Malinche's Dream
A downloadable game
Malinche's Dream is a game about La Malinche, the fabled translator of Hernán Cortés. In this game, sometimes you play as La Malinche, and sometimes you play as her Chorus, that unruly presence that is at once Malinche’s unconscious and also the dream of her world.
Together, you and your friends explore the memories and dreams of La Malinche across the past 500 years, beginning in 1519, the year of Cortés’ arrival.
The central mechanic of the game might understood as one PC, many GMs: one person is always Malinche, and the rest (the Chorus) guide her through her dreams and her innermost thoughts.
The Chorus passes notes to Malinche, reminding her of her life and past lives, and she chooses whether to incorporate these notes into the narration of her dreaming. When her dream ends, she passes the dream object to a member of the Chorus, and they become the next Malinche.
The game is light and freeform, but may be heavy in tone, especially when addressing topics of gendered violence, colonialism, loss, and betrayal. Please be sure to play with safety tools in place, and with folks with whom you feel comfortable.
The intended tone is one of magic, ritual, dreams, and the space between both terror and joy.
This game can be fully experienced in 1-2 hours of playtime. There are 7 pages.
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I have an immense bias for dream themes as someone who has, vivid and recurring dreams constantly. I also love narrative games that have a format within themselves that further expresses their themes and purposes.
So the mere use of a chorus and evoking such simple but deep names for each of the four is so powerful! I’m always fascinated by the multiplicity of narrators and voices in games that encourage following <one> character. Thankyou for making this game. Malinche is an intriguing protagonist
A game where you explore the psyche of the historical figure La Malinche through her dreams. Kazumi demonstrated how we can use gaming to examine difficult topics like colonialism.