This Video Game Designed by Filipino Developers in Their 20s Uses Fernando Amorsolo's Paintings
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If there’s one Filipino painter whose works are instantly recognizable, it’s got to be Fernando Amorsolo. The country’s first National Artist is often considered the “grandfather of Philippine art,” and for good reason: his works not only displayed his mastery of portraiture and landscapes, but have also become a symbol of Filipino identity and nationhood.
Through the decades, Amorsolo’s paintings depicting images of bucolic provincial life, of local customs and traditions, and of portraits that promoted unabashedly Filipino features over Western ideals of beauty, have seeped into the very fabric of Filipino consciousness. His works can be found as prints on countless books, novels, and illustrations, and has inspired many other artists here and abroad.
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The latest to find inspiration from Amorsolo’s images is a group of young gaming developers who are using his paintings as a setting for a story-based game called San Fernando. In the game, players are anthropologists studying the culture of a fictional town named San Fernando. They can navigate the town and talk to its inhabitants to learn about how they live, what their relationships are like, and many other details. The choices players make will affect their relationships with the other characters, and, of course, the story itself. Players can note their progress in a journal that they carry around throughout the game, and as the plot progresses, so too will their understanding of their place in the story.
“The players will experience the town with Amorsolo’s artistic vision through his paintings which often invoke a sense of nostalgia,” says Matt Limbaga, who is one of the game developers. Limbaga, who is 23 years old, is the narrative designer and composer of Makiling InterArts an independent game development group based in Los Baños. Others in the team include artist Kate Clarise de Leon, project manager Joma Urbano, and a programmer. They were all classmates in a high school in Cavite and while one of them studied at iAcademy, the rest studied at the University of the Philippines in Los Baños.
In an online conversation with Esquire Philippines, Limbaga said the project was first conceived as an entry for the 2022 Cultural Center of the Philippines’s Game Development Grant, which sought to find and develop original content that features Filipino art and culture, particularly folktales, myths, and legends.
“Our inspiration came from various sources,” Limbaga said. “The CCP gave us access to their Encyclopedia of Philippine Art (EPA), which we scoured for inspiration. We have always been accustomed to seeing Fernando Amorsolo’s artworks in textbooks as children, and seeing it in EPA convinced us of the potential of making a fictional world within his artworks which we can bring to life through animation. This is how San Fernando came to be. Everything else fell into place after.”
Limbaga said the group chose to use Amorsolo’s art because the paintings themselves tell stories of their own.
“We want to bolster the National Artist’s legacy by merging two art forms: painting and games,” he said. “A common criticism of Amorsolo’s art is that it’s too idyllic, and we take this into account as we put our own twist on it. San Fernando is more than a picturesque town ripe to be explored.”
The developers of Makiling InterArts have been working on San Fernando on and off for the past year but said they have recently gained traction after they earned the support of the Fernando C. Amorsolo Art Foundation. The group also won a P300,000 grant from the CCP’s Animation, Comics, and Computer Games Grants Program under the category of Computer Games (Independent). While it’s not much compared to similar independently developed games, it will definitely bring the developers one step closer to finishing the game, which the group hopes to release San Fernando “either late this year or early next year.”
In a Reddit post, Limbaga said there have been “complications” related to the release of the CCP’s grant, which is why the group said it is actively looking for game publishers and investors to help support the project.
“The people behind the grant are doing their best for the funding to push through, but since the project also needs financial support, we have begun to expand our options to other sources as firm believers of the game’s potential,” he said.
When the game is finally completed, the developers said they plan to sell the game primarily on PC through Steam, which is a digital platform that distributes PC games. Eventually, with enough support, the group plans to release the game to more platforms and even in other languages.
Limbaga said they’re focusing on the work needed to complete San Fernando before oving on to a new project. “We want this game to be recognized internationally and provide a fresh perspective on the paintings both for art lovers and gamers alike,” he said.
You can support Limbaga and his team at Makiling InterArts by checking out their wishlist on Steam and following their social media (Facebook and Twitter) for updates on the project.
You can watch a teaser of the game here:
We’re making an indie narrative game with Amorsolo’s paintings about Filipino culture
by u/mattastrophobe in Philippines
