Gaming

Among the Trolls: Finnish Folklore Survival Adventure Now on Steam

Avantgarden's first-person mystery puts you in the Finnish wilderness as Anna, with crafting, combat, and Kalevala-inspired magic.

Avantgarden’s first-person mystery puts you in the Finnish wilderness as Anna, with crafting, combat, and Kalevala-inspired magic.

Among the Trolls is a first-person narrative-adventure game set deep in the Finnish wilderness, where survival mechanics meet a family mystery drawn from Nordic mythology. You play as Anna, who travels from the U.S. to visit her grandfather at a remote forest cabin, only to find it abandoned and her grandfather gone. The search for him pulls you into a living forest populated by creatures from Finnish folklore and the shamanistic magic of the Kalevala.

Quick answer: Among the Trolls is playable now on PC through Steam, with Avantgarden handling development and 505 Pulse publishing it. It costs $19.99, discounted 15% to $16.99 through October 28.


The premise: Anna’s search for her missing grandfather

The story centers on Anna, an American who returns to Finland to see her grandfather and discovers he has vanished from his isolated cabin. What begins as a family visit turns into a journey through long-lost summer memories and the ancient beliefs tied to the land. The forest is treated as a living, animistic force, and following her grandfather’s footsteps means confronting both the natural world and the supernatural one layered over it.

Prologue & Remains
The prologue opens on a dried-out wooden figure entangled in roots and moss, setting the folkloric tone. Image: Avantgarden / via @GameTrailers

The launch trailer lays out the arc in order, from Anna arriving by boat at night under a full moon to her descent into underground ruins. It ends by confirming the game is available now.


Finnish mythology and the Väki and Lykky systems

The world is built on Finnish folklore and the poetic traditions of the Kalevala, with creatures and beliefs rooted in those myths. Two ancient forces sit at the center of survival and progression, and balancing them is part of staying alive.

  • Väki — the game’s term for magic.
  • Lykky — the game’s term for luck.

The trailer makes the mythic elements clear: huge trolls covered in moss, a woodland figure crowned with flowers, and a raven calling from the trees. To uncover the forest’s deeper secrets, look for clues, traces, and subtle signs in the surroundings.

Creatures of Folklore
A giant moss-covered troll looms by the water, one of the folklore beings drawn from the Kalevala. Image: Avantgarden / via @GameTrailers

Survival, crafting, and building

The wilds offer little mercy: severe weather, dangerous animals, and limited supplies all threaten you. Progress depends on a familiar survival cycle—collecting materials, crafting tools, hunting, and developing your surroundings. In the trailer, Anna takes “Grandpa’s Bow” off an item table, then hunts a deer in a first-person scene.

Hunting & Crafting
Collecting Grandpa's Bow from an item table, the weapon used for first-person hunting. Image: Avantgarden / via @GameTrailers

Cooking happens over an open campfire, with a leather crafting mat showing meat being prepared into a Cooked Steak. Logging feeds construction, and bridges are built piece by piece. Semi-transparent blueprint silhouettes mark where sections go, and each Bridge Body piece costs one log to add. Pieces can also be dismantled, so building is reversible as you adapt to the terrain.

The Wilderness
The living Finnish forest you explore between camps, shores, and ruins. Image: Avantgarden / via @GameTrailers

Dungeons, runic puzzles, and the field journal

The exploration also leads underground, through stone corridors and iron cells to a large, circular chamber. A field journal helps with puzzles: Anna checks a page titled “The First Passage” before touching a runic stone door that glows gold and turns open. Its clues suggest interpreting runes and combining results, since the wards protecting these places require understanding before they open.

Dungeon Descent
Rotating a stone pillar inside a dark dungeon corridor, part of the runic puzzle mechanics. Image: Avantgarden / via @GameTrailers

Inside the dungeons, rotating puzzle pillars appear with their own prompts, such as turning a pillar to the right and activating it. These mechanisms gate progress deeper into the ancient structures.


First-person combat against wooden and shadow creatures

Fighting plays out in first person using the tools you already carry. Combat footage shows archery, axe swings, and a spear used against animated wooden skeletons and glowing shadow beasts. A crawling heart creature also appears among the enemies, alongside wooden zombies encountered in the stone chambers.

Combat Gameplay
First-person axe combat against a wooden creature in an underground chamber. Image: Avantgarden / via @GameTrailers

Price, platform, and languages

The PC version is sold through Steam. Its regular price is $19.99, while an introductory 15% discount lowers the cost to $16.99 through October 28. The soundtrack is a separate $3.99 add-on. Supported features are single-player, Steam Achievements, Steam Cloud, and Family Sharing.

Eleven languages are supported, with full English audio and text subtitles in all of them. Those languages are English, French, Italian, German, Spanish (Spain), Simplified Chinese, Traditional Chinese, Korean, Finnish, Japanese, and Brazilian Portuguese.


System requirements

ComponentMinimumRecommended
OSWindows 10 Home 64-bitWindows 10 Home 64-bit
ProcessorIntel Core i5-10400 / AMD Ryzen 5 1600Intel i7-10700K / AMD Ryzen 7 4800H
Memory16 GB RAM32 GB RAM
GraphicsGTX 1070 / RX 5600XTRTX 2080Ti / RX 7700XT
DirectXVersion 12Version 12
Storage30 GB30 GB

An SSD is preferred for both configurations, and a 64-bit processor and operating system are required.

For players drawn to atmospheric, story-driven exploration with a survival backbone, Among the Trolls offers a self-contained mystery wrapped in Finnish folklore, now playable in full on Steam.