Year walk game music movie#
A scriptwriter and editor by trade, his initial idea for a year walking movie was awakened by his keen interest in curios and forgotten media. Jonas Tarestad was the catalyst for Year Walk's development. "From that, much of the atmosphere of the game just kind of found itself. "We focused on following the story we had laid out for ourselves," Flesser says. Flesser's overacting neurosis began to work its magic, and the plot of Tarestad's script steadily transformed into a game. The mystery inherent in the subject was the "crunch" element needed to begin development. "Making things that feel like they are their own and new is important."Įven now, in the age of Google and JSTOR, it’s difficult to find credible research on the tradition unrelated to Simogo's game. "One thing we always ask ourselves is, 'Has this been done before?'" Flesser says. Bewitched by Tarestad's discovery of an unexplored part of Scandinavian mythology, and a desire to uncover the secrets of their homeland, the pair was keen to feed this newly kindled desire to create a game based on year walking. Upon reading the script, the thought of a game based on year walking fully arrested the team in the space of a weekend. Simogo had recently produced its third iOS game, Beat Sneak Bandit, and was otherwise tempted by a few concepts that were soon put to pasture. "So when I came home I secretly started simplifying the story for a game and working out a map in my head." He sent it to me, we joked that it was almost structured like a game." Flesser remembers browsing at a makeup store with his girlfriend and being dogged by the idea of playing the script rather than seeing it. The walkers could not predict which of these they might encounter, but in each and every combination of these fearful communions lay either a gruesome death, or a vision of their future in the coming year.Īsked what compelled Simogo to make a game from this tradition, Flesser reveals, "My friend Jonas Tarestad showed me a short movie script he had written based on the tradition. Within the forest lurked strange, harrowing creatures, embodying the provincial fears of wanton lust, death, infanticide, misfortune and sacrilege. At midnight, they would emerge to walk through the woods to the village church. On certain holidays, the "year walkers" would abstain from feasting by locking themselves in dark rooms. in many ways we are just continuing the traditions of folklore: telling lies to children."Īccording to Simogo, the year walk, or "Årsgång" is a pseudo pagan ritual undertaken by Swedish people from medieval times to the 19th century. The combination of learning about the myths of their homeland and their desire to always create new, different games possessed them to such a degree that the game was born in just nine months.įlesser outlines the keystone of the concept that gave them the crunch: "We wanted to make a game that lets players experience discover the myths for themselves. "I believe found it in an old book neither of us had heard of it before," Flesser says, describing Simogo's first brush with year walking.įlesser and Gardebäck were vexed by this native custom that was somehow still mostly unfamiliar to them.
The subject of Simogo's latest crunch is Year Walk, a first-person iOS adventure inspired by long dead Swedish folklore. But in Simogo's case, infatuation with the concept is what drives the process. It's the indie crunch."įlesser is alluding to the development practice of putting in long, consuming hours to finish a game. "It gets to the point where it's all I can see, even when I close my eyes. "I tend to get very obsessive and neurotic about all of our games," says Flesser. For Flesser, this means finding ideas and fashioning concepts that are so quixotic as to grip the team and exhort them to create. Simon Flesser, the art and sound complement to his programming companion, Magnus "Gordon" Gardebäck, portrays the two as "toymakers," who constantly seek to satisfy their desire to create new and different experiences. The two man outfit of Malmö's Simogo Games is just the place for old myths to find new life.
But legends of "Skogsrået" and "Kyrkogrimen," among many others, still persist, waiting to take hold of those who find them. The city's vaulting skyline and wealth of international businesses insulate its residents from the parochial customs and supernatural fears of old. In this ultramodern, high tech municipality, the proximity to Scandinavia's medieval folklore is far removed and forgotten.
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