Telling the Story

The idea of Snowman in Hell was born during the preliminary game design process. The idea seemed absurd enough, but still somehow understandable. When a friend mentioned Dante, it was a perfect addition to the mixture, as platform games and medieval literary classics seldom have anything in common. Absurd elements and black humor are the things that take the story forward...

After the basic idea, some details had to be thought of. The Snowman's cynical character reminded us of the film noir detectives, and thus a film noir murder story was added to the basic story of the Snowman trying to find a way to relieve his pain. Film noir was also nice to add because of certain other film noir games from Finland that have been big hits.

The cutscene graphics were made by combining photos from different locations and our sets to form strong and weird imagery. The flashback graphics had a more cinematic style, to get a contrast to the gloomy dreamlike Hell-pictures.

Images from the cutscenes (click to enlarge).

The dialog was formed to give certain amounts of knowledge about the situation, but also to build up the characters. The pieces of knowledge the player gets during the voyage through Hell aren't supposed to form a whole before the last cutscene, which is supposed to bring some answers...Still, we tried not to make the story too apparent. If you didn't get it, well - play it again, Sam. ;)

Intertextuality was also a thing that strongly affected the story. It was great to add references to different works of art or entertainment. Many of them were naturally referring to The Divine Comedy, but also many other quotations can be found...If you recognize some of those, please tell it
in the guestbook. It would be fun to know how many have been found by the players. Also some visual and thematic references were added to the mix, but they are of course more difficult to find.

Snowman posing with the cast in the official Snowman in Hell poster.