The game about the culture of the Brazilian backlands completes its multiplatform saga! Switch and Xbox versions of the acclaimed ÁRIDA: Backland’s Awakening will be available starting November 22!
The end of the year brought great news for Aoca Game Lab. After winning second place in the "Embratur - Brasil Tá pra Game!" award, ÁRIDA finally arrives on consoles, establishing the series’ two feet in the multiplatform world.
The first version was released for PCs in 2019, followed by updates in 2020, with the “1 Year Edition”, and 2021, with the “2 Year Edition”, versions that brought new content, languages and improvements to the game inspired by the historic town of Canudos. In 2022, the mobile versions (Android and iOS) were released, followed by a major update in 2023 with the “Definitive Edition” version, which brought ÁRIDA to the Google Play Pass subscription system.
Now, at the end of 2024, Cícera’s adventures will find new fans in the world of consoles.
According to the company’s COO, Victor Cardozo, completing this journey is part of the series’ expansion plans, because, according to him: “people have always asked for the console version. Especially on the Switch, where there is a great “match” with the players’ profile. This expansion could have come much earlier, but this escalation was part of our strategy”.
Despite the proposals from publishers and porting companies, Aoca made a bold decision: to overcome the difficulties involved in importing equipment and the development itself to take on the entire process to develop an internal porting core.
Regarding this, Anderson Sampaio, the company's CTO, states that "it was a major challenge to carry out the port in parallel with the company's other projects. The programming and quality control teams have evolved a lot, so we are much better prepared for the future challenges of the series. This is a great achievement that is still celebrated internally today, as we now have the autonomy and decision-making power to take our series to the main platforms: PC, Mobile and Consoles".
Taking advantage of the momentum, Aoca is also preparing to launch the Epic Store version of ÁRIDA, seeking to further expand the reach of the series in the PC world. The Playstation version is also being developed "in-house", with a release scheduled for the first half of 2025.
But the news doesn't stop there!
Later this year, ÁRIDA will receive an update for 3 new languages: Polish, Vietnamese and Indonesian, recurring demands especially for the mobile version, meaning that internationalization strategies can count on 15 languages instead of 12.