Early scandinavian "Minigames"
When reviewing, I refrain from reviewing older games - mainly because I feel that it is better to search and shed light onto more contemporary games; also, I see the risk of falling into a shallow nostalgia if one focuses to much on what has been - so some stuff that I considered writing about never made it onto the blog.
I fondly remember the video game Taso. It was a quite unique helicopter/RTS-Game; years later, the now adult developer set up a small page about the game
the page does not only provide a DL-Link (playable with Wine/DOS-Box and some tinkering) and a video but also a short description of the Suomipelit scene. If you ask me, this was a result of the (by then) progressive education system of the Scandinavian countries. Education there seemingly often involved the use of “ClickTeam”, a software able to create - among other things - small games. A collection of “Click Games” can be found here www.create-games.com/museum.asp?tag=museum
Many of the early 2000s “minigames” were made using the “Click”-Language, among them the work of the - back then popular, at least partly Sweden based - Fallen Angel Industries. One of the games released from this Group was Siege: www.youtube.com/watch?v=EDIGwrwChNQ - A real jewel when it comes to sound, gameplay, and visual design. It is - among other games of the group - available at archive.org: archive.org/search?query=fallen+angel+industries , some of them can be played via Wine.
A vast archive of “Finngames” is available at archive.org/details/suomipelit_collection
The scene eventually shifted to the GameMaker; some of its members professionalized, developed more complex games and were a part of the founding base of todays Indie Game Scene.
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