All Park Keepers Are Bastards
Snufkin: Melody of Moominvalley has an agenda. Like grass under gossamer, it’s veiled by the unassuming cozy-game genre and the wide-eyed cuties that populate it. Finnish illustrator Tove Jansson’s pearly-white Moomin trolls — with their balloon-shaped heads and bellies and no mouths, though they enjoy cherries and martinis in Jansson’s ’40s picture-book series — seem too soft to have opinions. But you shouldn’t underestimate this gentle musical adventure game. Moominvalley hates cops and loves beauty.
Snufkin, Moominvalley’s harmonica-playing protagonist, drives these convictions. Jansson based the character primarily on one of her ex-boyfriends, leftist philosopher Atos Wirtanen, who believed in his pipe more than private ownership. Fittingly, then, your primary goal in watercolor-style Moominvalley is to help Snufkin tear “no smoking” signs out of the ground and manhandle the stuffy Park Keeper’s manicured lawns.
While nomad Snufkin was away — he usually wanders outside of Moominvalley in winter, then returns to meet his best friend Moomintroll on a petite arch bridge in spring — the Park Keeper decided to shave much of unruly, lush Moominvalley down. He set up private parks with clean hedges and stubbly lawns. He caged wildlife (“Animals shouldn’t be in cages,” Snufkin reacts. “No one should!”) and stationed police officers with thick broom mustaches to chase out ruffians like Snufkin.
It’s not very effective. As long as Snufkin has his music, his attitude is as bright as the moon, and his spirited anarchy can’t be stopped. He can play three instruments, which unlock as the game progresses: one wheezy harmonica, one breathy wooden recorder, and a shallow hand drum. Moominvalley’s twinkly, airy music was made in collaboration with Icelandic post-rock stars Sigur Rós. The game’s main theme — layers of guitar and flute that glint like birds or the Big Dipper — deftly accompanies the simple melodies Snufkin plays.
Each of Snufkin’s instruments is subject to the game’s relaxed level-up system; XP, or “inspiration,” accumulates automatically upon completing quests, though you can also wander through thick shrubs and flowerbeds to shake out extra points, which look like silvery music notes.
Higher levels allow you to play for a wider variety of animals — bees, fish, annoying swarming flies — and uncover new areas. The entire map can ultimately be connected with some finessing, like pulling logs into rivers to form makeshift bridges, using boulders as staircases, or, through music, coaxing all kinds of creatures (worms, alligators, stinky lost children called Woodies) to help you clear tall or wide gaps.
Snufkin’s instruments are particularly crucial to the pacifist game’s main conflict — destroying the Park Keeper’s tidy parks. These are set up as mini hedge mazes, and they’re stocked with patrolling officers that have a certain visual radius, denoted by a plumed black shadow (it turns red if you’re caught, though getting caught just means a slap on the wrist and returning to your last checkpoint). To restore a park to its unrestrained, natural splendor, you have to remove every unfair picket-sign rule hammered in its dirt. This requires hiding in tall grass, playing music for helpful animals, and confidently running around shrubbery like you were born for it.
As Snufkin, the more I encouraged nature to run deep and wild, the more welcomed I was in the world. I banged my drum while running, and the force of it knocked apart puffy dandelion heads, releasing glowy XP and motivating me to keep going. I felt encouraged to make a bigger mess. Every problem had a solution. Any discomfort can be assuaged by confidence and music.
Real Moomin-heads can probably tell by now that Moominvalley is faithful to the playful politics of the original book series; in the 1954 installment Moominsummer Madness, Snufkin endeavors to electrocute the Park Keeper before blowing raspberries at all his rules.
But even those new to the franchise will find it easy to empathize with Snufkin. He has a “no gods, no masters” energy, and the game reflects that in minor details. As you approach the resource-hoarding Park Keeper’s Grecian mansion, for example, the game’s curly undergrowth, bees, and butterflies give way to brown grass and chopped-up tree stumps. When a group of ridiculous cops accidentally spark a forest fire, it’s up to Moominvalley’s most overlooked residents to put it out.
Moominvalley is the ideal relaxation game for our current, suffocating climate. It feels like, in more insidious ways each day, corporate and political greed find ways to take people’s lives and motivation. We have all been made fragile by war, money, and indifference. Moominvalley, with its power-tripper Park Keeper and life-ruiner cops, gets that. But, while injustice pervades Moominvalley, the game creates a comfortable understanding that, no matter what, Snufkin is going to handle it. He’ll stand up for what he believes in. He has to — he’s an adorable ecoterrorist, championing nature and warmth with his ruddy cheeks and a blue flower in his tapered cap. His love rallies each character in Moominvalley, some of whom are very small, though their determination makes them seem bigger. He convinced me, too. The news is gloomy, but, under the butter-yellow sun, nature always wins.
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