It’s been five years since the first idea of making a game about Sámi people. This journey has been a real adventure, full of challenges, obstacles, detours, occasional success and a lot of luck. It’s hard to believe that this travel is almost over.
It all started in 2017. The original idea was to make a small low poly game inspired by Sámi, few locations, no text or any verbal storytelling, ready in half a year. BAM! Done.
We then created a demo and after it, thinking that we could do better, we created the second demo… And then the third. Always going back to the drawing board, thinking how we can improve our game.
With every demo our ambition grew stronger: we wanted to create something that no-one would expect from a team this size. We also wanted to prove to those who didn’t believe that an indigenous game would be a) fun, b) interesting to the players or c) any way sellable, that these kinds of games have their place in the game industry.
This “underdog mentality” was our driving force. When we finished our final demo in early 2021, we were sure that we had finally found our core mechanics and our very dear, then still a publisher-to-come, PID Games, agreed and offered us their support.
After that encounter, we finally could start developing the actual Skábma - Snowfall -game.
Now, a little over a year later, although the journey has been an occasional speed run every now and then, we notice that we have traveled a way further than we originally planned.
…And it’s been an amazing adventure so far.
-Marjaana Auranen & Sahin Cengiz
“Travels have their hardships as well as their attractions. The huge effort required doesn’t scare us - on the contrary - it increases our desire to travel. This passion that hardships only feed makes us travel further than we ever intended.” - Jean-François Regnard, 1713