In our first Dev Blog, we introduced our studio. Now, it’s time to take a deeper look into Among the Trolls and how the idea came to be.

Among the Trolls takes place in a world that looks a lot like our own. Our protagonist (either Anna or Alex) is a Finnish-American in their mid-30s. After their estranged parents pass away, they want to reconnect with their roots and their Finnish grandparents. The protagonist decides to travel from the United States to Finland and revisit the special places from their childhood where their fondest memories took place.

Anna/Alex decides to leave the hustle and bustle of city life in the United States behind. They’ve finally made their way to Finland and they’ve acquired a boat to reach their grandparents’ cabin. The sun is setting, but they still have a chance to make it to the cabin before it gets too dark. It’s been over 20 years since they’ve last seen their grandparents but the cabin seen across the water looks very familiar.

Suddenly, the water stirs. A monster that looks like a gargantuan pike crashes the rowboat to smithereens and drags Anna/Alex under the surface, towards the bottom of the lake. Everything goes dark for a moment, and as the protagonist washes ashore, gasping for air and taking their bearings, they realize that they must have reached the island their grandparents inhabit. But the cabin is nowhere to be found… The cabin and their grandparents seem to have vanished into thin air. Anna/Alex is feverish, cold, hungry, and thirsty, and darkness has fallen. This is where the game and the journey to survive and solve the mysteries begins.

It’s time to embark on a quest to find your missing grandparents and learn how to survive in the wilderness, dealing with the supernatural creatures of Finnish mythology and the animistic nature of the world. Anna/Alex must follow in their grandfather’s footsteps and discover the rune-singer within.

Among the Trolls is a survival and crafting game based on a world where the folklore, folk beliefs, and the spirits and creatures from grandmother’s stories are undeniably real. Due to this, the survival mechanics of Among the Trolls will be somewhat different from other games in the survival genre. Because the folklore aspect plays a crucial part in the world, the survival elements will also be affected. Instead of leveling enormous areas of the forest, hoarding resources, and taking without giving back, the protagonist must sacrifice, give offerings, and consult the spirits.

If Anna/Alex wants to avoid angering the forest and ward off the malevolent, corrupted creatures, they must make amends and sacrifices to the folk of the forest at cupstones (sacrificial places made up of large rocks with small indentations carved in) that can be found in the woods.

Building and crafting play a critical role in the game and are part of the core gameplay loop. Among the Trolls will include a modular building system that will allow players to build different types of creations from basic shelters to multi-level cabins and chalet structures. The system allows and encourages you to also create these structures together with your friends in co-op mode.

In addition to regular crafting, which includes items such as knives, spears, and axes, you will also have the ability to create “familiars”. These “familiars” are magical beings that may help you during your journey to find out what happened to your grandparents.

During the Early Access period, we want to develop the building and crafting features together with the community and explore what kind of things could be created in-game. We also want to give the players the ability to create something uniquely their own.

The inspiration for the world and story of Among the Trolls came to fruition years ago when our CEO, Veli Kokkonen, had interesting and thought-provoking discussions with his friends from a university’s folklore department and a study line specializing in ancient artisan crafts. How would our world and our lives be different from the ones we lead if we were more spiritually connected to the old folklore beliefs and if the ancient crafts had persisted, and the know-how would have been carried over from generation to generation.

Through the journey of learning artisan crafts and what one can make with basic resources like mud, sticks, and branches that are easy to find, we came to realize that a simpler way of life can be something to strive for, even in the world of video games. We wanted to combine forest dwelling with magical elements, and looked, yet again, into the past. You don’t have to look too far back to find remnants of Nordic shamanism and the shamanistic traditions that took place in certain communities. These shamans, sages, or “tietäjät” were part of everyday life.

We really like how Studio Ghibli has captured the, often forgotten, cultural roots of their stories, yet observed them through a modern lens. We also love how they tend to combine the natural with the fantastical. It’s very similar to what we want to achieve with Among the Trolls.

Many of our peers have asked us whether we’ll be using Unreal Engine or Unity to bring Among the Trolls to life. To many people’s surprise, we’re using Unity. Our team has some bona fide Unity experts and vast experience developing games within Unity in the past. Our CEO and Technical Director, Veli, used to work at Unity Technologies, creating the 2D framework for animation tools, lighting tools, and different core engine features. Later on, he had a chance to work on Ori and the Blind Forest and Ori and the Will of the Wisps, which both pushed the Unity engine forward.

Now, we want to take those learnings and see what kind of 3D games we can create by pushing the engine even further. Among the Trolls felt like a natural progression. We want to use all of the engine’s capabilities to create beautiful worlds with a minimal amount of loading screens, a streamlined experience with stunning graphics, and where your computer’s CPU and GPU are taken advantage of, so you’ll get the best possible experience. You didn’t pay for all those cores for nothing, right? Reaching these goals as a small indie team is something that no other engine has been able to provide.

We’re so lucky to have you all following along this exciting game development journey of ours!

If you want to chat about game dev shenanigans, Among the Trolls’ development, or what it’s like being a small indie dev studio in Finland, you can find us here or on Twitter, Facebook[www.facebook.com], and Instagram[www.instagram.com]. If you’re more into the business side of things, you can even follow us over on LinkedIn[www.linkedin.com].

If you’d like to get concentrated Among the Trolls content only, the official Discord[discord.gg] and the Steam page are your best bet, but we like to share some development screenshots, video clips, and bits of lore on the official accounts, as well. Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram are updated regularly, and you might find us infiltrating TikTok, every now and then, with our peaceful (and sometimes not so peaceful) forest scapes, too!

We hope you tag along, let’s get lost in the forest — among the trolls!

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1675260/Among_the_Trolls/