Gameskrift

Independent game studio

Games written in old songs.

We build co-op worlds out of myths that haven't been told to death. Our first is Kalevala: a sandbox RPG set in the Finnish epic, where the players decide what becomes of Sampo.

Meet Kalevala Watch the prototype

Project 01 · In development

Kalevala

A sandbox co-op action RPG for PC. Up to sixteen players share a persistent world. They build settlements, take sides, dig up relics, and set off world events around Sampo, the mill that grinds out grain, salt and wealth.

  • A myth you haven't played yet

    Väinämöinen the sage-singer, Ilmarinen the smith, Louhi of the North. The Kalevala is far less worn than Greek or Norse myth. We don't retell it scene by scene. It's the ground your own chapter is written on.

  • Play it your way, together

    Builder, explorer, fighter, rune-singer, relic hunter. Roles are a direction, not a locked class. Gather, craft, build, defend and expand with a small crew or a whole guild.

  • History the players write

    Each server moves through eras. Forge Sampo, fight over it, and maybe break it. What your server does is what its world remembers, so no two worlds end up with the same history.

  • Relics worth keeping

    Dig up cups, arrowheads, rune stones and Sampo fragments. Trade them, restore them, and show them off in a museum of your own. Finishing a collection set unlocks lasting rewards.

The shape of a world

Three eras, one mill

  1. Era I

    Before Sampo

    A frontier. Myth runs thin and resources are even. Survive, build, explore, and pick a side.

  2. Era II

    Sampo Forged

    Players pour resources and rituals into Sampo until it wakes. Whoever holds it prospers, and everyone else notices.

  3. Era III

    War and Catastrophe

    The heist, the Endless Winter, the shattering. Raids and disasters redraw the map, and each server ends up with its own saga.

The world

Four regions, three peoples

Kalevala, the land of songs, farms, builds and sings rituals. Pohjola, the northern land of frost, forges and fights. Wanderers come out of the wild with no allegiance. They may join a side, or stay their own.

  • Kalevala Bay

    Cold but friendly coastal forest. Every wanderer starts here.

  • Pohjola Highlands

    Snowbound mountains with rich ore and deadly enemies.

  • Lake Islands

    An archipelago of rare ores and relic sites, explored by boat.

  • Giant Stone Plain

    Ancient stone fields full of ruins and the deepest dig sites.

From the forge · October 2026

Prototype 0.1: Sampo wakes

This is a real session, unedited. One server and one client talk over UDP, and the client plays itself, pressing the same buttons you would. The art is all placeholder shapes. The game loop underneath is real.

37 seconds: a walk past the relic gallery, gathering, then forging Sampo and moving the world into Era II.

What works today

  • An authoritative server for up to 16 players. Clients can only ask; the server decides.
  • Gathering from nodes that shrink as you take from them and grow back later.
  • The first world event: offer resources until Sampo is forged and the era changes for everyone.
  • A day and night cycle, and Sampo's dormant and active states, lit by its own rune shader.
  • Relic data checked against the art files, so the two can't quietly drift apart.

Coming next

  • Collisions, simple building, and a first enemy.
  • Real art for Kalevala Bay and the player, in place of capsules and spheres.
  • Animation, sound and menus.
  • A row of stone pedestals in a grassy field, each holding a small crystal relic, with a relic's name and rarity shown in the corner of the screen.
    The relic gallery
  • A yellow capsule player beside the pedestals, with boulders and birch trees nearby and a pack count in the corner.
    Gathering stone, ore and wood
  • The Sampo stand-in, a stone base with mill disks, a tall shaft and a ring around a glowing crystal, after it has been forged.
    Sampo, forged

Roadmap

Where Kalevala is headed

  1. Now

    V0.1 Prototype

    Movement, gathering, building, a first enemy and small-scale networking in one region.

  2. V0.2 Content expansion

    Faction reputation, small world events such as camp defence and escorts, and a relic market.

  3. V0.3 Sampo era test

    The full forging process, event branches, and Sampo's three visual states.

  4. Release

    More regions and relics, finished art and audio, and support for long-lived servers.

The studio

Why “Gameskrift”

Skrift is the Nordic word for writing. Our games come from old written and sung traditions, and they let players add new chapters of their own.

We build our own tech in Rust on the Bevy engine. The server owns the world, all the game data is plain text that can be checked, and every pull request runs the full game loop before it lands.

Engine
Bevy, in Rust
Platform
PC first
Players
8–16 per world
Servers
Official or player-hosted

Write to us

Press, playtesting, collaboration, or just a favourite rune from the Kalevala.

[email protected]