While trying to make this game as joyful and fun to play it was also important for us to put the emphasis on culture. Skábma-Snowfall is a game taking its inspirations from the northernmost indigenous people of Europe, the Sámi.
Simply put, Sámiland is one nation with nine different languages, all endangered, in four countries: the northern parts of Russia, Finland, Sweden, Norway. Skábma will be voice acted in the most spoken of them: Dávvisámi known as Northern Sámi language (20 000 speakers).
The Sámi have suffered from assimilation culture: the children were put to boarding schools where they were raised to be ashamed of their own culture and be part of the majority culture. This very recent history has caused families to lose their mother tongue, parts of their culture (f.e traditional storytelling and family handcrafts) and has also created cross generational trauma that is still being processed in many families.
Traditionally livelihood has been based around fishing, hunting and reindeer herding but modern days have brought many modern ways to make a living: like video games. As we know, there are only two game companies in the world that are owned or partly owned by Sámi: Red Stage Entertainment and Miksapix Interactive (owned by Mikkel Sara, who also owns part of Red Stage).
Want to get the latest news from Skábma-Snowfall before its launch? You can follow and wishlist the game on :
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1665280/Skabma__Snowfall/