The Mooseman | |
---|---|
![]() English-language logo of the game | |
Developer(s) | Morteshka |
Publisher(s) | Sometimes You |
Programmer(s) | Vladimir Beletsky |
Artist(s) | Vladimir Beletsky |
Writer(s) | Vladimir Beletsky |
Composer(s) | Mikhail Shvachko |
Engine | |
Platform(s) | Windows, macOS, Linux, Android, iOS, Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, PlayStation Vita, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S |
Release | 17 February 2017
|
Genre(s) | Adventure game |
Mode(s) | Single-player |
The Mooseman [lower-alpha 1] is an adventure video game developed by the Perm-based Russian studio Morteshka and released in 2017. The game is based on the mythology of Komi, as well as other Finno-Ugric peoples, and is an attempt at artistic reconstruction of mythological plots. [1] The game tells the story of the Mooseman, the shaman and one of the seven sons of the creator god Yen , who must travel to the underworld to retrieve Shondi (the sun) and save the world from the eternal cold. [2]
The Mooseman was well received by the gaming press. [3] [4] [5] It was praised for its distinctive and atmospheric art style, sound design, skillful use of the mythology in the story, but criticized for its short length.
The gameplay consists of moving the protagonist, the Mooseman, through a 2D-world, and solving various puzzles. The Mooseman can only move left or right, and, being "The One Who Knows", is able to move between the world's real and spirit planes. [6] Switching between planes allows the player to see spirits and changes the surrounding objects: for example, what in the real plane seems like an ordinary boulder, in the spirit plane begins to move itself. The player can use such objects to hide from enemies or, for example, to build a bridge over an abyss. During the game the player can collect artifacts of the Permian animal style hidden in different locations, each of them has short historical descriptions. [7] Passing the idols, the player opens entries in the in-game encyclopedia that explains the Komi mythology, the same idols serve as save points. [2] Unlocked myths in the encyclopedia are written in Anbur, the ancient Permic alphabet. [8]
The game also has enemies, which player has to defend or escape from. They are evil spirits, as well as the dead who are trapped in the Sir-Yu River , which separates the world of the dead. In addition, the game has bosses, various deities of Permiс Komi mythology, but to defeat them, player has to solve a puzzle. [9] At a certain stage of the game, the Mooseman can gain the ability to light his staff with Shondi to protect himself from evil spirits, and at one of the locations he will have to shoot a bow. [2]
The story in the game is presented without direct dialogue between the characters, both through the visual and through the entries from the in-game encyclopedia. The player unlocks new entries in the encyclopedia which as he passes by the idols. At the beginning of the walkthrough the player is not given any information, but in the end the data from encyclopedia come together. [9] [1] The cutscenes in the game are voiced in Komi-Permyak language. [10]
The moose god Yen , the creator of the world, hatched from an egg laid by the duck floating on a boundless ocean. [2] From the shell of this egg the Middle World (the world of humans and spirits) was created, when Yen saw himself in reflection, from the two moose heads the Upper World (the abode of gods and souls) was created, and when Yen was born, the Lower World (the place where the cursed ones live) was formed in the depths of the ocean. One day Yen decided to find himself a wife, and found three sisters on Earth, mere mortals. To test them, Yen gave them his moose hide. The older and middle sisters tried to scrape the moose fat off the hide to eat it, but the younger one tried to take care of it, and it proved worthy. Eventually the younger sister became Yen's wife and bore him seven sons, demi-gods moosemen. From the father the sons learned to communicate with spirits, and from the mother they learned human feelings. Subsequently, Yen got tired of living in the dugout and took his sons and left his wife for good, to hunt for the swift six-legged moose.
The six-legged moose carried Shondi (eternal flame) on its horns from the lower world to the upper world. Yen chased the moose through the taiga for a long time, and one day he killed it and nailed its hide to the stars. But when Yen killed the moose, Shondi fell into the lower world, and its light and heat stopped reaching the other worlds, and still remains there. The world could have perished from the eternal cold without Shondi's heat. To prevent the world from perishing, Yen instructed each of his seven sons to descend daily into the Lower World to raise the fire from Shondi to the upper world, from where it can light and warm all worlds.
After this, the main plot of the game begins. The Mooseman, as played by the player, descends into the Lower World, the entrance to which is guarded by Kudym-Osh the bear-man, passing the Sir-Yu River full of evil dead, and guarding Shondi is Cheran the spider, the psychopomp. After obtaining a piece of Shondi, the Mooseman ascends the web of Cheran to the Middle World along with innumerable orts , the souls of dead people, who must pass all three worlds and find their rest in the Upper World. Subsequently, he has to pass through the underwater realm of Vakul (water deity), who looks like a giant pike, and then, having ascended to the Middle World, to commit sacrifice to the Vorsa , the forest deity. The Mooseman then passes through the Komi town of Kudymkar . Upon reaching the bird named Kars, The Mooseman mounts him and soars into the sky, toward the Upper World, but his way is blocked by Voipel , god of the northern wind. In the end, The Mooseman manages to reach the Upper World and illuminate the world with the fire of Shondi, continuing the eternal cycle.
The game's developer is Vladimir Beletsky from the Perm, Russia. He was developing The Mooseman in his spare time, while at his main job he supervised the creation of another game, Tanki X . [1] The development of the game began in May 2015, [11] when Vladimir Beletsky drew the game logo in the Permian animal style and made a short document describing the general concept. Beletsky sent this document to his friend Mikhail Shvachko, who became the game's composer and sound designer, while Beletsky was an artist, writer, game designer, and programmer at the same time. Initially the game was planned as an endless runner that would take one week to develop, but then Beletsky realized that the project was becoming something more than that, and the team wanted to make the game more in-depth. Locomalito's L'Abbaye des Morts game served as a reference point and source of inspiration. The visual style was inspired by the works of Norwegian artist Theodor Kittelsen and Hayao Miyazaki's anime films, and it was decided to draw characters and creatures in silhouettes, because it was easier and created the right atmosphere. [12]
In matters of mythology and material culture, the authors consulted the Perm Regional Museum. [2] [1] The developers turned to the museum after doing the draft of the plot and the list of the idols of the Perm animal style, which were to be present in the game, were ready. Eduard Churilov, head of the museum's archaeology department, advised the developers of scientific literature on the subject and pointed out flaws in the plot. After that Beletsky refused to use the artefacts of the Cherdyn goddesses in the game, because they are not objects of the Permian animal style and were brought from somewhere in these lands. The developers also abandoned the dualistic pantheon described in the scientific literature on Komi mythology, and instead reconstructed the solar myth based on the stories depicted on the idols and the Sámi legend of Myanndash . In addition, the reconstruction included elements of Mansi mythology. [13] In the credits of the game there is a list of scientific literature used in writing the story. To learn more on subject, the developers visited Cherdyn, but to their dismay they found that the pagan culture has been irrevocably lost, except for the collection of the Cherdyn museum. [2] According to Beletsky, the team met with Limerov, the author of one of the books, after the game was released, and he approved of their work. [12]
Shvachko wrote music based on Komi folk motifs. According to Belinsky, they were helped by a Parisian, who was fond of throat singing: such singing is not peculiar to Finno-Ugric peoples, but it was suitable for voicing some spirits. [1] In the game there is choral music in the Komi-Permyak and Komi-Zyrian language, performed by the student choir of the Perm Krai College of Arts and Culture. [1] [14] One of the songs is called "Asya Kya" (Komi : Morning Dawn), and is used during the transition between worlds, [15] and the other is "Yen Dzodzogez" (Komi-Permyak : God's Geese), which plays during the final credits. [16] In early 2020, the soundtrack of The Mooseman was released on limited-edition audio cassette from the Minimum Records label. [17]
The promotion of The Mooseman went through non-core press: the developers sent press releases to publications that usually do not write about games, such as the newspaper Argumenty i Fakty or the channel Rossiya 24, as well as participated in various indie game contests. [12] The game was released on February 17, 2017, and its release was timed to coincide with the day of the Komi-Permyak language. [18] On April 17, 2018, the game was ported to smartphones, [19] and on July 18, 2018, the game was ported to Nintendo Switch, Xbox One and PlayStation 4 consoles. [3] [5] [20] In late 2020, the game was released in physical format for PlayStation 4 in 999 copies. A boxed edition of the game was prepared by Red Art Games. [17] In December 2021, it was announced that The Mooseman would be one of the last two games in history for the PlayStation Vita to have a physical edition. The other game was A Winter's Daydream . [21]
Aggregator | Score |
---|---|
Metacritic | NS: 70/100 [22] PC: 77/100 [23] XONE: 75/100 [24] |
OpenCritic | 71/100 [25] 47% Critics Recommend |
Perm, previously known as Yagoshikha and Molotov, is the administrative centre of Perm Krai in the European part of Russia. It sits on the banks of the Kama River near the Ural Mountains, covering an area of 799.68 square kilometres. With over one million residents Perm is the 15th-largest city in Russia and the 5th-largest in the Volga Federal District.
The Komi Republic, sometimes simply referred to as Komi, is a republic of Russia situated in the northeast of European Russia. Its capital is the city of Syktyvkar. The population of the republic at the 2021 census was 737,853, down from 901,189 at the 2010 census.
Syktyvkar is the capital city of the Komi Republic in Russia, as well as its largest city. It is also the administrative center of the Syktyvkar Urban Okrug. Until 1930, it was known as Ust-Sysolsk, after the Sysola River.
The Komi are an Indigenous Permian ethnic group whose homeland is in the northeast of European Russia around the basins of the Vychegda, Pechora and Kama rivers. They mostly reside in the Komi Republic, Perm Krai, Murmansk Oblast, Khanty–Mansi Autonomous Okrug, and Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous Okrug in the Russian Federation.
Komi, also known as Zyran, Zyrian or Komi-Zyryan, is one of the two regional varieties of the pluricentric Komi language, the other regional variety being Permyak.
The Permic or Permian languages are a branch of the Uralic language family. They are spoken in several regions to the west of the Ural Mountains within the Russian Federation. The total number of speakers is around 950,000, of which around 550,000 speak the most widely spoken language, Udmurt. Like other Uralic languages, the Permic languages are primarily agglutinative and have a rich system of grammatical cases. Unlike many others, they do not have vowel harmony.
Perm Krai is a federal subject of Russia, located in Eastern Europe. Its administrative center is Perm. The population of the krai was 2,532,405.
Cherdyn is a town and the administrative center of Cherdynsky District in Perm Krai, Russia, located on the Kolva River. Population: 4,920 (2010 Russian census); 5,756 (2002 Census); 6,535 (1989 Soviet census).
Komi-Permyak Autonomous Okrug was an autonomous okrug of the Russian SFSR and the Russian Federation, administered by Perm Oblast. It was established on February 26, 1925 as an administrative division for Komi-Permyaks, a branch of the Komis. The territory is now administrated as Komi-Permyak Okrug of Perm Krai.
Great Perm or simply Perm, in Latin Permia, was a medieval historical region in what is now the Perm Krai of the Russian Federation. Cherdyn is said to have been its capital.
The Komi-Yazva language is a Permic language closely related to Komi-Zyrian and Permyak, and spoken mostly in Krasnovishersky District of Perm Krai in Russia, in the basin of the Yazva (Yodz) River. It has no official status. It is the most divergent of all the Komi varieties.
Alexei Viktorovich Ivanov is a Russian award-winning writer.
Perm District is an administrative district (raion), one of the thirty-three in Perm Krai, Russia. Population - 116,353 (2021)
Komi mythology is the traditional mythology of the Komi peoples of northern Russia.
Joint-Stock Company Permalko is one of the leading distilleries in Perm and Perm Kray. The company is in the top 20 list of vodka and spirits producers in Russia.
The Komi language, a Uralic language spoken in the north-eastern part of European Russia, has been written in several different alphabets. Currently, Komi writing uses letters from the Cyrillic script. There have been five distinct stages in the history of Komi writing:
Black Book is an adventure role-playing video game, developed by Morteshka, which created The Mooseman, and published by HypeTrain Digital. The game was released on August 10, 2021.
Vladimir Viktorovich Uyba, born in 1958, is a Russian statesman, scientist, and doctor, who is the acting Head of the Komi Republic since April 2, 2020. Before being appointed to that position, he was deputy health minister and head of the Federal Biomedical Agency.
The governor of Perm Krai is the highest official of Perm Krai, a federal subject of Russia. The governor heads the executive branch in the region.
Gennady Petrovich Savelyev, is a Russian politician who had served as the 2nd and last head of administration (governor) of Komi-Permyak Autonomous Okrug before that region's unification to Perm Krai on 1 December 2005.