Hello!

Today, we will leave actual game development aside and focus on world building.

Tales of Kulplex is based in the 14th century and has a strong connection to our own world history, which means that a lot of research needs to be conducted in order to faithfully represent the location in its historical period, while keeping a focus on folklore and cultures.

Of course, one doesn’t always have to be this thorough when researching for a level for their game, many times the game environments are fantastic worlds born from the humble imagination of their designer(s), with a sprinkle of reality and/or other people’s work.
But given the core concepts in Tales of Kulplex, the extra effort feels necessary.

Severnaya Zemlya

Our first region is the Severnaya Zemlya Archipelago (Russia), which is located north of the Siberian region.

[2]

History

The archipelago had multiple chances of getting discovered but each exploration team failed to notice or even reach the landmass. Only some mentions of "icy mountains" (orig. Montes Glaciales[1]) in the north of the Taymyr Peninsula allowed Philip Johan von Strahlenberg, a famous Swedish traveler, to add them to his map in 1730. [2]

[1]

It took the use of icebreakers to actually land on one of its islands in 1913, in a private expedition on behalf of the Russian Hydrographic Service.[3]

For this reason, Severnaya Zemlya is deemed the last major geographical discovery.

This map, dated 1902, shows just empty ocean instead of the archipelago:

[3]

Geography

The archipelago is composed of around 70 islands, with 4 main ones: October Revolution, Bolshevik, Komsomolets, and Pioneer Island (all renamed during the USSR).

Each of these islands are glacierised and Komsomolets Island holds the largest ice cap in Russia, named the Academy of Sciences Glacier. [3][4]

[5]

The archipelago is not just a barren frozen land, in fact some very interesting rock formations are found in the northern part of Komsomolets island:

[2]

Given its longitude, Severnaya Zemlya is a place where the Northern Lights (Aurora Borealis) has a great chance of occurrence throughout its long nights.

[10]

Just for fun, this is the aurora forecast at the time of writing:

[9]

Its geographical location also means that ice and snow are present for most of the year.
Here is a cool timelapse of the change of ice level depending on the month (which also shows a decline in the last decades):

[11]

Extra: (link to another interesting visualization of glaciers decline in the archipelago between 1980-2000s [PDF])

Flora

Bolshevik Island is completely devoid of vegetation, while on other islands only a few perennial plants are found.

Things change in July, the closest to a "summer" the archipelago gets, when different types of plants bloom in the unfrozen soil. The fertilization provided by birds, make the areas closer to permanent bird nests richer in plants. [7]

[7]

The most common plants found are the purple saxifrage (photo below), the arctic poppy and the cerastium, which are also found in many other northern regions.

Fauna

Despite the harsh weather, several animals are found in the archipelago.
The extreme low temperatures allow these animals to move from one island to another undisturbed.
To name a few: snow foxes, polar bears, arctic hares, collared lemmings, walruses and wolves. [8]

[6]

Folklore/Culture

Although this region does not have any sort of specific folklore or culture (even today only a handful of people live temporarily there), some more generic tales about some animals, the cold or the Northern Lights can be found in the folklore of some people living in the neighboring Taymyr Peninsula (such as Nenets and Nganasan)

Here is one I found most interesting:

Two Brothers (aka The Two Frost Brothers)

The story begins with two frost brothers who are seeking to have some fun.
They manage to find two people passing by: a rich man and a peasant, and they promptly decide to freeze them.
The younger one picks the poor man while the older gets the rich man.
After a while they both come back but the younger looks distressed, as he didn’t manage to freeze the peasant: the man managed to fight the cold by working hard and he even beat the young brother with a stick, who was hiding inside his coat.
And for that reason, he gave up.

Full story | Animation (RU)

Architecture

No humans, as far as we know, were living in the archipelago in the 14th Century. No architectural remains have been found, consequently this section has been left empty.

Clothing

Similarly to architecture, this section is not available for this region.

Artstyle

Similarly to architecture, this section is not available for this region.

Conclusion

I wrote this article with two purposes: one is to give some insight on what kind of information I felt were needed to even begin designing a historical level and the other is to present Severnaya Zemlya, the Far North and some of its interesting details to people who, like me, enjoy learning more about our marvelous little planet.

After seemingly derailing off the “gamedev” path, in the next post, I will show how this location research can help in the creation of its virtual representation, aka Level Design!

You can get in touch with us and stay up-to-date on:

- Reddit: https://reddit.com/r/talesofkulplex

- Discord: https://discord.me/talesofkulplex

- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/talesofkulplex

- Twitter: https://twitter.com/talesofkulplex

- Giphy: https://giphy.com/channel/talesofkulplex

And, of course, feel free to leave a comment! :D

Take care!

Nesh

References

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1. Nova Descriptio Geographica Tattariae Magnae tam orientalis - URL

2. Severnaya Zemlya - URL

3. Severnaya Zemlya on Wikipedia - URL

4. Severnaya Zemlya on Britannica - URL

5. SEVERNAYA ZEMLYA (NORTH LAND), RUSSIA on Visible Earth Nasa - URL

6. Northern Earth. Archipelago of Inaccessibility on Youtube - URL

7. Islands Severnaya Zemlya - features, descriptions and interesting facts - URL

8. List of Species on Severnaya Zemlya on Wikipedia - URL

9. Aurora Service (Europe) - URL

10. Expedition ‘Severnaya Zemlya’ - URL

11. Animated history of Arctic sea ice in the satellite era - URL