From games based on the Malvinas War to Argentina’s urban legends and even its most popular beverage, the local video game industry put all its creativity and energy on display at the Argentine Video Game Expo (EVA, for its Spanish initials) with a slew of games based on topics and motifs of the country’s culture.

The Association of Argentine Video Game Developers (ADVA, for its Spanish initials) organized the event that took place between October 23 and 26 at the recently renamed Palacio Libertad in Buenos Aires. Developers spoke to the Herald about where they got the inspiration for the projects and the state of the industry in the country.

Take “Cebador,” for example, a mobile video game named after the person in charge of serving mate, the country’s traditional hot beverage. 

“There was nothing centered around yerba mate and that’s when I said ‘let’s go that way’,” said Mariano Bevaqcua, game designer and project artist. 

“We said ‘How can we make a mate game challenging?’ First we came up with a character who only drinks latte macchiatos and someone forces him to learn how to drink mate. And then we took it one step further, asking ‘What if he dies, and has to learn how to drink mate to get into heaven?’” Bevacqua told the Herald. 

“That’s the starting point of the delirious story you can see in the game.” 

The music score, composed by Maxi Morales, is also inspired by national tunes. “We are doing all the basic folk music — chacarera, zamba, carnavalito, chamamé, etc,” said Morales, adding that he adapted those genres to make them similar to something you would listen to in an old Nintendo or Sega console.

“There are a lot of games based on different topics of Argentine culture,” said Diego Azario, who serves as the project’s programmer. “The industry is in a very interesting place, valuing all kinds of cultural and historic matters.”

Hernán Patané leads the team making Malvinas: La última Carta (Malvinas: The Last Letter), an action and stealth video game set at the end of the Malvinas War. The player takes on the role of a soldier at the end of the conflict, tasked with protecting the letters his deceased brothers-in-arms wrote to their relatives.

“We did five interviews with veterans and also used available information to put together this fictional story,” Patané told the Herald. “Video games are not only hobbies — there are a lot of different genres that can cause a lot of sensations in the player.”

Hypnos team’s Fábulas porteñas (Buenos Aires Fables) is an upcoming horror game with PlayStation 2 aesthetics inspired by titles such as Resident Evil and Silent Hill. The game is about a character stopping at a subway station that does not appear on any map. “When you get to the station you realize that you have no charge on your SUBE card, you have to find a way to get back home while something is lurking in the shadows,” said Kevin Weiss, one of the artists on the team.

Game designer Delfina Roillet said they drew inspiration from an urban legend about a “ghost metro station” in the H line called Pirámides. “The legend says that by 9 p.m., when the subway goes through that empty station, lights flicker. The idea in the future is to work with other myths,” she said.

Argentine video games on the global scene

Argentina’s is Latin America’s leading video game industry, with the highest number of projects in the continent. And global interest in video games produced in the country is growing. 

Andrés Borghi’s team won the 2023 EVA best video game award for Tenebris Somnia. Following the prize, he struck a deal with U.S.-based company New Blood Interactive to publish his game, which is still in development. This year, he showcased a more advanced version of his project, a very original horror game that combines pixel-art gameplay with live-action cinematics. 

“This helps me to narrate deep sensations in characters that are little squares, because later you see them as actors and your empathy grows; you see them as little squares again going through terrible things,” Borghi said. 

“This brings you closer to the character in a very unique and strange way.”

Borghi, himself a filmmaker, said video games are “a fairly new, unexplored language” compared to the cinema, adding interactivity into the mix.

Hernán Saez is one of two members of Videogamo studio. They had created two games prior to this year’s presentation at EVA. One is called Nave (Ship), an arcade machine with only one unit in existence (it is currently in a bar in Palermo called Destellos), and Dos Botones (Two buttons), a console designed for parties whose controls only consists of two buttons. 

Saez presented Gol-E-Gol at this year’s EVA, an electronic table football financed by NYU’s Game Center that had people queueing in line to play. The only difference from other versions of the popular tabletop game is that here the actions are seen on a screen. 

When the Herald asked if it was possible to make highly controversial shots over 360 degrees, also known as “spinning” — that is, spinning the bar all around, instead of using wrist strokes to kick the ball — Saez answered positively but warned that he wouldn’t take responsibility for the blowback.

“You can, but if your friends then insult you, that’s on you.”

Editorial disclaimer: Although the UK refers to the territory as the “Falklands Islands,” Argentina strongly contests this name. The Buenos Aires Herald uses “Malvinas” to refer to the islands.