Skabma - Snowfall is all about the power of nature and the rhythms it moves at. While not a rhythm game per se, it uses the idea of rhythm and the concept of the music of nature i🎀n order🍨 to tell its story, all wrapped around the Sámi, an indigenous Scandinavian tribe. One of the writers, Marjaana Auranen, is Sámi herself, and she explained the importance of being able to understand the nuances of her culture.
"It's about the presentation of different cultures, and the overall diversity of human beings in the world that we are lacking at the moment," Auranen tells me. "To me, it's not indigenous nations' obligation to teach other people about our cultures. Of course, we want to tell everyone about our culture. That's why we're making the game. But teaching is probably not the word that I would use in this case, because we are trying to portray Sámi culture, Sámi people, and Sámi language especially in a way to entertain people and tell an emotional story with a deeper meaning that maybe not all games have.
"And I think it's so important, because we have in the world I don't know how many hundreds of millions of indigenous people, and we don't know these cultures. I'm part of indigenous community, but still, I only know maybe four or five other indigenous people and their culture. And so there are so many cultures that we know nothing about. If we can bring out a portion of that into games, that would open our minds a little bit of how diverse the human race is."
Sahin Cengiz, director and designer at Red Stage Entertainment, is not Sámi, and had to learn aspects of the culture as development went on. However, as he explains, the studio never set out to create a Sámi-focused game at all. "When we were starting the company, we were talking about what kind of game to make," Cengiz says. "[That] brought up Marjaana's background as a Sámi, and then the question was 'Why would you make a game about this unknown culture where no one can understand what's going on?' And we very quickly came to the realisation that all games have a lore and history and background. And the difference is that ours exists already, but is unknown to many people, which makes it more interesting. It's a well of knowledge, and we have stories that we can already start to bring up into our game."
Despite having to teach Cengiz, Auranen says education is not at the forefront of her goals here. "Definitely I don't want to preach to anyone," she says. "I don't want to be the teacher who is giving these exams for people to study this culture, and I'm going to have to ask you questions now. It's not going to be like that."
The game itself is built around nature, and the Sámi are a natural fit for a game with those themes. "Why are we making a game about the rhythm of nature? Nature is a big part of Sámi values," Cengiz says. "Talking to nature, understan♔ding how nature works, and sustaining the balance in between human and nature - we are dependent on nature. So that is a no brainer to take into this game, because it is the core value of Sámi. Communicating with nature and understanding the rhythm of nature, w♑e are all part of that."
It's not just Auranen, either. Hildá Länsman, one of the world's most well-known Sámi singers, is lending her voice to the game, adding to the connection of rhythm, music, and Sámi culture. "Hildá was the first voice actor we found for the game," Auranen says. "She's our main character's voice, but also the little cousin's voice. So she's [given] two voice acting performances in our game. She is an amazing artist, and she has this amazing voice. We wanted to get her involved with making the theme song for our game. We are so happy that she said yes, and so she created the melody of the song too."
While Sámi myths often feature intricate, expressive creatures, because Skabma is an indie game, the team had to make some sacrifices around the depiction. “It is definitely something where we had to think of compromises in how the familiar spirits [the Sámi name for these creatures] are portrayed,” Cengiz says. “In Sámi lore, they often have an animal by their side, or could change into an animal and travel in animal animal form. So those kinds of things we couldn't do. Basically, we didn't have the resources to make them. So we had to create some other ways to show the familiars in our game.”
When you think of indigenous games, there's only one title that comes to mind. Unsurprisingly, the Skabma team took a lot of lessons from this. "I think the most successful indigenous game was Never Alone," Auranen says. "And that paved the way and showed that there is an interest in hearing these stories and seeing these cultures. I think that that was, for me, the wake up call that 'Okay, we can do this'. That it's possible to make a game inspired by these very small communities, and people would actually play the game and enjoy it, and to get to know of our culture."
Of course, when making a game about your own culture, inspiration is all around you too. "I travel up nor♍th [to Lapland] now and then, but Marjaana does it way more than me," Cengiz says. "Marjaana comes back with hundreds of pictures, and then we look at how autumn o𓆏r winter is portrayed the further north you get. Those have always been a big inspiration for us, and we just try to try to replicate that kind of a colour spectrum in the game.”