Atuel is an award-winning surrealist documentary game in which you explore beautiful, dreamlike landscapes inspired by the topography and wildlife of the Atuel River Valley in Argentina. Shapeshift into different animals and elements of Atuel’s ecosystem while listening to real-life interviews with specialists and locals who talk about the region’s past, present, and future. These interconnected perspectives weave together to tell a historic narrative about people’s intimate relationship to the land they live on and the effects of the global climate crisis.

Atuel is developed by Matajuegos, an indie game co-op and development studio located in Argentina. Matajuegos was founded in 2016 with the goal of creating and thinking about games from social, political, and cultural perspectives that are informed by their Latin-American context. Alongside game development, they have also dedicated themselves to creating Spanish-language game criticism in the form of articles, translations, interviews, podcasts, and videos.

Pablo Quarta, one of the members of Matajuegos will be at the festival and host a playsession during the Playful Friday program

You can read more about Matajuegos in this excellent interview published by ROMchip, play their other games on their itch.io page, read their game crit work on their webpage, and follow them on social media.