Entry #1: How it came to be

A few months ago, I was taking a class on Games Narrative at the university. We were tasked to come up with story ideas that would eventually be turned into games. For a while I had this idea for a short comic about a woman trying to get her deceased husband back to life and to do so, she needed to go deep inside the Amazonian jungle together with the husband’s corpse.

Well, eventually I thought that carrying a corpse through the jungle would be an exciting game concept and it opened up interesting ways to tighten up the story and game mechanics together. Which, by that time, was what I was interested in the most.

After reworking the concept for a while, it occurred to me that it climbing up a mountain would be an even more exciting setting. I was inspired by a trip I made a few years ago to the Sierra Nevada of Santa Marta, Colombia. I found it fascinating that you started the track near the sea coast, and after a few day of walking up the mountain you would actually witness the thermal floors changing as you were getting closer to the top. Eventually, you get to the point where you see the snowy top of the mountain on one side, and the Caribbean sea on the other. It’s magical.

For La Carga, I want to evoke a similar kind of magic through the setting. The environment is a big part of the game, not only because I want it to look nice, but also because a big chunk of the story is told environmentally and all the puzzles go around finding ways to manipulate the environment to bring the corpse, and yourself, to the top of this magical mountain.

Juan