Tag: Aurion: Legacy of the Kori-Odan

News

A videogame is being used to humanize Dakar City’s child beggars

If ever a title exemplified the ability games have to comment on important issues, it’s Senegal’s Cross Dakar City. Essentially an updated version of Frogger in the vein of Crossy Road, its goal is simple: you are a young boy named Mamadou trying to cross the various streets, railroads, and rivers of Senegal’s capital city, Dakar, without running into any obstacles along the way. Unfortunately, traffic is indifferent to you, and you’ll have to dodge any number of vehicles, trains, and even bombs just to get home. This is because, as Mamadou, you are a talibé, or child beggar, and…
Aurion
News

Beautiful African fantasy RPG Aurion comes out April 14th

In 2011, Elder Scrolls took players to the overtly Scandinavian nation of Skyrim. This week, Fire Emblem Fates will welcome Western players to the heavily Japanese Hoshido. And now we know that, on April 14th, 2016, Africa will finally get it’s due when Aurion: Legacy of the Kori-Odan opens up its Cameroon-inspired planet of Auriona. Aurion aims to do for Cameroon what Never Alone (2014) did for Alaska’s native Iñupiat people. It’s to be the first installment in its local developers’ planned Kiro’o Tales, which hopes to advocate for African culture through games, comics, and cartoons. Last September, Aurion earned $50,000 in a…
News

Africa is not a country, unless you’re a videogame developer, apparently

Here’s an idea: If your blog post announcing a game set in ‘Africa’ doesn’t name a single country, it probably needs another edit. To wit, here’s a choice passage from Positech Games’ announcement for Democracy 3: Africa: In the west, we tend to think of Africa as either the target of charity fund-raising concerts, or somewhere to go on a safari. We never think about the African economies, or African industry or exports. Lets not forget Africa is home to a billion people… The problems, opportunities and characteristics of many African countries make for a fascinating experiment in political strategy. …
News

Finally, African fantasy is getting its own gorgeous RPG

If you were to rifle through the annals of videogame history you’d never guess that Africa is the second largest continent on the planet. There’s a distinct lack of African stories, characters, and art represented in the medium. Which is a shame when you consider how rich Africa is with history, language, people, traditions, myths, architecture, and so on.   The reason for Africa’s absence is obvious: there aren’t many Africans making videogames infused with their culture and stories that reach a global audience. What we’re familiar with, instead, is reappropriation by blockbuster titles that only use the ambiguous setting of…