Polda 5

Polda 5 was made over three years on essentially no budget with a minimal team, which is noticeably reflected in the finished game, but it still gave the series about policeman Pankrác another humorous case in the spirit of the earlier entries. The player returns to the classic point-and-click formula — exploring the environment, collecting and combining items in an inventory, and conversations full of trademark one-liners, whose main draw since the first game has been Luděk Sobota's voice acting as Pankrác. The story again mines parody of the crime genre and references to Czech reality of the mid-2000s, while keeping the typical exaggeration and absurd twists fans had come to expect.

The limited production resources also show in the technical execution — the graphics and animation feel more modest compared to the previous entry, individual locations are less detailed, and the overall production bears the marks of both haste and a lack of funding. Even so, the production tried to preserve the series' distinctive visual style and keep the recognizable characters from earlier entries. The audio remains built on voice acting and light music that give the game the atmosphere fans were used to from before. The lower production quality was seen by players and the contemporary press alike as a weakness, one the game only partly offset with the loyalty of its fanbase and the ongoing popularity of its main character.

Looking back, Polda 5 is generally considered the weakest entry in the series, yet it remained an important stepping stone after which the creators at Zima Software decided to give the brand a more substantial overhaul in later entries. For collectors and loyal series fans the game mainly carries nostalgic value, standing as evidence of the difficult conditions in which domestic adventure games were made at the time, and as a reminder that even a small studio managed to keep the series alive.

Why play it: More for collectors and loyal series fans, for its nostalgic value — as evidence of the difficult conditions in which domestic adventure games were made at the time — than as a fully rounded experience.