Developer: Bytepolar LLC
Release Date: March 5, 2015
Platforms available: IOS, Android
Salta Patria -or Patria Jumper in English (Patria meaning Homeland or Fatherland, and also being an important buzzword for Venezuela’s former galactic, universal, celestial, divine commander in chief Hugo Chávez) – is a cheery and colorful mobile phone platformer that puts you in control of a venezuelan university student during the 2015 “guarimbas” protests against the countries dictatorship, that resulted in the imprisonment and torture of students as well as the murder of protesters by the national guard and paramilitary groups aligned with the government.
Political commentaries aside, Salta Patria is a simple game that takes you through different cities of Venezuela as you collect national treasures and free your fellow students from the national guard.
Thematically, Salta Patria is a pretty strong game. Just like it happened to students during the protest, the player is only ever safe when inside a large group of people that can protect them from the main threat of the game: the national guard. Just like it happened during the protests, the guards shoot to kill at the player without hesitation and a great deal of effectiveness, the game even adds marksmen! who gained notoriety since most or at least the most famous murders where due to shots to the head.
Continuing this idea, it is not only the bad that Salta Patria gets right, everything from its menu and map to its store is done as a reference to some staple of Venezuelan life and current events of the country. Its depiction of Venezuela comes to a climax with the first boss fight, which takes place in a prison and pits the player against 5 rounds of knife-wielding convicts. It is a challenging fight that makes sense, since captured students where sent to jail during this period of time (making some prisoners that believed in the cause of the students promise not to hurt them, which while something good, still means the default expectations is for them to be hurt by all the criminals in prison…) What really brings together the fight is a TV screen with an animated face of the Minister of Penitentiary Services directing the enemies and getting angry after you clear each round.
The coins found in the game are the controversial 1 bolívar coin, infamous for being able to be broken in two parts with ease and for being an early sign of the devaluation of the currency under Chávez and Maduro. As arguably the most iconic currency piece in Venezuela, in-game this coin allows you to purchase different characters of which we will talk about later. There is one other collectible in Salta Patria and it is the corn flour Harina PAN which has famously been scarce in spite of being crucial for the Venezuelan diet.
Salta Patria presents one of its defining traits, its humor, in the playable characters that are available for purchase. The game offers everything, from opposition leaders, public figures, comedians, the eternal-galactic-commander, the founding father of the nation up to a national inside-joke: An Iguana (from a time the government blamed an iguana for a power shortage) which shows how the game developers definitely had their share of fun creating this game. Of course, this being a free game the player must either amass great amounts of coin or pay with real life money.
Controls are a little wonky, especially on the landing, where your character keeps falling for a quarter of a second after he touches the ground, which makes precision jumping a dangerous proposition since even if you do manage to land where you wished to you might just slide to your death if you lose control over the character. This is a major problem for a platformer, and it is the major drawback that personally makes me stop playing after I lose all my hearts a few times in quick succession. However, it does remind me that Salta Patria is not a game made to be good, but rather to be relevant; made during a time of strife to say something when no one knew what to say. And to maybe make a little money while doing so, developing video games isn’t cheap after all.
Salta Patria is no longer in my cell phone due to a factory reboot and, at least here in Europe, it cannot be found in the play store. I do remember the feeling of discovering every detail put into the game and having a laugh with friends about how a few pixels could describe our nationality so well and criticize it so harshly. It is an interesting feeling to see yourself reflected in something you love, especially in movies and video games, two markets heavily dominated by the USA, Japan, and Europe, and it is a feeling that I hope more people from smaller countries can get to experience some time in the future.
A. E. Kuttel 