Demera

Demera is a 3D narrative adventure built in Dala Studio that follows a traveling merchant through a single Ethiopian village across a festival season. The motivation behind it was to introduce players to Ethiopian traditions through direct participation in gameplay rather than exposition letting the mechanics themselves teach the culture. The game weaves together three distinct traditions into one linear three-chapter story set within the same evolving village hub as it shifts from day to dusk to night. In Chapter 1, the player performs the traditional buna (coffee) ceremony as a calm ritual puzzle — roasting, grinding, and brewing so while seated villagers share cultural context through dialogue. Chapter 2 shifts to tense exploration, racing to collect Meskel daisies before torchlight fades, building toward lighting the Demera bonfire the game is named after. Chapter 3 closes the story with a strategic Gebeta match against the village elder on a physical 3D board. Beyond the main story, two standalone bonus levels expand the game's festival calendar: Timkat Procession, a light rhythm/timing mini-game set during Epiphany, and Enkutatash Sunrise Hunt, a calm flower-collecting level set on Ethiopian New Year's dawn. Both are accessible independently from a level-select screen. The process began with three separate concept ideas are a coffee ceremony puzzle, a bonfire-lighting platformer, and a Gebeta strategy game that were merged into a single cohesive journey once it became clear they shared a natural emotional arc: ritual, exploration, then strategy. The visual direction uses a low-poly 3D style with a warm, earthy palette reflecting Ethiopian village architecture and dress, with lighting design reinforcing each chapter's time of day and mood.