It’s a steamy night in the jungle. A huge one-legged creature with a detached jaw roars in the face of the protagonist, a young Indigenous woman. She grips her double-edged spear in both hands, readying herself for a fight.
This is a scene from Araní, a Brazilian game currently in development. The game is named after its lead character, an Indigenous warrior of the Sun Tribe intent on saving her people from a mysterious, mythological power. It was announced in 2018 by Diorama Digital, a studio based in Pernambuco, a state in Northeastern Brazil.
Brazil is the fifth-largest country in the world and is home to many different cultures. There are those hailing from the favelas seen in movies like 2002's City of God, and the Carnival parties and tropical bossa nova which are familiar to tourists, but it is the country’s many Indigenous peoples and traditional communities that caught the attention of the team at Diorama.
The country is also home to 850,000 Native peoples, living in 300 communities. They make up 1.1 percent of the country's 213.3 million inhabitants, according to the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics.
During the game’s planning, game developer Everaldo Neto says Araní’s willpower made her the obvious choice for the protagonist. “Everything happened in a very organic manner—it was almost like she picked us, and not the other way around,” he says. “We knew we needed a strong woman who was small considering the scale of her challenges, but huge in her deeds.”
