Lorca, from New York to the Videosphere

Federico García Lorca's latest journey takes him from New York to the videosphere. His most surreal poetry collection, 'Poet in New York', forms the basis of 'Aura (Dawn poet)', a video game created by Jesús Torres and Carlos Brayda that merges poetry with technology. Available on the Steam platform for 4.95 euros, the creators state, "We are not looking to make money, but to bring Lorca to everyone by uniting technology and poetry." This is the first video game based on the life and work of the universal poet from Granada, who was murdered in August 1936.

With ten levels, users will accompany Lorca on the revealing and crucial journey to the city of skyscrapers that changed his life in 1929. "Through the world of eyes and the wounds of hands," says a verse by Lorca. It is through this unreal universe that the digital Federico moves, having arrived in Manhattan in a state of heartbreak following the success of 'Gypsy Ballads' and his theatrical dramas.

Players must reassemble Lorca's typewriter, locating its twenty-seven keys so the poet can write his poems. This will help him overcome the severe creative crisis that led him to the Big Apple, embracing surrealism and moving away from the traditional theatre in which he excelled. Each level is named after a poem, such as 'New York: Office and Denunciation', 'City That Does Not Sleep', 'The King of Harlem', or 'Blacks in Cuba'. "It has four columns of mud and a hurricane of black doves splashing in the rotten waters," Lorca wrote of 'Dawn', the New York poem that gives the game its title.

"We will not learn poetry, we will live it by guiding the feet and hands of Federico lost in the labyrinth and enigmas of New York," says Torres. The game follows Lorca as he arrives in the megacity after the 1929 stock market crash, when ruined bankers threw themselves from skyscrapers, a moment the game alludes to with the poet "metaphorically dodging the hats of those bankers."

It took two years of work by a team of fifteen people led by Torres, director of Yellow Jacket Studio, to design the video game focused "on the most experimental, dreamlike, and disruptive stage of Lorca."

For artist Carlos Brayda, the creative lead, translating poetic emotion into images was a challenge: up to 18 in a single poem. "I greatly enjoyed the process and have hundreds of folders that speak of 1920s New York," he says.

The same team that previously turned classics like 'Life is a Dream' or 'The Odyssey' into mini-games decided to continue on this literary path "to connect with younger audiences." Designed for players aged 14 and up, "thirty-somethings have been the most enthusiastic so far," says Torres. Available in Spanish and English, the video game targets both the Ibero-American market, "where Federico is loved and admired," and the American market, "where he is studied in universities."