Snufkin said to ACAB. OK, not literally “all cops are assholes”.Rather, the main character of the hyper game Snufkin: Melody of Moominvalley Say something like, “Once we remove all the signs in the park, the police will leave.” Still, the message remains and is gaining attention. Since the game debuted on Steam and Nintendo Switch, it has continued to amass a cult following thanks to Snufkin's active opposition to the over-policing of his beloved Moominvalley, and we'd love to share it on social media It's bringing back some of the long-held philosophies of the 80-year-old franchise for its fans. media.
A cozy, family-friendly game set in the world of legendary Finnish cartoonist Tove Jansson. melody This work tells the story of the iconic Snufkin's return to Moominvalley after a winter spent wandering around the world. Moomintroll has disappeared. Always an optimist, he tried to reason with the police and was arrested indefinitely. Snufkin's main purpose is to undermine the park keeper. Park caretakers want to fill the valley with a sea of monocultured lawns, mazes of manicured hedges, caged animals, river-destroying dams, and signs telling people how to enjoy nature. This is an arrogant Hemulen thinking.
Snufkin's response to all of this is absolutely shitty: waste signage, evade police, tear down fences, and forcefully rewild a degraded park with direct action.
After the game's release on March 7th, players picked up on these themes almost immediately. In its review, Vulture called Snufkin “a lovable eco-terrorist with a 'no god, no master' energy.” On platforms like X, fans praise his hilarious penchant for criminal activities. On Reddit, his more explicitly anarchist philosophy is articulated.
Undoubtedly, these themes have permeated Jansson's work over the years. Snufkin has been criticizing park rangers since the 1950s, and in 2021 people were still making TikToks about his response to overpolicing. But seeing these ideas incorporated into what is essentially a children's game on the Switch brought them to light in a new way.
Not that this was the case that's right Hyper Games' intentions. If you ask Ale Sundones, the company's co-founder and CEO, he's not keen on getting carried away with the radical political agenda at the heart of the game. The direction of the game included conversations with Moomin Characters Limited, the organization that oversees new Moomin content and is chaired by franchise rights holder Tove's niece Sofia Jansson.
“It was very important for them and for us not to let them invent too many new things,” Sundnes says. “In one book, Snufkin removes the park signs that set the rules, burns everything down in a conflagration, and then, along with the Hattie Fatteners, electrocutes the park keeper. I didn't write the exact story, but I think it's a story that might have happened in the Moomin canon. ”
Sundnes says Moomin characters generally don't take political stances on real-world issues – they're not even aware of them. Therefore, “we've never really tried to make a game about politics or the environment,” he says. “All of these elements were born out of a focus on the character of Snufkin and Tove Jansson's story.”
Although the police have been portrayed several times throughout the Moomin series canon as powerless, overzealous, unnecessary, and hostile, they are well-intentioned and partially Sometimes they even resolved the situation unconsciously.