Escape to Moominvalley

This column is a reprint from Unwinnable Monthly #196. If you like what you see, grab the magazine for less than ten dollars, or subscribe and get all future magazines for half price.

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Interfacing in the millennium.

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When trapped inside during the latest nightmare national weather event, watching the aftermath of the murder of Alex Pretti unfold across the horrible little doom-box of my phone, I decided to play Snufkin: Melody of Moominvalley. I’m kinda semi-ironically semi-seriously anti-cozy games but the combination of having literally nowhere to go, anything to do, or anyone to see felt like as much permission as I was ever going to get to “escape,” as the kids call it (or “distract myself,” or “do something with my hands while the world around me got incrementally worse”). Plus – I thought, as I looked out my living room window at the gorgeous snowy landscape, feeling not minorly guilty about sitting safe and warm in my nice house – it was the winter, which they have in Moominvalley. And it would make me think of spring, which we theoretically have in Missouri (theoretically.) A nice balm for the times. An antidote, or a soporific. Whatever. I made my choice, turned on the little app that makes a tree wither and die if you touch your phone, and booted up Snufkin’s Grand Adventure.

What a dipshit idea that was. First of all, if you think watching Snufkin leave Moominvalley for the winter while Moomin begs him not to go and says he’ll miss him is going to cheer you up in an emotionally volatile moment, you have another thing coming. Here is an approximation of my internal monologue as I watched the introductory cutscene of this children’s game:

HE’S GOING TO GO EVEN THOUGH MOOMIN WANTS HIM TO STAY 🙁 MOOMIN IS GOING TO MISS HIM SO MUCH 🙁 BUT HE WILL BE ASLEEP AND WHEN HE WAKES UP SNUFKIN WILL BE BACK 🙁 AND SNUFKIN HAS TO LEAVE BECAUSE THAT’S WHO HE IS AND IF HE STAYED HE WOULD BE UNTRUE TO HIMSELF 🙁 BUT HE ALWAYS COMES BACK BECAUSE HE LOVES MOOMIN AND MOOMINVALLEY 🙁 LOVE LOOKS DIFFERENT FOR EACH OF THEM BUT THEY STILL MEET EACH OTHER ON THE BRIDGE 🙁 THIS IS A DISPROPORTIONATE RESPONSE TO BE HAVING TO A FAIRLY REGULAR PART OF THE MOOMIN CANON 🙁 IS LOVE REAL 🙁 IS LOVE REAL BUT ONLY IN FINLAND 🙁 IS LOVE REAL BUT ONLY IN FINLAND IF YOU’RE A MOOMINTROLL 🙁 ARE WE ALL GOING TO DIE 🙁 WILL SPRING EVER COME 🙁

After which I gently shut my laptop, stared at the wall for a little while, and came back to the game with a better understanding of the absolute wringer I was about to put myself through. So, it started off on a good note.

Snufkin: Melody of Moominvalley had exactly what I was looking for to get my “cozy” fix: extremely high-quality, whimsical design with extremely low gameplay requirements. Snufkin wanders around, plays music for animals and searches for Moomintroll, who has gone missing (cue more anguish.) He also exercises a one-snufkin vendetta against the Park Keeper by demolishing parks like a good little eco-anarchist. He tears up signs (yeah!! smash the system!!!) and mouths off at constables (ACAB!!! GO SNUFKIN!!!!) and I stared at my videogame and tried to figure out how my attempt at relaxing and forgetting about the world for the three hours it takes to complete a playthrough instead lead me to contemplate how much Snufkin, of Moomin fame, would have hated Robert Moses.

It’s funny because I had no business dragging our prejudiced, militarized police forces or the unjust nature of American urban planning into any of this. Snufkin: Melody of Moominvalley is a gentle game. The bumbling Park Keeper and the misunderstood Groke barely count as antagonists. Snufkin wanders through the seasons helping others, interacting sweetly with those he cares about and getting into a bit of good-natured mischief. It felt like a game that should have soothed me, brought me back to my childhood. That was what I was looking for when I started playing it. Instead, I started trying to wrestle cartoon characters into our political moment, for no reason other than I was incapable of removing myself from it. The thing outside my door was too big to be soothed or whistled away. I knew that when I picked up my phone, after I’d saved Moomintroll, helicopters would still be flying above my cousin’s house and Alex Pretti would still be dead.

So, whatever. I failed at the cozy escapism thing. I really loved my time with Snufkin: Melody of Moominvalley, but it’s not like it got me away from the bad things that drove me to it. The world is too much to be distracted from these days, and the existence of peaceful, relaxing Moominvalley behind the pixels of my computer screen mostly reminded me that that peace was contained and fictional.

But I guess this is where aspiration comes in. The perfect gentle world of the Moomins doesn’t exist in real life, but parts of it do. There are lots of people out there that are as determined as Snufkin, or as faithful as Moomintroll. Kid’s media has an advantage, in a way, because it can make our complicated world simple. Snufkin tears up signs because they represent civilization and he is a creature of the wild. Moomintroll is imprisoned for unjust reasons so Snufkin breaks him out. We don’t live in a world like that, but we do, a bit. We do live in a world where people are seeing something bad and doing something good in response. I feel better if I think that games like this are serving less as a distraction and more as a reminder.

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Maddi Chilton is an internet artifact from St. Louis, Missouri. Follow her on Bluesky.