Descripton

I did not expect Bramble: The Mountain King to genuinely unsettle me. I went in thinking dark fairytale platformer — moody, atmospheric, probably a bit like Little Nightmares with a Scandinavian coat of paint. What I got was something considerably more specific and considerably more disturbing. This is not a game that borrows a Nordic aesthetic. It is a game that actually understands Nordic folklore — the real stuff, the versions that were never meant for children — and it is not gentle about it.

Developed by Swedish studio Dimfrost and published by Merge Games, Bramble follows a young boy named Olle who wakes one night to find his sister has sneaked into the forest. He follows. She is taken by a troll. What follows is Olle’s journey deeper into a world of creatures from genuine Scandinavian mythology — trolls, nøkken, pesta, the neck — each more horrifying than the last, each rooted in real folk tradition.

The Story

Olle follows his sister Lillemor into a forest that quickly becomes something out of a nightmare. Each chapter introduces a new creature and a new piece of the world’s dark mythology — and the tone escalates steadily from eerie to genuinely harrowing. There is a section involving Pesta — the personification of plague in Nordic folklore — that I found more disturbing than anything in the Little Nightmares series. I mean that as a compliment.

The story is narrated in a quiet, measured voice that gives the whole thing the feeling of a bedtime story being told very, very wrong. By the end, Bramble has gone to places I genuinely did not anticipate. It earns its darkness completely.

Graphics

Beautiful and horrible in equal measure — which is exactly what Nordic folklore requires. The world shifts between sun-drenched forest clearings populated by cheerful gnomes and stone golems, and oppressive darkness filled with creatures that no amount of visual polish makes less threatening. The creature design in particular is exceptional — each monster feels genuinely researched rather than invented, which gives them an authority that purely fictional creature design rarely achieves.

Gameplay

Light platforming, stealth sections, environmental puzzles, and boss encounters — Bramble mixes its mechanics without going especially deep into any of them. None of it is mechanically groundbreaking, and the game never pretends otherwise. It is clearly prioritising atmosphere and storytelling over challenge, which is the right call. The boss fights are where the game earns its most memorable moments — cinematic, physically threatening encounters that use the creature designs to full effect. Checkpoints are generous enough that frustration stays minimal even when things get difficult.

The one honest criticism is the loading screens between sections, which occasionally break the atmosphere at the worst possible moments. A small thing, but noticeable in a game this invested in immersion.

Atmosphere

The best thing about Bramble, by some distance. The soundtrack is haunting and restrained, and the narration — that quiet, measured voice reading Olle’s story like a fable — gives the whole game a texture that lingers after you finish. The contrast between the game’s lighter, more whimsical moments and its genuinely horrifying ones is handled with real intelligence — you never become desensitised to the darkness because the game keeps giving you breathing room before pulling the rug again.

Where can I play Bramble?

Bramble: The Mountain King is available on PC DRM-free on GOG — also worth checking Fanatical for deals. Also available on PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S, and Nintendo Switch. At around five to six hours it is well-paced and modestly priced.

Similar Games

If you are drawn to cinematic platformers rooted in real mythology and folklore — games that treat their cultural source material seriously — our feature on cinematic platformers built on real cultural tradition covers exactly this corner of the genre. Here are 2 games that do exactly that: