Disclaimer: This is a very heavily text-based historical and cultural game. I find it hard to classify it as a game, to be honest, but you’ll see why. Since I’m a historian and history teacher by trade (or education), I’m biased and I like these kinds of things more than the average joe. Nonetheless, I’ve tried to review it as honestly as possible. So, let’s start The Mooseman!
Long-long time ago the world was created out of an egg-shell by a god named Yen. In the murky depths of the endless ocean, the Lower World was born. The Middle World was made for the men to dwell, and the Upper World was where the ancient gods would reside. A multitude of spirits dwells among the layers of creation, guarding their secrets in the dark. Embark on a journey through all the worlds of ancient myth, find artifacts of Chud’ tribes and solve all the mysteries of finno-ugric tales. You are the Mooseman and you have the ability to see all that is hidden to the mortal eye. You are about to visit three layers of this universe – the first one is the Lower World where ancient spirits dwell.
Perm – Home of the Mooseman
Welcome to the mythological world of Perm (Пермь), a city and the administrative center of Perm Krai, Russia, located on the banks of the Kama River in the European part of Russia near the Ural Mountains. The game started out in a game jam in early 2015 and was first planned as a runner with visuals taking roots in Perm Animal Style. Perm Animal Style is a unique metal plastic form, an animal style that existed till the 12th century. Artifacts of this style depict strange mythological creatures (one of which bears name Mooseman) and ancient gods of creators of these artifacts – finno-ugric tribes of Ural. The Finno-Ugric people are any of several people of North-West Eurasia who speak languages of the Finno-Ugric group of the Uralic language family, such as the Khanty, Mansi, Hungarians, Maris, Mordvins, Sámi, Estonians, Karelians, Finns, Udmurts and Komis.
But they soon found out that the ancient myths, underlying the animal style demanded more thoughtful gameplay that the runner genre could afford, and when the jam ended the game ended up to be an adventure style game with several puzzles completed and playable. After the jam Vladimir Beletsky (code, art, programming) and Mikhail Shvachko (sound effects, music) continued working on the game as a side project. During the development, we realized that the narrative of the game could not be based on myths of Perm animal style because of the simple reason that these myths do not exist anymore. This is the reason of work that was made to reconstruct the animal style myth based on culture of komi-permians, komi-zyrians, mansi and saamic people. The studio read a bunch of scientific research on this matter and talked with local museums and scientists and created the game we played – a solar myth depicting the journey of the Mooseman – half-god, half-human.
Moose-venture
They call it an adventure style game, which is fitting I guess. The main premise of the game is walking and pressing the A & B button at the right time to solve the puzzles and learn more about the lore. Since the game is really text-heavy, you have to do a lot of reading to gain background information about what is actually happening on screen. Once you pass a totem (savepoint etc.) you gain another piece of lore, piecing more of the story together. Another important aspect of the game is music. it is based on folk music of komi people. Some folk songs were performed and recorded for the game by Perm regional college of arts and culture. The game was translated to the komi-permian language. Some parts of the game are voiced by the native speaker. A really nice touch, but I could have used some translations of what they were actually saying..
Conclusion
If you want to explore the world of the Perm (and don’t want to fly out to the local museum) and dive into the Komi Music style, this is the game for you. You will meet gods and spirits, which you can actually fight in boss-fights and read up on the finno-ugric tribe myths. But if you don’t like history and prefer to shoot your way through games instead of reading greats walls of text, please stay away from this. Personally, I applaud Mortheska, the Russian studio behind this game, for making stuff like this. But.. I don’t know if it will find the right public in the long run. [My personal rating for this game is 90%, but I can’t really score it unbiased].
