Habla Con Migo

WHAT IS THIS??

Habla Con Migo was a one-button adventure game prototype developed for the UT Dallas Capstone course in the Spring of 2019. Here's the original speech myself and the game's fantastic sound designer, James Popiel, presented(He presented the audio portion), "Habla Con Migo is a videogame that uses my family’s collection of old home movies and videos to explore Tejano culture of the '90s and see how they compare to critiques and commentaries made by prolific Mexican American authors of the time, including Gloria Anzaldua and Sergio Troncoso.

If you’re not familiar with the term Tejano, we define it as Mexican Americans born or raised in Texas or identify themselves as both Mexican American and Texan.

Throughout the game, players will be given the chance to experience Tejano's lives through 3 VHS cassette-themed vignettes of home movies depicting specific aspects of Tejano communication, including dialogue amongst themselves, dialogue with Mexicanos or people from Mexico proper, and dialogue with non-Latine individuals.

 After viewing these vignettes, the player will get to explore those same scenes again like a platform game similar to what one might find in Mario games. They’ll be hopping over people and furniture, searching for items shown throughout the game world in order to complete their objectives. Both items and objectives are addressed and requested within the footage in order to foster a more engaging experience. We want our game to be as accessible as possible, so we’ve made sure Habla Con Migo only requires a single button to play from the moment players pick it up, to the moment they put it down.

We want our game to be as inclusive as possible as well as explore the relationships between different aspects of Tejano culture, so it will contain an original soundtrack with a unique song for each level that draws from the cultural interaction which that level depicts.  You can hear the first track playing right now.  The soundtrack contains many disparate elements of both Latin and American music as well as various genres spanning from the ’90s to modern. It also combines low and high-fidelity sound to match the aesthetic.  The sound of our world will consist of low-fidelity static ambiance, as well as both analog and digital distortions in the diegesis and the music to accompany various visual disturbances in gameplay, as well as to represent the college student’s separation between his foundations and his current college life.

From our gameplay to our audio, and narrative, we’ve built Habla Con Migo to bring my family’s Tejano experience to the player." Wow, James and I really said all this to a room full of actual humans?? 

UHH... SO CONTROLS?

Literally, just the Space Bar. (Also Esc. to quit because it's always good to pack an ejection seat.)

Hold Space Bar to skip cutscenes. During gameplay, hold Space Bar down when the arrow is going in the direction you want it to go.

During the showcase, this game used a giant USB button to control it. I thought it was cool.

IT'S A MESS AND UNFINISHED!

It was a prototype for a 3-month course that predates any of my other uploaded works. I'm amazed it exists. The uploaded build, which has been untouched since Spring 2019, only has 1 completed song and level that loops once you reach my cousin wearing his helmet at the end of the stage.The majority of assets for levels 2 and 3 were complete but due to time constraints, those levels weren't included in this build. It runs terribly, and I'm very sorry for that.

The project meant quite a bit to me and I'd love to remake/complete it one day. For now, I'd like to upload this prototype of it to remind myself it exists and share it with you lovely folks. Happy Hispanic Heritage Month! :)