afterthought. You feel that most when the game simply ends with little fanfare and a cryptic cinematic. It's clear that SOPA is trying to tell a story greater than itself, but it's ultimately lost. That doesn't mean I didn't greatly enjoy my time with this game, though.
SOPA: The Tale of the Stolen Potato is now available across Xbox Series X|S, Xbox One, Windows PC, handhelds like Xbox Ally, and Xbox Game Pass if you'd like to experience this potato recovery mission for yourself.
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