There were technical frustrations. Film stock arrived late or not at all; the river once rose and soaked a batch of exposed footage into a mottled, dreamlike smear. Once, a hornet nest behind the backlot set had to be coaxed away with sugar water and patient hands. Yet these small disasters gave the film character: a shot, half-burnt by water, became a sequence where the town looked as if submerged beneath an evening tide; a jitter in the projector lent the scene with Don Miguel a prescient, trembling urgency.
Mía thought it was just a walking sim. A nostalgic trip through a sun-drenched, idealized Mexican village: papel picado fluttering, an old abuela making mole, a boy trying to impress a girl during the lluvia de estrellas —the August meteor shower. Version 0.2.4 had been charming. Broken, but charming. The boy would get stuck in a wall. The guitar minigame would crash the engine. A Summer in Mexico -v0.2.5- -La Cucaracha Studios-