Cinco Paus

If you’ve played other Michael Brough games, like Imbroglio or 868-HACK, the details of Cinco Paus may come as less of a shock to the system. It’s a fabulously complex and deep turn-based strategy game revolving around the use of five magic wands, each of which has complementary powers and limited uses. Discovering how they work and what each system does is left entirely up to you, because the game is only available in Portuguese and does not have English subtitles, making discovering its rules through a series of hard-won Eureka moments, fascinating and daunting in equal measure.

If you're a fan of Brough's other games, this review was likely a pointless exercise. You already bought Cinco Paus. I can see it on your home screen. Put on some pants, friend. Similarly, if you've been turned off by his games in the past, I'm not sure anything I've said here will convince you that this is your magic moment. If you're new to this developer's games I think this is mechanically a nice one to start with, but the language thing might be off-putting so I'd probably point you towards 868-HACK [$4.99] instead. All I know is that good old Papai Noel brought me a great new game from one of my favorite developers this year, and I'm pretty happy about that.

As a fan of Brough's other games, I think Cinco Paus is another great hidden gem from him that I'm happy to have in my collection. The distinctive art style makes me think of obscure adult swim cartoons, and I think the experimental approach with Portuguese is a fascinating perspective on language barriers in games. The gameplay itself is easy to pick up and learn after a few tries, and I enjoy the fact that each staff has a new set of properties in each game. It keeps you on your toes and you must try them all out in the first level to know and understand what their properties are. On top of that, there are a lot of other things in the game to learn as you play, such as enemy behaviors and what items do.