Related videos:
The “inspiration” behind the new Cuban video game set in the Jurassic era seems like a bad joke at a time when the country's economy and society are regressing at a prehistoric pace.
Paradoxically, the regime is celebrating a virtual journey to the past while millions of Cubans are surviving trapped in their own version of the Jurassic period.
According to the official newspaper Granma, the title “Gigantes del Caribe,” developed by the state company Citmatel along with scientist Manuel Iturralde Vinent, promises to take players to the seas that covered the Pinar del Río territory over 145 million years ago.
The game, described as an educational and scientific experience, recreates marine species that inhabited the Caribbean during the Late Jurassic, including ichthyosaurs, plesiosaurs, sea crocodiles, mosasaurs, and pliosaurs, with the latter being presented as the primary predator.
According to Iturralde, all the animals depicted were discovered in fossils found in the mountains of the Guaniguanico Range, which makes the video game—according to the regime—a digital "natural treasure" based on Cuban geological and paleontological research.
The scientist emphasized that “Gigantes del Caribe” is the first Cuban video game set in a prehistoric era and that its purpose is to “draw attention to nature and science,” avoiding gratuitous violence. In the game, animals “only attack to feed or defend themselves from larger species.”
Available for download at the Citmatel Virtual Library and priced at 150 Cuban pesos, the state-produced game allows players to "embody different prehistoric beings" and compete for survival in seas dominated by large predators, a metaphor that many Cubans have interpreted as an involuntary reflection of their own reality.
Because while the video game invites you to "travel to the past," daily life on the island increasingly resembles that distant past: a constant struggle for food, scarcity, and survival.
Filed under: