Bramble: The Mountain King

Bramble: The Mountain King, released in 2023, is an action-adventure game from Swedish developer Dimfrost Studio and publisher Merge Games. It follows a boy named Olle as he ventures through a world inspired by Scandinavian folklore to save his sister Lillemor from mythological beings. The game uses a third-person perspective and blends adventure with horror elements.

In terms of gameplay, Olle travels through linear, fairy-tale-like environments, solving puzzles and jumping between platforms to progress. Boss fights appear during certain action sequences. The story begins when Olle and Lillemor fall into a giant tree, shrink, and interact with gnomes and fairies before returning to normal size. A troll then captures Lillemor, taking her to a distant mountain kingdom. Armed with a mysterious stone of light, Olle sets out through the woods. He escapes trolls, befriends the stone giant Lemus, and is lured toward a pond by the hypnotic violin of the water spirit Näcken. Olle flees, and Näcken dies when both tumble over a waterfall. Olle meets the young witch Tuva, who empowers his stone to push back the Bramble, a corrupting plant. In marshes haunted by drowned children, Olle witnesses a witch sacrifice her baby in a Satanic ritual under the demon midwife Kärrhäxan. He fails to save the newborn, who is drowned, and the witch hangs herself. Olle buries the child to prevent it from becoming a shadow. In the library of the Lyktgubbe, an archivist creature, Olle learns the Mountain King’s origin: King Nihls’ son Ulrik was ill, and the king’s brutal search for a cure led to a kind witch giving him a magic flower, warning him to use only a piece. Though the boy healed, royal servants killed him out of vengeance. The devastated king used the full flower, transforming into a mad giant and unleashing the Bramble. The witch built a mountain over him and his kingdom, binding him to the Bramble, with trolls forced to bring him prey. Olle later kills the shapeshifter Skogsrå, who lured men to their deaths, and continues to a village destroyed by upheaval and later plagued by the demon hag Pesta, which turned villagers into zombies. Crossing the sea by rowboat, Olle banishes Pesta with the light. Inside the mountain, he finds Lillemor being fed to the Mountain King. Olle weakens the Bramble, and King Nihls, regaining his senses, destroys the Bramble’s root flower.