100 Finnish games Games

Aapeli is the first digital gaming device in Finland.

Aapeli was built by the Mathematics Committee that constructed ESKO, Finland’s first computer. The junior engineers in the group gave it to Rolf Nevanlinna, the leader of the committee, for his 60th birthday. Aapeli played Nim, a strategy game that was commonly adapted to early computers. In Nim, the players remove the desired number of sticks from rows of different sizes. The player who gets the last stick loses the game. Originally, the device was simply known as “the Nim machine”. The new owner, Suomen Kaapelitehdas, renamed it Aapeli in the 1960s.

AirBuccaneers, a very personal modification that was created by a research unit at the University of Oulu, was published nearly ten years later as a standalone game.

AirBuccaneers was initially a mod for Unreal Tournament 2004 and it took third place in the international Make Something Unreal contest in 2004. Soon, this unique game of cooperation gathered a group of loyal fans. In this game, which requires seamless teamwork, a group of players guides a hot air balloon and fights against other teams. The game’s background story builds on Finnish traditions and nature with a fresh approach.

Angry Birds, which expanded from games into versatile entertainment, is the most talked-about brand in the Finnish game industry.

Children all over the world love Angry Birds and its expressive birds. Over the years, the simple puzzle game has developed into a brand that is known for its extensive product selection. To many, the name Angry Birds brings to mind the different seasonal and thematic variations as well as the merchandise that ranges from sweets to wall clocks. The computer animated Angry Birds film released in 2016 was an international box office success.

Afrikan Tähti, a game that brought several generations of Finns together, is nowadays being subjected to increasing criticism.

Designed by Kari Mannerla when he was 19 years old, Afrikan Tähti has been translated into 16 languages and it has sold over 3.6 million copies – half of them internationally. The game was inspired by Humphrey Bogart’s films and the fascinating names on a crumpled map of Africa – not so much by the reality of Africa. Over the years, the game has been criticised for its colonial view of the world.

The delightfully simple word explanation game Alias is known by most everyone, but few people know that it is from Finland.

Mikko Koivusalo, who is known as an author, composer, lyricist and musician, already designed different board games when he was young, but Alias is his only successful game. The name comes from the Latin word alias, meaning “in other words”. Several different versions of this popular game have come out over the years, and it is also well-known in Estonia, the Netherlands and Russia.

The chess game Chesmac is the first commercially published computer game in Finland.

Chesmac was made for the Finnish Telmac kit computer, and it was originally a hobby project for Raimo Suonio. Suonio wanted to demonstrate that the low processing power of the Telmac is sufficient for chess. In the end, the game was sold by the Topdata store in Helsinki. The other side of the tape had two versions of John Conway’s Game of Life simulation (1970), both written by Suonio. Chesmac sold 104 copies in total. Suonio received all the profits from the game.

Clash of Clans took the Finnish game industry to the top of the world.

In a few years, Supercell has become an institution that creates headlines in the gaming press as well as on the finance and culture pages. In Clash of Clans, Supercell did two things right. Firstly, it combined a deep strategy game with casual playing, which attracted a large group of different players to the game. Secondly, Supercell was one of the first to combine a free game with profitable micropayments in a manner that made playing fun both with and without real money.

Crayon Physics Deluxe proved that international hit games can be made outside of the game industry’s mechanisms.

The game started from a challenge that Petri Purho set for himself: he would create a new game each month all by himself. Crayon Physics (2007) was a new type of puzzle game, and it became so popular that Purho started polishing it into a commercial version. This created Crayon Physics Deluxe, a pioneer for small-budget indie games. It was one of the trailblazers of the international indie game trend and among its first hits.

Cities: Skylines took over the top spot of city building games from the SimCity series that had reigned supreme for decades.

The developer, Colossal Order from Tampere, is known for its high-quality work, and its carefully constructed city building game arrived on the market at the right time. Although Colossal Order had achieved success before, its third game Cities: Skylines quickly became an international hit and a critical success. In particular, its versatile support for player-generated content has received praise. The game has also been used as a tool for actual city planning, both in Finland and internationally.

Coloris renewed the puzzle game genre and it was praised by the Finnish press, but it never achieved the success that was originally forecast.

When it came out, Coloris was well received by the magazines and, in 1990, it was advertised as “Avesoft’s best product”. Jukka Tapanimäki, who was writing game reviews for MikroBitti at the time, also gave it a top score. Coloris is often compared to Tetris (1984) due to the similarity of the idea. However, it was not Tetris that stopped the international success of Coloris. Instead, its similarity to Columns (1989) was feared to result in legal action against Coloris.

Sami Laakso is a one-man game factory that published Dale of Merchants with the help of a crowdfunding campaign.

Dale of Merchants is a card game where merchants compete for their position within a magnificent guild. It has been especially praised for its game mechanics that spice up the traditional deck-building formula with a few original solutions. Dale of Merchants was designed in English from the ground up, since its crowdfunding campaign was aimed directly at the international market. The game is a good example of the growing international game expertise in Finland.

Developed as part of a long-term research project, Ekapeli is a series of learning games that supports the development of reading, for example.

Ekapeli, which has been developed by Professor Heikki Lyytinen in cooperation with Niilo Mäki Institute and researchers from the University of Jyväskylä since 2004, is a series of different learning games. The games in the series can recognise the learner’s skill level and adjust the tasks accordingly. Separate games have been prepared for teaching mathematics, foreign languages and reading, for example. The international version of Ekapeli is known as GraphoGame and it can be used to learn Swahili, Mandarin or Greenlandic, among others.

FlatOut’s popularity can be attributed the groundbreaking physics model that makes the player feel every crash and bump.

FlatOut is based on the sport of folkracing and offers a high-speed demolition derby with destructive environments and drivers flying through the windscreens. The precise modelling of car and track physics is one of Bugbear’s trademarks. It was already present in their first game, Rally Trophy (2001). The success of FlatOut gave rise to several sequels. In total, the series has sold over three million games.

Furry Dragons is an unpublished game project from Housemarque that was given a new lease on life as a comic.

Furry Dragons was going to be a game for all ages where you could fly with dragons, explore a large game world and collect jewels. The aim of the game was to grow new dragons and develop their characteristics. Although Furry Dragons was never published, the game world and characters were developed further in Lopunperän Tarinat, a comic drawn and written by Miha Rinne. It was published in Koululainen magazine between 2006 and 2010.

Habbo is a virtual online community for young people that gained immense popularity in the early 2000s.

The story of Habbo begins in 1999, when Sampo Karjalainen and Aapo Kyrölä developed a virtual world called Mobiles Disco in order to promote their friends’ band. Over the next years, this popular meeting spot became Habbo, which was played in over twenty countries at one point. Although Habbo is more of a virtual world than an actual game, it includes several games and game-like features that appeal to teenagers all over the world.

Electra is an international electric game innovation from a hundred years ago.

In Electra, the idea is to connect the right question and answer with electric wires. If the answer is correct, a light will turn on. A game based on electricity was unheard of in the early 20th century. Electra quickly spread all over Europe. Most likely, the game originates from Germany. A Finnish version was also quickly created. It contains questions in Swedish and Finnish.

Fortuna was an educational game that turned into an export success. It is the oldest Finnish game that is still in production.

In 1923, the teacher Juho Jussila started a carpentry shop for manufacturing the wooden educational games that he had developed. Fortuna, which became the company’s largest success, was also designed to be educational: the scoring of the game teaches mental arithmetic. The game was exported from the very beginning and, in the 1930s, it even attracted the interest of the British Royal Family. The carpentry shop started by Jussila is still operational and Fortuna is its most successful classic.

Galilei was a TV character who resumed his adventures in two Finnish licence games.

The Galilei series started with a children’s show that was broadcast on Yle TV2 in 1996–1997. Viewers could call in and solve different tasks with their telephone. The show utilised real-time 3D graphics, which were completely new at that time. The TV show had two licence games where Galilei and his friends continued their adventures. Unlike most games at the time, both Galilei ja kadonneet lelut (“Galilei and the Missing Toys”, 1997) and Galilei 2: Seikkailujen saari (“Galilei 2: Island of Adventure”, 2000) were in Finnish.

Inva-taxi is a freeware game that makes fun of people with disabilities. Is this really something to laugh at?

In Inva-taxi, the driver transports disabled people and tries to make sense of what they are saying. Åkesoft were a group of teenagers who published games using pseudonyms. This was done for a reason, since they were also responsible for other questionable software. The game Bepa Quest was particularly notorious. It was used for bullying one of their schoolmates, and it resulted in a court case that ended Åkesoft’s career. In its time, Inva-taxi was distributed via BBS systems and, for many, it still symbolises the authority-disrespecting attitude of 1990s games.

The ice hockey game Kiekko.tk started as a simple browser application and has gathered an active community around it.

In multiplayer Kiekko.tk, each player controls one member of an ice hockey team. The first version only allowed 15 simultaneous players, but the number can be up to 1,500 currently. Over the years, several unofficial leagues, such as “Kiekkoliiga” and “Eliittiliiga”, have been created around Kiekko.tk. On April Fool’s Day, Kiekko.tk may become an entirely different game. The April Fool’s joke for 2007 gave rise to an entirely new soccer game, Socceracy (2007).

Kirppupeli (Tiddlywinks) has been teaching children precision and strategic thinking for decades already.

Kirppupeli is an English invention that arrived in Finland in the 19th century, but Sarvis Oy made it especially popular from the 1920s onwards. Sarvis manufactured buttons from milk-based casein plastic, and soon found that the same process could also create game tokens. The goal for Kirppupeli is to get your own “fleas” into the box and to stop your opponent by landing your fleas on top of their tokens.

Interactive TV/mobile games like Katapultti (“Catapult”) were the state of the art in Finnish game industry expertise in the early 2000s.

Katapultti was one of the first TV/mobile games, and it was shown on MTV’s channels after the other programming had ended. Katapultti was played by sending a text message that contained instructions on the desired direction and speed for firing the rocks. The idea was to hit the other players and the dinosaurs. The Finnish companies RedLynx, Outer Rim and Sofia Digital were among the pioneers of interactive TV/mobile games in the early 2000s. They also exported the game technology internationally.

Kimble is one of the classics of Finnish board games and originally a licensed version of the American game Trouble.

The name Kimble comes from the popular American TV show The Fugitive (1963–1967), where the main character was Dr. Richard Kimble. In addition to the peculiar name, Kimble is remembered for its unique Pop-o-Matic dice system. Nelostuote, currently Tactic Games, was established for the purpose of manufacturing Kimble. It has since grown into Finland’s largest board game publisher. Kimble’s continued popularity is manifested in the Finnish Championships that have been arranged several times.

Kuninkaiden aika (“The Age of Kings”) shows that role-playing games are also suited for teaching historical and religious topics.

Kuninkaiden aika was created to support the youth workers of the Evangelical Lutheran Church, and it guides young people and children in the events of the Old Testament. In the game, the Age of Kings described by the Bible is presented as a fascinating environment that can teach players about biblical events and characters. Despite the topic, Kuninkaiden aika is a simple and easily approachable game that is well suited for beginners and short gaming sessions.

Lustfärd till Avasaksa (“Pleasure Trip to Aavasaksa”) is probably the oldest commercial board game in Finland.

The game board consists of 52 squares that describe 19th-century tourist attractions. The manual provides the explanations and instructions for each square. The illustrations are made by Hilda Olson, an artist from Nykarleby. The designer is not known with certainty, but Olson is known to have published dice games with her own designs and illustrations in the 1860s. It is likely that Lustfärd till Avasaksa is entirely her work. A Finnish version of the game, Huvimatka Aavasaksaan, was made available during the year of its first publication.

Matopeli (Snake) was the first mobile phone phenomenon that spread like wildfire in the late 1990s.

Matopeli was first introduced in the Nokia 6110 and found its way onto hundreds of millions of mobile phones. Nokia even arranged the Finnish championships for Matopeli at the peak of its popularity in 1999 and 2000. Internationally, Matopeli is known as Snake. It is based on a classic game from the 1970s. Originally, Taneli Armanto ended up making the game by accident, since the Nokia 6110 team thought that he was an experienced game developer. However, he was confused with his relative, T. Armanto, who had made a few computer games.

Mehulinja (Juice Belt) is a likeable game innovation from the early ages of Finnish digital gaming.

The VIC-20 game Mehulinja, originally called Juice Belt, places the player at the helm of a juice factory. It is the second commercially released computer game in Finland. The publisher AmerSoft and developer Ojaniemi started cooperating after Mehulinja achieved success in a programming contest. It soon turned out that Ojaniemi had written several games that were ready for release, so in 1984 he brought out three more: RahaRuhtinas, Herkkusuu and Myyräjahti.

MinecraftEdu turned the immensely popular Minecraft into an educational game for classroom use.

MinecraftEdu is a licensed version of the Swedish Minecraft (2009) that is intended for use in schools. In MinecraftEdu, the creativity nurturing environment of Minecraft has been modified for teaching by offering the teachers a selection of tools. The aim of TeacherGaming was always to create an educational game that retains the fun and inspiration of the original Minecraft. When MinecraftEdu was purchased by Microsoft in early 2016, it was already being used for teaching in over 40 countries and tens of thousands of schools.

Lydia deals with alcoholism in the family and shows that games are capable of telling difficult stories.

Led by journalist Juho Kuorikoski and cartoonist Henri Tervapuro, Platonic Partnership tackles a very personal topic: domestic violence and parents’ alcoholism. The team behind the melancholy game has received multiple awards, including game developer of the year. Alko later published a mobile version of Lydia, returning to the path laid by the 1980s educational titles Promille and Hup-peli.

Max Payne, the first big-budget action game from Finland, revolutionised the action genre by slowing down time.

The film noir-like cinematics, time-slowing effects and visual novel sections were unprecedented for 2001. Max Payne quickly gathered a reputation and appealed to players worldwide. Since then, the game has gathered several industry awards and, in 2008, it was used as the basis for a Hollywood action film starring Mark Wahlberg. With Max Payne, Remedy rose to the top ranks among the international game studios.

Miekka ja Magia (“Sword and Magic”) is the first commercially published role-playing game in Finnish.

Risto Hieta, known as Nordic from his “Peliluola” (“Game Dungeon”) column in MikroBitti magazine, was a key figure in Finnish gaming in the 1980s. Hieta became interested in role-playing games, but since very few international releases were available, he decided to publish his own game. The personal approach of Miekka ja Magia was born without a deep knowledge of the role-playing classics, which means that its take on role-playing is somewhat special. Miekka ja Magia was preceded by Acirema (1985), a self-published game that Hieta sold by mail order.

Writing adventure games like Paha Juttu (Bad Thing) was a basic skill for home computer hobbyists in the 1980s.

Text-based adventures like Paha Juttu were written for the Commodore 64 everywhere in Finland, but unlike most others, Paha Juttu was distributed. The game and its three sequels were published in Floppy Magazine, a magazine distributed on floppy disks by Protocol Productions. Publishing a total of six episodes of Paha Juttu, each one more complicated than the last, paved way for the authors’ success as anti-virus pioneers at F-Secure. The game on display is the first of the series.

Pathway to Glory was a major production for the Nokia N-Gage that is remembered for its excellent multiplayer mode.

The World War II strategy game Pathway to Glory was a show of force for RedLynx. It was the largest mobile game production of its time. Thousands of locations were photographed for it and the animation of the characters utilised motion capture technology, which was highly advanced at that time. Over 500 lines of dialogue were recorded for the game in eight different languages. The much praised multiplayer mode worked over Bluetooth or the Nokia N-Gage Arena. To this day, Pathway to Glory is generally considered the best game for the N-Gage.

Porrasturvat (Stair Dismount) is an oddball of the gaming world where unique game mechanics meet twisted humour.

In Porrasturvat, the objective of the player is to push the simple stick man down the stairs in a way that will injure him as severely as possible. In the game’s background story, the super hero Spector is trying to claim tax benefits by proving that he was injured while working. The player needs to inflict these injuries on him. Porrasturvat is one of the first games that used the built-in physics engine as a core gameplay component. There is also a mobile version of the game called Stair Dismount (2009).

Painter Boy was Finland’s first digital advergame and it was published as part of a campaign for the paint manufacturer Tikkurila.

The heroes in Painter Boy are the painting duo Master and Son, seen in Tikkurila’s advertisements at the time. Although the game is based on the TV and magazine advertisements, the actors did not participate in its creation. The voices were recorded by the game’s 16-year-old programmer, Teijo Pellinen. In addition to regular sales, Tikkurila also distributed the game at its own events. Nevertheless, pirate copies were the most common form of distribution.

Piiritystila (State of Siege), or Halat hisar in Arabic, is a Palestinian and Finnish live-action role-playing game that deals with life in an occupied nation.

In the starting scenario for Piiritystila, Finland is occupied by the fictional nation of Uralia. The scenario is in many ways reminiscent of the current conditions in Palestine. The script for Piiritystila was mainly written by the Palestinian participants, with the Finns playing the citizens of the occupied country, while the international guests played foreign journalists and aid workers. The game was originally arranged in Parkano in 2013 and remade in Mikkeli in the summer of 2016.

The role-playing game Praedor offers players the opportunity to dive into a fantasy world that is known from comics and literature.

Praedor draws upon a world that Petri Hiltunen created for his comics. Ville Vuorela created this acclaimed role-playing game in cooperation with Hiltunen. In addition to the comics and the game, there are also two story collections, two novels and a reference book about the Praedor adventurers and the other dwellers of this world. Praedor encourages adventure and exploration, and it has become an international sales success and one of the milestones of Finnish RPG publishing.

RAY’s 50-penni Pajatso, once a familiar sight at service stations, is an undeniable part of Finnish gaming history.

The first pajazzo-type machines were brought to Finland from Germany in the 1920s. As a result of the monopoly on gambling machines that the Slot Machine Association received in 1938, many pajazzos shifted to RAY from private entrepreneurs. RAY also started its own pajazzo production at the same time. The classic 50-penni Pajatso was born in the late 1960s. Long into the 1970s, pajazzos were the only gambling machines in Finland. RAY has been arranging the Pajazzo World Championships every other year since 2003.

Ristikontra was a card game invented at log cabins. The loggers spread it all over Finland.

Ristikontra is a tricks game and one of the few card games originating from Finland. Ristikontra is played by four people in pairs. The objective of the game is to get as many points as possible by winning tricks. A trick refers to a round where every player plays one card. The specialty in Ristikontra is that the player who last played the same number of card as the starter gets all the cards.

The nationalistic Sampo board game was published during the first period of Russification in Finland.

Sampo has illustrations in the National Romantic style and it takes the player to the plunder of the Sampo, from the national epic Kalevala. The game was illustrated by Samuel von Bell, who is also known as the illustrator of Kalevala-themed postcards and educational posters. Story-like descriptions escort the players on their journey to Pohjola. The winner is the first player to get back home on the shores of Finland. Footnotes explain the key characters, locations, items and beings in Kalevala to players who are unfamiliar with the national epic.

The “double up” music in RAY Pokeri (Poker) is embedded in the Finnish subconsciousness.

The idea for building a video poker machine came when RAY’s product development brought over a similar device from Las Vegas. Most of the technology in the machine known as RAY Pokeri was designed and built in Finland. Nowadays, RAY Pokeri is best remembered for its “double up” tune, composed by Kimmo Koskinen. The game and its music were so fondly remembered by the players that once the machines were removed from service, there were numerous requests to bring them back. The wish came true and the original RAY Pokeri returned in 2015.

Finland’s first game console, the Salora Playmaster, is a regular-looking TV that contains a simple sports game.

Salora Playmaster came to the market when the first game consoles had only been sold for a few years. The home consoles mostly played Pong (1974), where the player controls a paddle that hits a ball. Pong was based on a single microchip, which was also included in the Salora Playmaster. It can be justifiably called Finland’s first game console. Experiments with televisions containing the Pong game were also made in other countries in the 1970s.

Home-made miniature games like Reijo Paulus’s Sotapeli (“War Game”) have a long history.

In post-war Finland, the teenager Reijo Paulus was inspired by board games and war history. He and his friends developed several different rule sets that were played with attractive miniatures. The naval game that Paulus called Sotapeli was expanded to contain aircraft and ground troops. The game board that covered approximately four square metres has been lost over time, but the mostly wooden miniatures and the rules of the game have survived. The complex game made innovative use of Modulex blocks for the fuel and ammunition totals.

Supreme Snowboarding was the first Finnish video game to sell over one million copies.

The technologically ambitious Supreme Snowboarding was the first large-scale success of the Finnish gaming industry. It was only overtaken by Max Payne (2001) a few years later. Supreme Snowboarding was later on used as the basis for Transworld Snowboarding (2002), the first Finnish game for the Xbox. It was based on a licence from a snowboarding magazine of the same name. All the athletes, clothes and snowboards are identical to their real-life counterparts. The music was composed by the rock group Apulanta.

Talebans demonstrates that not all games are about having fun.

A game of Talebans is impossible to win. The more you bomb Afghanistan, the more aggressive the terrorist attacks get. This thought-provoking idea demonstrates that games can also be used to discuss problems in society. The game turned out to predict the US attack on Afghanistan, since it was completed before the terrorist attacks in September 2001. Talebans was on display at the Kiasma contemporary art museum during the Terror 2.1 Utopia exhibition by the ROR art collective. It also toured international art exhibitions later on.

Suunnistussimulaattori (“Orienteering Simulator”) is both a fascinating game and a training platform for future orienteers.

Suunnistussimulaattori is one of the few games that manage to faithfully recreate the northern coniferous forests that Finns love. Antero Pulli has been developing the simulator as a hobby since 2004. Suunnistussimulaattori carefully models the terrains based on real-life areas and the running speeds, which Pulli has confirmed by running across the scenery appearing in the game several hundred times. The game’s weekly virtual contests support the training of Finnish orienteers.

Talvisota 1939 (Winter War 1939) renewed the strategy game genre. It was the first digital game published in the Pirkanmaa region.

Talvisota 1939 describes the conflict between the Soviet Union and Finland in an innovative manner by using two entirely different approaches. The first part includes troop movements and probability-based battle modelling which are typical of the strategy games of the time. The second part is the battle news section where the player needs to assess the effect of different news on the Finnish war effort. In addition to the MSX home computers, Triosoft also planned to release the game on the Commodore 64, but it never materialised.

Uuno Turhapuro muuttaa maalle (“Uuno Turhapuro Moves to the Countryside”) was the first licence game from a Finnish film, and it is remembered for its extreme level of difficulty.

Written by Pasi Hytönen, a high school student at the time, Uuno Turhapuro muuttaa maalle is the best-known mid-1980s game release from AmerSoft. Hytönen feared that the game was too easy and raised the difficulty level by a notch just before its publication. This may have been too effective, since completing the game requires a near-perfect performance. Uuno sold approximately 2,000 copies and it is currently a desired collector’s item.

VecSports Boxing is a hobbyist-created sports game for the Vectrex console that had been released twenty years earlier.

Vectrex is a 1980s game console that the general public has mostly forgotten about. Since there are very few original games for the Vectrex, many of the available games are made by hobbyists. One of them is the work of Manu Pärssinen, a member of the Pelikonepeijoonit collective. VecSports Boxing is one of the few sports games for the Vectrex. The system’s vector screen was originally not considered suitable for this genre.

The flight simulator Jet Rocket is an electromechanical game; this means that it contains no video screen. The terrain is on a roller inside the machine, and a mirror is used to project its image to the player. The roller is illuminated with a blacklight. The mirror is tilted in order to create the illusion of banking.

The original Space Invaders (1978) was an enormous success in Japan. Taito sold over 350,000 units in two years. Part II is nearly identical to the first version, but it includes a real colour screen, whereas the original game used a colour film on top of a black and white display.

Hyper Olympic, inspired by the 1984 Olympics, is a typical sports game that also requires quick reflexes and good physical condition from the player.

The simple tennis game Pong was the first successful coin-operated digital game. Its developer Atari sold manufacturing licences to others, and the Midway Winner is one of these officially licensed products. Pelikonepeijoonit purchased the machine in a very poor condition, and it has been restored with the help of funds from the crowdfunding campaign for the Finnish Museum of Games.

When Defender was first introduced at a trade fair, many people felt that it was too complex for an arcade game. In the arcades, however, it was an immediate hit, and skilled players could play it for hours with a single credit. The game is considered as one of the most influential products of the “Golden Age” of arcades.

Race Drivin’ was the sequel to the successful Hard Drivin’. It contains more tracks, different cars and a more complex physics model.