Kawiteros was the Grand Prize winner of last year’s French game-making competition Nova Play. Now it has been picked up by publisher Neko Entertainment and will be further developed for PC for a launch in 2016.
It’s a 2D exploration and puzzle game that has you playing as a Huichol shaman. The team behind the game happened across the Huichol people of Mexico, their culture, religious beliefs, and fascinating art work when looking for ideas for the competition. “It was then obvious, that the teeming and colorful world of Huichol people would be a great source of inspiration for our game, which we have decided to call ‘Kawiteros’, meaning ‘ancestor’ in Huichol,” the team said.
The result is a game that explores what it means to see everything in the world connected by energy, as Huichol shamans do. This manifests in the game as a mechanism that lets you physically connect objects together by drawing lines with your mouse between them. Not only is it playful (in the prototype you could have bunnies floating in the air, attached to plants) but this interaction opens up environmental manipulation that goes toward puzzle solving.
Of course, the immediate draw of Kawiteros is its art, which is inspired directly by the elaborate yarn paintings of the Huichol people, made from psychedelic colors, and all of which are tied to the the Huichol people’s beliefs.
You can find out more about Kawiteros on its website.
