Bramble: The Mountain King

Bramble: The Mountain King is a 2023 action-adventure video game developed by Dimfrost Studio and published by Merge Games. Players control a young boy named Olle who attempts to rescue his kidnapped sister Lillemor from mythological creatures.

Gameplay
A child named Olle discovers his sister is missing and takes off to find her. Bramble: The Mountain King is an adventure game based on Scandinavian folklore. It is played from a third-person perspective and has elements of horror games. Olle must traverse locales common to fairy tales. Travel is generally linear, and, to continue, players must occasionally solve puzzles or jump across platforms, as in platform games. There are also occasional action sequences where players must engage frightening monsters in boss fights.

Plot
Long ago in an old Nordic land, a young boy named Olle searches for his big sister Lillemor during the night. Eventually he does find her but not long after they fall into a giant tree, which magically shortens their size, and both Olle and Lillemor playfully spend time with the gnomes and fairies before returning to normal size. Things start turning grim, however, when a troll kidnaps Lillemor to be taken to an unknown kingdom. With a mysterious stone of light he finds in his hands, Olle traverses through the woods in search of his sister.

He first encounters and escapes a butcher troll, then escapes another troll by freezing him into stone with the light. Olle also helps and befriends a stone giant named Lemus. After passing through dark caves filled with captives in cages, Olle is entranced by the hypnotic song of the Näcken, a dangerous water spirit. He was originally a human violinist who was beaten mercilessly and unjustly by his fellow villagers, and so he obtained his revenge by playing a cursed melody that caused them to dance to death; he fell into darkness and despair when a woman he loved was killed by his spell. Olle hides and flees from him in the riverside, and the Näcken is killed in his pursuit of Olle. Olle also meets the young witch Tuva, who gives him encouragement and gives his stone the power of light to defend himself and push back the Bramble.

Traveling farther out into the marshes, Olle happens upon a shack that is home to a witch and her infant child. The marshes are filled with shadowy figures of drowned children, and Olle learns that the witch plans to sacrifice the baby in a Satanic ritual, with the child becoming a shadowed one under the watch of the demonic monster Kärrhäxan. While he manages to fend her off, Olle ultimately fails to save the newborn from being drowned by the witch, who hangs herself. Olle brokenheartedly buries the child to prevent them from becoming another shadow.

Meeting the Lyktgubbe, an immortal creature and a magical archivist, Olle enters a clearing where its library manifests, and he learns the tale of the Mountain King. King Nihls' son Ulrik was ailing, so he set out on a bloody search for the cure. Finding a merciful witch, she gave him a special flower that she warned to only use a piece of. While the boy is healed, he is then killed by the servants out of anger towards his father's bloody campaign. The crushed King unleashed his fury with the full flower, turning into a mad giant and releasing the Bramble onto the world. The kind witch witnessed his transformation and rampage from afar and used her power to build a mountain over him and his decimated kingdom, binding him to the Bramble forever; the trolls are forced to retrieve prey for him to feed on.

Entering a forest, Olle is lured by a vision of Lillemor, created by the shapeshifter Skogsrå, who disguised herself as a beautiful woman to lure men from a village to their deaths, drawing power from their hearts. An angered Olle uses the light to break down her magic by destroying the corpses sustaining it, then killing her when the light becomes a sword; the guilt-ridden Olle continues to a village destroyed by the upheaval caused by Skogsrå. The village is afflicted by a plague caused by the appearance of the demon hag Pesta, and Olle flees from the now zombified, cannibalistic villagers. Olle escapes the village and uses a rowboat to cross the sea to the mountain, lighting the way with a magic crystal atop a lighthouse during an eclipse, but he is confronted by Pesta herself, who tries to eradicate Olle by entering and destroying his mind. Olle uses the light to overcome her nightmare and banish her, leaving him victorious as he finally reaches the mountain.

Entering the mountain through a magic doorway, Olle finds and opens the Mountain King's sanctum. Climbing onto his table, Olle is too late as he witnesses Lillemor being thrown into the giant's mouth (to which the King kills and eats the troll that kidnapped her). The Mountain King attacks Olle, who evades his efforts at killing him while using the light to weaken the Bramble binding him. With the Bramble weakened, King Nihls regains his senses and uses his sword to destroy the rooting flower of the Bramble, decimating the cursed plant forever. Olle climbs onto King Nihls' beard, and falls, throwing the stone of light into the King's mouth, who collapses dead upon taking his first step. Olle is mortally wounded by the fall, and Lillemor uses the light to cut her way out of the King's stomach. While Olle is seemingly dead, the light revives him, and Lillemor carries him off while the castle begins to collapse; they are saved by the timely intervention of the Lemus. The story ends with Lillemor searching for Olle at home in the night before he appears to reassure her, mirroring the beginning of the story.

Development
The developer, Dimfrost, is based in Sweden. Dimfrost's first idea had to do with Vikings, but they found the idea overplayed and chose instead to focus on Swedish mythology. The story comes from cautionary fables for children, and the monster design was inspired by John Bauer. The developers did not want players to see the game as just a horror game; besides the grim atmosphere, they also wanted to stress the beautiful elements and Olle's growth as a character. Merge Games released it for Windows, Xbox Series X/S, PlayStation 4 & 5, and Nintendo Switch on April 27, 2023.

Reception
Bramble: The Mountain King received positive reviews on Metacritic. Although PC Gamer highly praised the game's atmosphere and said it had the potential to be an "instant classic", they criticized what they felt was "archaic puzzle design" for ruining the experience. Shacknews called it "as gorgeous as it is horrifying" and recommended it to fans of horror games. Nintendo Life recommended against the Switch version due to performance problems during their review, but they reported that an upcoming patch promised to address this. In the meantime, they recommended playing the game on more powerful systems. GamesRadar said it has enough jump scares and gore to satisfy horror fans, but there is also "a lot of wonder to be found".