The Moomins in video games

Did you know that they planned a Moomin park outside Karlstad, Sweden where also Embracer is situated? The whole deal fell through. Moomin is a very popular comic character made by the Swedish-speaking Finn Tove Jansson, first published in 1945. Despite being a popular franchise for so long, the first video game didn’t appear until the early 90s.

In my job I often get to make complete lists of all games to a video game console or computer. Or as lately, the Embracer owned IPs Tomb Raider and The Lord of the Rings. Both these have quite complete lists online. But what about The Moomins I thought, can’t be that hard? I thought.

The Moomins are loved by the people in the Nordics but also countries like Japan. Check out the list further down and you’ll see that this also is the case when it comes to which countries develop the games about Little My, Snork Maiden and the Hattifatteners. Even though the comic in the beginning was very melancholy and maybe mostly for adults that have changed over the years. Because of that most of the older games are mainly made for children and some of them had quite limited distributions outside the Nordic countries. Hince they are not very well known for a bigger video game audience.

The wonderful quirky world of the Moominvalley is well suited for video games, but are there just a few of them? Mobygames lists only 2 games, English Wikipedia 4, Svensk Mediadatabas (Swedish Media Database) 7 and Giant Bomb 8 games, but there are a lot more than that. Swedish Wikipedia mentions 21 games and are more accurate. But still far off. Examples like this tells us that many games still aren’t known to people and hardly show up on the internet at all. So let’s dig even deeper.

To make a complete list of Moomin video games is no easy task. Many of the games were released in several countries, but heavily localised since the Moomins are called different things in most countries. Try searching for Muminki W Dolinie MuminKów or Muumit Piilosilla for example. This list focus on the names in Swedish, English and Finnish.

And here it is, a list for all those Moomin collectors out there. Don’t forget that most of them are available in many different languages and versions. A new, more mature game, is on the way at the moment: Snufkin Melody of Moominvalley is coming in 2024. Maybe this is what the Moomin lovers have been waiting for within video games? Also the first non smart phone Moomin game in 15 years! About time, I’d say. Sadly many of the quite recent smart phone games are already hard to find and also not supported by all phones. A two year old game can be impossible to play or it might already be unavailable.

Also, many Flash games are today probably lost forever but the ones once featured on www.moomin.co.jp can actually still be played via archive.org! Click on their respective titles (game 14-17) here in the list.

Not included on this list:

• Spinfy made several other apps that can’t be called games.
• Homebrew games like A Little Lost Moomin, Super Moomin and Taistelevat Muumit Muumipapan Pojan Kosto.
• Other computer software that contains the Moomins but aren’t games.

Please mail me if you find any errors or have any additional info.