13 Rosas

Description

13 Rosas is a horror adventure game about the characteristics and mechanisms of fascism in general and the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939) in particular.

Explore a nightmarish, impossible building to retrieve thirteen red roses for the monster guarding the exit gate. The roses lie behind puzzles and philosophical riddles inspired by texts from, among others, Umberto Eco, Antonio Gramsci and Clara Zetkin, paintings, photographies and poems from artists like Pablo Picasso, Gerda Taro and Federico García Lorca, and several pieces of historiographical documentation dedicated to these dark times.

The Thirteen Roses

The Thirteen Roses were an actual group of young socialist women fighting on the Republican side, who were executed not during, but after the end of the war. The demo version release was on the anniversary of their assassination (August 5th, 2022).

The name of the Thirteen Roses transcends their own existence: what was meant to be an exemplary penalty became a symbol of the resistance which continues to exist to this day. The presence of these roses inside the game serves as a common thread for the historical memory of Spain.

Background

The game concept and the first playable demo was developed by Casilda de Zulueta, with original music and sound design done by her father, Francisco de Zulueta. This version was submitted in mid-2022 along with her master’s thesis in Game Development & Research M.A. at the Cologne Game Lab (TH Köln University of Applied Sciences, Germany).

On the 5th of August, 2022, a public demo was released (available on itch.io). It is for this version that Daniel Palacio Samitier joined to take over the programming work and implement the missing features.

Features

  • First-person horror.
  • Fully navigable 3D space.
  • Scripted puzzles.
  • A nightmarish, impossible, old building to explore.
  • Lore notes on the causes and consequences of fascism scattered around the house.
  • An enigmatic creature guarding the exit gate.

Selected Articles, Reports and Interviews