Bruno De Paula (University College London)

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Abstract

The present work reflects on the tensions between gaming as a global phenomenon, and the relationship between games and local/regional cultures. Beginning from a reflection on the ideological positioning of gaming as a global – and almost universal – culture, the present paper moves on to, following recent scholarship, present a more nuanced view on this relationship, reflecting on the idea of regional/national games, and how game developers might reject or claim particular regional links. To operationalise this view, I recruit contemporary work on regional game studies and, to reflect about games to decide to ‘own’ particular links with certain cultures, the ‘folkloresque’ as a bridging concept between folklore, popular cultures and authenticity. To detail how the folkloresque can operate as a relevant concept in this debate regarding regional/national games, I analyse, through a close reading, two independent games made in Brazil during the 2010s, Dandara and Chroma Squad, detailing their relationship with Brazilian (and other) cultures through the folkloresque. I conclude this paper with a reflection on how the folkloresque can work as a conceptual tool to dive deeper onto how localised cultures might be amalgamated in media productions, and how that can complicate and enrich our understanding of what constitutes a regional game, as well as recruit in different ways the myriad of positionalities that constitute the universe of videogame players around the world.

 

1. Introduction

Videogames are no short of myths: beyond the literal engagement with mythical creatures at textual level – from Greek mythology in Hades (Supergiant Games, 2020), to Chinese folktales in Black Myth: Wukong (Game Science, 2024), to Northern Mexico Tarahumara culture in Mulaka (Lienzo, 2018) – the cultural apparatus around videogames also present, their own ideological mythologies (Barthes, 2012). Videogames are, for example, ‘often understood to be the first “global” medium’ (Mandiberg, 2021, p. 177), as if they were ‘untroubled by borders, boundaries, cultures and languages’ (Mandiberg, 2021, p. 181), when the reality demonstrates that there is substantial hidden work throughout history to build up this myth (Carlson & Corliss, 2011; Mandiberg, 2021). 

In this myth, videogames are mostly seen as the product made by big conglomerates, often led by their headquarters in mainstream gaming spaces, such as Anglo-Saxon North America or Japan. Such mythic constitution of game production has a clear side-effect for game developers. As a way to leverage this ideological setting, game-makers often have to navigate tensions between producing works that are seen as “localisation ready”, easier to be transposed and adapted to different markets (Carlson & Corliss, 2011; Kerr, 2017; Vanderhoef, 2021; Webber, 2020), or leveraging their own ‘cultural fragrance’ (Iwabuchi, 2002; Webber, 2020), leaning into their pedigree in the case of prestigious locations, such as Japan (Consalvo, 2022; Hutchinson, 2025), or their own ‘exoticism’, in peripheric spaces (Švelch, 2021). 

The present work contributes to the recent scholarship (Barreto & Jensen, 2020; Krawczyk, 2024; Li & Li, 2023; Penix-Tadsen, 2016; Pérez-Latorre & Navarro-Remesal, 2022; Švelch, 2021; Webber, 2020) that focuses on the relationship between games and regional/national cultures. I examine how particular connections between text and place might be established through close readings (Bizzocchi & Tanenbaum, 2011) of two games made in Brazil: Dandara (Long Hat House, 2018) and Chroma Squad (Behold Studios, 2015). 

In order to operationalise the different strategies and the different potential links to (different) local and popular culture(s), I recruit the cultural theory concept of the folkloresque (Foster, 2016; Tolbert, 2016), highlighting the contact zones between vernacular, informal, noninstitutional nature of folklore (Noyes, 2012), and more institutionalised, often commercial and proprietary forms of popular culture (Tolbert, 2016).

In the following sections, therefore, I present a brief overview of the key concepts that underpin this research – namely, a brief discussion on regional game studies, and the folkloresque as a bridging concept between folklore, popular cultures and authenticity – to then move onto the analysis of the two games. I conclude with a reflection on how the folkloresque works as a conceptual tool to better understand how localised cultures might be amalgamated in media productions and how that can complicate our understanding of what constitutes a regional game.

 

2. Regional Game Studies and National Games

While the rhetoric around videogames historically tended to emphasise their global nature by reproducing narratives around income and the ubiquity of certain platforms and games, recent scholarship has deliberately challenged these more traditional models, be it looking at flops and failures (Navarro-Remesal, 2017; Nicoll, 2019), at forgotten biographies, especially when developers do not fit the “male genius” mold (Lemon & Rietveld, 2020; Navarro-Remesal, 2024; Nooney, 2013), or in looking at how games and gaming cultures have been developed in particular places around the world (Swalwell, 2021). The work presented here is aligned to the latter. 

Different authors have looked at the relationship between particular regions and games, including here the UK (Webber, 2020), China (Li & Li, 2023), Italy (Carbone & Fassone, 2020), Japan (Consalvo, 2022; Hutchinson, 2025), Europe (Pérez-Latorre & Navarro-Remesal, 2022), and Latin America (Penix-Tadsen, 2016). This debate is summarised by Krawczyk (2024), who identified across the Game Studies literature different categories for associating a game with a place/region. Two of the most common ways of association are based on where the developers are based; and on the ‘textual’ representation of certain places through history, geography and culture. These two categories, however, still create some tensions: while they easily explain The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt (CD Projekt Red, 2015) as a Polish videogame, or Thank Goodness You’re Here (Coal Supper, 2024) as a British game, they do not help in other instances. A game such as Cai Cai Balão (DADIU, 2020), produced by students at IT University of Copenhagen in which the player immerses themselves in the world of baloeiros, the hot air balloon crews in São Paulo, Brazil (who acted as consultants for the game production) becomes more difficult to be classified through these categories.

To complicate this issue, even in small-scale game development, the imaginary that games are a global medium is a recurrent idea (Vanderhoef, 2021). In defining the key aspects related to the ‘transnational indie imaginary’, Vanderhoef (2021, p. 161) argues that while some independent developers “double down” on their origins, most independent game developers tend to ‘omit or occlude national signifiers in their games in order to (re)produce transnational entertainment products that appeal to global markets […]’ (idem). 

When mapping the different ways games have been associated with regions or national states, Vanderhoef (2021) argues that another way these links might be established could be via specific sensibilities that appeal to the local audience, which might be lost in translation for a different public. A similar version of this argument is put forward by Webber (2020, p. 143) who, looking at Britishness in productions such as Everybody’s Gone to the Rapture (The Chinese Room, 2016), claims that these games, due to being ‘situated within […] recognisably British landscapes, offe[r] a referential form of experience which speaks to a British audience in a way that it may not do to international players’. 

This consideration, therefore, opens space for questions regarding the representation of certain countries to a “global” audience, and how that might fall onto stereotypes. Discussing Brazilian representation through culture, Barreto and Jensen (2020) problematize the idea of “Brasilidade” as a ‘prepackaged cluster of familiar signifiers portraying a unified cultural landscape’ (Barreto & Jensen, 2020, p. 1668) for outsiders including, for example, ‘Carnaval, favelas, Rio de Janeiro, beaches, crime, bossa nova and samba music, the Christ statue, the Amazon, and Pelé as an avatar for Brazil’s futebol obsession’ (Barreto & Jensen, 2020, p. 1668). These tokens have been exploited by different international game developers to signify Brazil: Little Big Planet (Media Molecule, 2008), for example, recruits samba and carnaval, and Max Payne 3 (Rockstar Games, 2012), favelas and violence. Fighting games, such as the Street Fighter and the Tekken series, mix more problematic representations, such as the Amazon region as a space of savages – e.g., Blanka, in Street Fighter II (Capcom, 1993) – or highly sexualized characters – e.g., Laura Matsuda, in Street Fighter V (Capcom, 2016), and Christie Monteiro, in Tekken 6 (Bandai Namco, 2008) – with more relevant connections, such as having typically Brazilian fighting styles represented through characters – e.g., Laura Matsuda with Brazilian Jiu Jitsu in Street Fighter V (Capcom, 2016); Eddy Gordo and Christie Monteiro with capoeira in Tekken 6 (Bandai Namco, 2008). Of course, neither of the games discussed here were produced in Brazil, but the way they communicate “Brazilianess” has been influential to games developed in Brazil, with most local games opting for either “hiding” their Brazilian origin, or doubling down on their situatedness, a topic that will be retaken in the methodology section.

In relation to the quality of these representations, however, Barreto and Jensen (2020) – in a slightly different iteration of the argument presented by Vanderhoef (2021) and Webber (2020) – argue that going beyond these stereotypical views of “Brazilianess”, and digging deeper into aspects of the myriad of lived experience of Brazilians, can lead to more accurate depictions, even if they might end up “lost in translation” (Vanderhoef, 2021). As an example, Kotaki (2016) argues that more than stereotypical tokens such as beaches, samba and carnival, resilience and the idea that “no matter what happens, life goes on”, runs deeper in the Brazilian imaginary, and therefore, tapping into that would lead towards more accurate Brazilian representations.

What this position on the use of particular cultures in games present is, therefore, a more nuanced approach to read the way locality might influence game production, from more explicit, easily perceptible references to ones that might only interpellate cultural insiders. A question that remains, though, is related to the relationship between situated cultural references and game development, more specifically in how these might be employed to build a sense of authenticity. In the next section, then, I turn to the concept of folkloresque (Foster, 2016; Tolbert, 2016), which might shed light on how such processes can occur in commercial productions.

 

3. Folklore and Folkloresque

Folklore is defined, in a broader sense, as the shared vernacular elements of everyday life, underlying elements not necessarily regulated by formal institutions (Noyes, 2012). As a concept, it can be linked to the romantic nationalism of the 19th century, which saw in folk traditions a pivotal element to establish unified national identities as part of the project of modern nation-state building (Fischman, 2012). Throughout the 20th century, though, cultural theorists challenged this naïve position that considered ‘folk tradition[s] streaming unsullied from a pure social source, unclouded by mediation and unpolluted by self-conscious manipulation or foreign influences’ (Noyes, 2012, p. 29), indicating how folklore often constructed identities rather than expressing a pre-existing identity shared among cultural insiders (Noyes, 2012). Therefore, contemporary understandings of folklore highlight its communal nature, but considering that this communal element is grounded in shared forms and formats, and not in pre-determined identities (Noyes, 2012). Such focus on forms – therefore, on practices – reiterate the liminal nature of folklore, remarking its nature as part of vernacular cultural elements that are performed, rather than an essential element as earlier (romantic) conceptions of identity might have indicated.

Such understanding of folklore as having a social base is relevant to comprehend the role that folklore can play in the contemporary age. There is, as Bacchilega (2012) claims, an undeniable “web of intertextuality” between folklore and contemporary cultural productions. However, these intertextual connections do not erase the differences, nor the ‘material and ideological relations that inform the web’s links and hierarchies’ (Bacchilega, 2012, p. 457). It is in these hierarchical relationships that the idea of folklore – and, later, of folkloresque – become relevant for analysing the relationship between cultures and cultural products such as videogames. Relying on folklore can produce an aura of authenticity, which can be employed to distinguish certain cultural productions.

The folkloresque, therefore, emerges as a concept to highlight the contact zones between the vernacular, informal, non-institutional nature of folklore (Noyes, 2012), and the more institutionalised, often commercial and proprietary forms of contemporary popular  culture (Tolbert, 2016). More explicitly, Tolbert (2016, p. 16) defines the folkloresque as a ‘process of bricolage by which commercial interests cannibalize folklore, extracting component parts and reassembling them in a product that retains a connection to folklore, or seems folkloric, or has the style of folklore – and, most important, sells because of this perceived relationship’. But how exactly folkloresque appropriations operate?

Foster (2016) categorise the intertextual relationships between folklore elements and cultural productions in three main approaches: version or adaptation; precise allusion (or folklorism); and fuzzy allusion (or folkloresque integration). In his understanding, the first approach would be direct adaptation of a known folkloric narrative. The second approach – precise allusion – would entail the use of ‘identifiable characters, motifs and narratives from a shared tradition […] within a new medium and narrative’ (Foster, 2016, p. 46), creatively resituating (and potentially remediating) folklore. The third approach, fuzzy allusion, alludes to folkloric motifs, characters and tale types in unusual juxtaposition: in other words, it is a wholly new creation that is not based on a specific tradition, but one that alludes to folkloric elements in an imprecise way (Foster, 2016). The audience might be able to feel the ‘folkloric odour’ in these folkloresque productions, but would not be capable of relating back these elements to specific sources in specific folkloric traditions (Foster, 2016).

These categories are useful to understand, then, how commercial productions might refer to specific forms of folkloric and vernacular elements to potentially leverage specific elements that distinguish such productions in the contemporary media landscape. Such ideas might also be relevant under the light of the earlier discussion on how locality might become embedded (or not) in particular productions, and how such ideas might be combined or erased in independent productions (Kotaki, 2016; Vanderhoef, 2021). 

 

4. Methods: Cases and Analysis

In this paper, I analyse two Brazilian games: Dandara (Long Hat House, 2018), and Chroma Squad (Behold Studios, 2015). These games were selected because they fall in-between the two main approaches to the use of culture in peripheric independent game production, either eschewing their origins to make a “localisation-ready” product, or doubling-down on their locality as a way to rise above the mass of games released every month around the world (Vanderhoef, 2021). But how are these two poles represented in local Brazilian game production.

There is a substantial number of recent popular Brazilian releases that had reasonable recognition in Brazil and abroad and that avoid establishing explicit connections to Brazil, such as Vengeful Guardian: Moonrider (Joymasher, 2023), Out There Somewhere (MiniBoss, 2016), Horizon Chase (Aquiris, 2015) or Mullet Madjack (Hammer95 Studios, 2024). These games rely on other strategies such as alluding to particular game genres (e.g., fast-paced FPS in Mullet Madjack) and gaming periods (e.g., 16-bit era in Vengeful Guardian) while dealing with specifically fictional worlds, or presenting a more global perspective depicting different countries in the case of Horizon Chase. In either case, the result is a certain erasure of their Brazilian roots.

In the opposite pole, we have games that deal explicitly with Brazilian themes, often relying on hyperlocal cultures such as 171 (Betagames, 2022), inspired by São Paulo state urban cultures and often dubbed as the Brazilian GTA, indigenous legends in Aritana e as Máscaras Gêmeas (Duaik Entretenimento, 2021), North-eastern sertão culture in Árida (Aoca Game Lab, 2019), or Southern (specifically Rio Grande do Sul) gaúcho culture in Gaúcho and the Grasslands (Epopeia Games, 2025). In that case, these games have a clear Brazilian culture inflection, often depending on some kind of insider knowledge to fully follow the game universe, and sometimes relying on certain stereotypical views (e.g., crime in 171) or dealing clearly with folkloric entities and elements (e.g., the use of boitatá, a folkloric creature, in Gaúcho and the Grasslands). How are, then, the two selected cases, different from these games?

Dandara is closer to the latter category, relying on a known folk hero in Brazil –Dandara dos Palmares (Caetano & Castro, 2020; Williams, 2016) – but bringing in references and ideas from different domains, periods and cultures, rather than simply reproducing or adapting the known narratives about Dandara dos Palmares. This expansion leads to a meta-commentary on current Brazilian society.

Chroma Squad, on the other hand, can seem a game that falls under the category of Brazilian games that try to distance themselves from Brazil, since at a first glance it is a game that pay homage to super sentai, a media genre typically Japanese. However, as discussed in following sections, a deeper analysis makes clear its Brazilian roots as well as raises questions regarding the relationship between national culture(s), adaptations and, how power dynamics across international actors can affect the way certain cultural elements are attributed to particular locations.

Both games discussed here were analysed through a close reading (Bizzocchi & Tanenbaum, 2011) approach. Close reading, as applied to games, derive from a long-standing tradition in the humanities, in understanding that meaning is produced during the process of fruition of a certain cultural product (Carr, 2009), and not fixed in the product/text itself. It draws on and share traits with other analogous methods, such as textual analysis (Carr, 2009) and reader-response theory based methods (Fullerton & Farber, 2025), recognising that texts are never read in isolation, and on the same way that intertextual elements influence meaning-making processes, readers also bring in their own ‘reading formations’ when engaging with a text (Carr, 2009). 

In this particular case, I employed my positionality as a Brazilian player-as-analyst to select and analyse the most salient ludonarrative constructs, combining both plot/narrative and ludic (e.g., game mechanics and dynamics) elements. These aspects were supported by some contextual information, leading to an analysis that discusses how cultural/folkloric elements (from direct adaptations to fuzzy allusions) were recruited in Dandara and Chroma Squad, establishing then specific connections with different kinds of “Brazilianesses”, as well as more generic structures beyond Brazilian representations.

 

5. Dandara

Dandara (Long Hat House, 2018) is a 2D metroidvania developed by a small studio based in Belo Horizonte, capital of Minas Gerais state, Brazil. The title refers to the main/playable character in the game, making alluding to the folk hero Dandara dos Palmares. Dandara dos Palmares is, alongside Zumbi dos Palmares, recognised as one of the leaders of Quilombo dos Palmares, the biggest self-governing community organised by escaped enslaved people in colonial proslavery Brazil during the 16th century (Caetano & Castro, 2020). Palmares lasted for more than a century, resisting Dutch and Portuguese incursions until it fell for a Portuguese expedition in 1694 (Caetano & Castro, 2020; Williams, 2016). While the existence of Dandara has been questioned by some historians due to the lack of official records (Williams, 2016), here I agree with Caetano and Castro (2020) that more important than trying to distinguish myth from fact is how Dandara dos Palmares became, especially in last decades, a collective totem for intersectional (antiracist, feminist) resistance in Brazil. But how are these elements recruited in Dandara?

Rather than trying to simply adapt the history of Palmares or Dandara dos Palmares – therefore, going beyond the first level of integration according to Foster (2016) – the game places a well-known Brazilian folk hero in a fictional world that is peppered with references from sci-fi (Barreto & Jensen, 2020), afro-futurism, and from Brazilian contemporary popular culture and its own recent history (Maia & Silva, 2023). 

The overarching plot of Dandara is organised around more generic themes well-explored in heroic narratives, such as a world that has fallen out of balance by the emergence of an authoritarian figure (in the game, Eldar), the dichotomic relationship between (raising) oppression and (fading) freedom, and the rise of a new hero (Dandara) who is called upon to restore equilibrium. While this reliance on more general themes well-known in multiple folk traditions could be seen as a nod to fuzzy allusion – alluding to folkloric elements in an imprecise way – most of the referential elements in Dandara can be read through what Foster (2016) dubs as ‘folklorism’, or precise allusion. 

These precise allusions are not only limited to the plot, characters or locations – since certain areas in the game make direct reference to Palmares – but also to how certain ludic decisions are integrated into the game, and the way Dandara traverse the game space is a good example of such process in the way it establishes links with different elements and iconographies from Afro-Brazilian traditions, such as the link between the genre (Metroidvania), the map and the role of encruzilhadas (crossroads) in the Afro-Brazilian cosmovision (Lima, 2025), and how salt is iconographically employed in certain traditions.

As a Metroidvania, the world of Dandara is made of different rooms that are interconnected. There is no clear indication of an “optimal path”, and the player must find their own way through the world, traversing the different areas and rooms. In that, the map – revealed to the player part by part, only after rooms have been visited – can be considered as a map constituted of encruzilhadas, in that almost every room holds not only an intersection, but also an important moment in terms of where to go next, and what to do next; it is a space where contradictions and possibilities exist (Lima, 2025). In some Afro-Brazilian religious traditions, the encruzilhada is the space occupied by Exú, one of the most emblematic orixás (orishas) in that it is an entity that challenges usual Western conceptions of time and space: ‘Exu killed a bird yesterday with a stone that he only threw today’ (Lima, 2025, p. 8). While the game does not explicitly dwells on Afro-Brazilian religions, the option to rely on a genre that is contingent on choices and on simulated encruzilhadas can be seen as a subtle, but relevant, nod to this particular well-known aspect of Afro-Brazilian religions and traditions (for Brazilians who are and are not initiated in this specific culture). These links between game and Afro-Brazilian iconographies, however, are not only related to the map/level design, but also to specific mechanics.

In order to traverse the different rooms, the player is not free to move anywhere but can only move by attaching Dandara to one of the edges of the screen/room (figure 1 below). The movement, therefore, is contingent on jumps, and controlled by screen flicks on the right side of the screen, in the mobile version, or flicks in the right analog stick, if using a controller. However, Dandara can only explore her world, dubbed as ‘The Salt’ in the opening cutscene, landing across spaces covered in salt (as represented in Figure 1 below, the edges in white). This particular design decision not only adds a specific challenge to gameplay but also can be justified in integrating a ludic choice with narrative/cultural elements. Salt is related to purification in different religions, including those of Afro-Brazilian (Kosby & Bueno, 2019) origins, and such connection alludes to Dandara’s mission to restore harmony by purifying a now corrupt, oppressive world.

Figure 1: Dandara can only move across the salt-covered (white) edges. The object inspected describes a carving making reference to “a couple, enshackled, laughing”, potentially making reference to Dandara and Zumbi dos Palmares.

Throughout the game, Dandara moves across different areas freeing them from the “Eldarianos” (Eldar’s followers). Using flicks on the left side of the screen, in the mobile version, or flicks on the left analog stick on a controller, Dandara can use her arrows to eliminate enemies. The main goal, however, is to dismantle Eldar’s operation, and that is done by solving puzzles throughout the areas, using the help of allies that oppose Eldar’s oppressive regime. One of the first areas to be cleared in the game is named as “Vila dos Artistas” (Village of Artists), and it is an important area in Dandara because it signals two key elements in the game. Firstly, it highlights one of the central topics in the game, the dichotomic relationship between art and creativity (symbolised by Dandara’s allies), and oppressive order and economical exploitation, represented by the different bosses such the aforementioned General Augustus (fig 2) or Eldar, the main boss, aligned to a exploitative neoliberal work ethic (Maia & Silva, 2023). Secondly, the particular framing of the area as both an urban setting and one that concentrates artists opens space for the developers to bring in several intertextual elements borrowed from modern and contemporary Brazilian culture, for example, references to artists such as the modernist painter Tarsila do Amaral (figure 3), or to Clube da Esquina (figure 4), an important musical movement in Minas Gerais (Maia & Silva, 2023). On the same way, much of the assets and scenarios – especially in the urban setting areas – are inspired by everyday elements found in major Brazilian cities, mimicking the same road signs, graffiti styles (Maia & Silva, 2023), and regional speech mannerisms (figure 5).

Figure 2: Augustus, one of the bosses in Dandara, a reference to the military dictatorship in 20th century and, arguably, the rise of militaristic discourses in contemporary right-wing movements in Brazil

Figure 3: Scene depicting Tarsila’s house, making reference to one of her most famous art pieces, the Abaporu

Figure 4: Room referring to Clube da Esquina, a playword with its literal meaning (Corner’s club), also making reference to the important musical movement from Minas Gerais, Brazil.

 

Figure 5: In the Portuguese version, characters often have speech mannerisms that situate their origins (e.g.: “nó” is a typical interjection from Minas Gerais vernacular speech)

The game progresses with the player liberating different areas and allies that have either been in hiding or controlled by Eldar, until reaching the centre of Eldar’s domains, where efficiency, order, and “hard work” are seen as the only way of progressing to a “better future”. Such structure demonstrates how Dandara operates in a space between precise and fuzzy allusions (Foster, 2016). While the overall plot can be seen as another iteration of generic folkloric motifs found in different traditions (i.e., the rise of oppressive powers that impose narrower values, and the emergence of a folk hero to liberate people from this oppression), there are precise allusions in the way the game recruit intertextual elements from Brazilian culture, such as the particular references to characters, movements, and everyday life elements such as ways of speaking. For a Brazilian audience, however, the fuzzy allusion gets closer to a precise allusion in the way the two opposing forces depicted in the game can be related to structures of feeling (Williams, 2012) in recent Brazilian history, depicting the rise of far-right and the persecution of the artistic class in public discourses oriented towards order and narrow views on economic development. 

In that, I agree with other authors (Barreto & Jensen, 2020; Maia & Silva, 2023) that Dandara is, therefore, a game that is unapologetically Brazilian. It draws on Afro-Brazilian traditions, folk, and contemporary popular culture references to represent a different – and, arguably, less stereotypical – sense of “Brasilidade” in ways that incorporate references to Brazil that are, at the same time, recognisable by cultural insiders, as argued by other scholars (Webber, 2020) but also capable of expanding the understanding of that particular cultural space for outsiders. 

 

6. Chroma Squad

Chroma Squad (Behold Studios, 2015) is a turn-based RPG produced by the Brasilia-based company Behold Studios. In Chroma Squad, the player is responsible to manage a super sentai crew recording its own TV show. The player must navigate the tensions of balancing the budget and attracting new audience members in the most spectacular fashion during the (turn-based) battles. In that, Chroma Squad relies heavily on humour, and establish substantial intertextual relationships with different subcultures, such as super sentai (fig 6), tokusatsus and, more broadly, action movies. Considering that super sentai and tokusatstus are genres well-established as Japanese (Consalvo, 2022), it would be easy to claim that Chroma Squad falls between an adaptation or even precise allusion to Japanese popular culture. In that, and considering the way super sentai and tokusatsus are, per se, already folkloresque – as they play around usual folkloric dichotomies such as good vs evil, while also dealing with specific elements of Japanese culture, such as the nuclear postwar trauma (Sugawa-Shimada, 2014) – it would be possible to claim that Chroma Squad plays with this trait while reinforcing the transnational imaginary in game development (Vanderhoef, 2021), avoiding direct links with its place of origin, Brazil. However, as argued by Amaro and Freitas (2025), despite a salient link to Japanese elements, Chroma Squad is a game typically Brazilian. Two different elements can be recruited here to support this argument.

Figure 6: Cutscene, finishing with the typical formation pose of super sentais, when the transformation from regular humans to superheroes is triggered by the player during the gameplay.

Firstly, Chroma Squad plays significantly with elements that are quintessentially Brazilian, in that it combines ‘folk’ elements such as the embracement of precarity and gambiarras (de Paula & Luersen, 2023; Messias & Mussa, 2020; Tietzmann et al., 2023), humour, and self-deprecation. Gambiarra, a popular term employed to designate ‘cheap, practical, improvised solutions to diverse sorts of problems’ (de Paula & Luersen, 2023, p. 143) is a key phenomenon in Brazilian culture, and is core to the game, including here in the storylines, costumes and equipment used by characters (fig 7). In that, the combination between improvisation/gambiarras and humour in media cultures is well-recruited by Behold Studios, making direct links not only with super sentai shows – themselves, often based on low-budget productions (Sugawa-Shimada, 2014) – but also other successes in Brazilian media cultures of late 20th century, such as the Mexican TV show Chaves (El Chavo del Ocho), also an important humouristic reference in Brazilian TV (Martino, 2013). This reference becomes clear in the game broader structure, since the whole gameplay is organised in seasons and episodes, mimicking the production of a TV show. The gambiarras become clear in the way progression is established, with the traditional mechanics of upgrading equipment being contingent on everyday life materials (e.g., duct tape, canvas, cardboard) being collected as loot during fights, and a crafting system that allows to produce more sophisticated/better “on (diegetic) camera” materials.

Figure 7: Chroma Squad gameplay, with the low-tech costume used by the first boss (a cardboard box with boxing gloves)

While the gameplay per se follows conventional turn-based RPGs (players have a party of different heroes with specific strengths/weaknesses, move through a grid as in Figure 7 above, and can attack/defend in turns), there are specific aspects of the gameplay that make deliberate reference to super sentai. Among these, we have the ability to transform into superheroes (Figure 6 above), group attacks or even – in certain chapters – mecha fights (themselves, like regular equipment, passible of being updated through collecting everyday materials and crafting), establishing therefore a clear connection with super sentai as a media genre.

As a second aspect, it is not possible to ignore the deep relationship between tokusatsus and super sentai, and Brazilian vernacular culture in the 20th century. Between the 1960s and the early 2000s, tokusatsus were a familiar form for Brazilians, easily accessible in multiple open-air TV channels (Amaro & Freitas, 2025; Isshiki & Miyazaki, 2016). Such pervasiveness created a particular phenomenon in which tokusatsus just became part of Brazilian popular culture beyond TV, including toys and itinerant live performances (Amaro & Freitas, 2025). In Chroma Squad, this popularity is recruited beyond generic super sentai elements, bringing in references to other heroes from earlier generations, such as Kanji Ahbo/Night Driver (fig 7), which makes direct reference – or a precise allusion –to tokusatsu actor Kenji Ohba and Kamen Raider.

Figure 8: Sequence of scenes in season 5, ep. 1, when Kanji Ahbo reveals to be the Night Driver and becomes temporarily a playable character

In this perspective, Chroma Squad presents a case that is slightly different from Dandara and that, somehow, complicates the relationship between games and regional/national cultures, since it deals at the same time with appropriation and explicitly commercial elements. In that, the folkloresque, as a concept, becomes relevant to examine such production practices and claims to authenticity. As a case, though, Chroma Squad is also relevant because it reminds us that, besides production, circulation and the context where reception happens matter. 

This becomes clearer when examining how Chroma Squad was read outside Brazil by other actors, including the media company Saban. Saban was the distributor and copyright owner of Mighty Morphin’ Power Rangers (Saban & Levy, 1993), an US-based version of the multiple Japanese super sentai TV shows. Like other super sentai shows, Power Rangers was broadcast in Brazilian TV, which emboldened Saban – since 2001 a subsidiary of Disney – to sue Behold Studios for illegal copyright use (Amaro & Freitas, 2025). Threatened with a long legal battle against a multinational conglomerate, Behold Studios settled with a tongue-in-cheek solution, explicitly acknowledging Power Rangers as a reference (figure 9). 

Figure 9: Chroma Squad title screen on Steam

This process reminds us that, besides the better known issues regarding visibility and stereotyping (Barreto & Jensen, 2020), the sociomaterial conditions – such as economic power relations – are also important when examining transcultural readings of media. More explicitly, the legal action – and the solution adopted – had repercussions to how the product is read across the globe, since it changes the nature of the allusions in Chroma Squad. Before, Chroma Squad presented a very specific version of fuzzy allusion (Foster, 2016), combining different kinds of references that could be somehow related to particular places, but not necessarily clear-cut. After the settlement, we have a “forced” precise allusion, since it explicitly cites Power Rangers (Saban & Levy, 1993).

Saban’s legal action makes strategic use of a particular partial way of understanding the world, one that deliberately ignores (or, at least, questions) the local Brazilian context – and the direct ties between Japanese and Brazilian 20th century popular cultures –rhetorically centralising an American product in this chain of meanings. More problematically, though, this “forced” precise allusion to an American text end up masking the direct Japanese-Brazilian popular cultural flows that happened in the 20th century (Isshiki & Miyazaki, 2016), potentially giving the impression to non-Brazilian audiences that the Japan-Brazil connection was always mediated by a third cultural space (the USA). Nevertheless, as discussed in previous sections (Kotaki, 2016; Webber, 2020), such markers and connections are still accessible by an audience that is familiar with the local context, reiterating how certain games can reach specific audiences in particular ways that other audiences might not access.

 

7. Final Remarks

As cultural products, it is undeniable that videogames can end up drawing on specific regional and/or national elements. While the idea that games are inherently global is a persistent myth in game development (Vanderhoef, 2021), different examples, including the two games analysed here, demonstrate that the reality is much more nuanced. The idea of folkloresque (Foster, 2016) as a spectrum that describes how different references might be recruited in particular cultural products, either as direct adaptations, specific and traceable references, or just as amalgam of loose cultural reference points, presents itself as quite valuable in supporting the different nuances regarding local cultures and videogame production.

Throughout the two cases presented here, Dandara and Chroma Squad, this paper contributes to recent discussions on national/regional games, in which it demonstrated how different strategies can be adopted by game developers to integrated cultural references in their games. Rather than simply rejecting particular locations or falling into stereotypical tropes, what those two cases demonstrate is that it is possible to represent a sense of locality without being tied to existing narratives or excluding outsiders. Dandara, in that respect, present itself as a quite relevant case interweaving colonial and contemporary history, managing to capture the struggles in Brazilian society. It also works as an important case to highlight the challenges implicated in adapting known narratives: in a later interview, Dandara creators discussed how their initial idea was to produce a game about Palmares, but the complexities implicated in the historical research – and, more importantly, the repercussions of that moment to inequalities contemporary Brazilian society – made them decide on a different direction (Coimbra, 2020). In that, the dual approach intertwining fuzzy and precise allusions (or folkloresque and folklorism) proved an important creative solution, giving enough range for developers to add elements specific from Brazilian culture without resorting solely to stereotypes or hyper-specific references.

 Chroma Squad, on the other hand, might seem at a first glance a mere adaptation or reliant on precise allusions to a particular text (Power Rangers), but a closer look at it demonstrates how its precise allusions also play with “Brasilidade” in a broader sense through gambiarras, precarity and humour. In that process, Chroma Squad raises further questions regarding intercultural connections (i.e., between Japan and Brazil), and the limits between popular culture and transnational appropriations. Moreover, it also acts as a relevant case reiterating that in cultural spaces, sociomaterial conditions – including here the power relations between different cultural actors – still matter, as is illustrated by the way Saban forced developer’s hands in having Power Rangers explicitly recognised as a referential point, when culturally this is, at least, questionable (Amaro & Freitas, 2025). In that, Chroma Squad reiterates an important message known to those familiar with cultural studies: while the way makers rely on different cultural sources and references is important, this only shows part of the issue. As the Saban legal challenge demonstrates, the way actors that are cultural outsiders might read a product can be quite different from the way cultural insiders might do so, following Webber (2020).

In a world that is, contradictorily, interconnected and fractured as ever, researching the relationship between regional/national cultures and cultural products are established becomes essential, and hopefully this paper can inspire further research into the production, circulation, and reception of games across multiple local contexts. While this seems to be a fruitful field for further research in this field, including on the integration between such production practices, local policies pro-game development, I single out here the need to focus on the differences in the local and global reception of games that play around these different degrees of borrowing from particular cultures (adaptation, folklorism and folkloresque), since such processes are important not only from an economic perspective, but also in relation to process related to intercultural meaning-making. Looking at the use of certain culture as reference points in different cultural settings can allow us, those interested in cultural products, to move beyond narrower discussions on cultural preservation, adaptation, and appropriation, and explore from a more nuanced and detailed perspective how such integrations can be sought without necessarily resorting to defensive and isolationist, or merely essentialist approaches.

Notes

1. The hot air balloons described here could be considered a cross between transport hot air balloons and flying lanterns: they are often as big as transport hot air balloons, but they are not controlled by any pilot.

2. Mixed-gender superhero combat teams, common in Japan from the 1970s to the 1990s (Sugawa-Shimada, 2014).

3. In Portuguese, the general term to describe such communities is ‘quilombo’. In English, the favoured term would be Maroon community (Williams, 2016). Even though Palmares was mainly organised by Africans or people of African descent, historical records indicate that peoples from different origins, including indigenous, mixed race, and marginal whites were also accepted in the community (Caetano & Castro, 2020; Williams, 2016).

4. Beyond the scope of this paper, Lima (2025) discusses the relationship between the encruzilhada and contemporary decolonial onto-epistemologies.

5. In a reflection that goes beyond the scope of this paper, Kosby and Bueno (2019) discuss how the fact that salt is symbolically read as a purification icon in multiple religions means that it can become either an act of well-wishing, or an act of religious violence against Afro-Brazilian temples in contemporary Brazil.

6.  Literally translated as ‘special effects’, tokusatsu is the term used to refer to tv shows dedicated to lone superheroes (Sugawa-Shimada, 2014). It could be considered that super sentai is a subgenre sprawling off tokusatsu (Sugawa-Shimada, 2014)

7. For example, in South Asia, we have the analogous concept of jugaad (Prabhu & Jain, 2015).

8. The first tokusatsu/Japanese hero in Brazilian TV was National Kid, which was first broadcast in 1964 (Amaro & Freitas, 2025), with the peak of such shows happening between late 1980s and mid-1990s, exactly when I was growing up in Brazil.

9. Among these elements, we can include the use of main and subplots, the archetypical role-based elements, the coloured uniforms that helped identify each team member, the use of mecha robots/gigantism and city-destroying battles, and the trope of the “enemy of the week” (Sugawa-Shimada, 2014).

 

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Ludography

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Thank Goodness You’re Here, Coal Supper, United Kingdom, 2024.

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Vengeful Guardian: Moonrider, Joymasher, Brazil, 2023.

 

Authors’ Info

Bruno De Paula

University College London

bruno.depaula@ucl.ac.uk

 

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.