Echoes of the End: How a tiny Icelandic studio made one of the year's hottest indie games

Opening the proverbial bag of cliches and rummaging around at surface level feels like an unjust way to open about Echoes of the End but here it is: from tiny acorns, mighty oaks grow.

Echoes of the End is a third-person action game set in Aema, a fantastical take on Iceland, that focuses on main protagonist Ryn, a warrior whose connection to ancient magic sets her apart in a world that fears what it no longer understands.

Players take on the role of Ryn and engage in combat, solve puzzle and platform while travelling across the world experiencing a story about sacrifice and redemption.

The game split into 10 chapters and is linear with some elements of exploration that broadens the experience. It's been developed by Icelandic indie studio Myrkur Games and the average time the team there took to complete the main game is 14-15 hours.

Echoes of the End is set in Aema, a fantastical take on Iceland / Myrkur Games, Deep Silver

Trailers for the game have received God of War comparisons from some online. That's incredibly high praise for a game that has been made by 40 developers at a studio started by three friends who met at university and wanted to create the games they wanted to play.

Hold on, 40 developers at an indie studio? Delivering a game that seems as though it looks and plays at a much higher standard than one would expect from a studio of that size? And it focuses on celebrating the country where the studio is based?

Haven't we seen that before already this year? Sandfall Interactive (which itself employs 30 people) and Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, I'm looking at you... And what an unbelievable game that turned out to be.

To be clear here, this isn't to put pressure on Echoes of the End; the reason Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 and any similarities have been mentioned here is quite the opposite - it's to contextualise what an amazing place indie games are currently in.

Ryn fights human enemies and mythical beasts in Echoes of the End / Myrkur Games, Deep Silver

Myrkur Games was founded in September 2016 by Halldor Snaer Kristjansson, Fridrik Adalsteinn Fridriksson and Daniel Arnar Sigurdsson - in an attic.

They all met while studying game design development together at Reykjavik University and after graduating, despite having no money instantly available to them, they wanted to create a game they wanted to play themselves while celebrating Iceland.

So they did.

It took them years to get the full backing they needed but the team remained undeterred after laying the foundations and producing a number of different demos - and PLAION eventually came along and liked what they saw.

"It's a tough hill to climb for a new studio and we knew that going in," Kristjansson said to indy100.

"The first few years were spent building the technical fundamentals before we were really even prototyping anything. We didn't have a game, a name or anything at that point except for a core idea.

"Once we got all the pieces aligned and everything was working end to end, that's when we started putting together a 20 / 30 minute demo which we felt great about at the time, but oh man, looking back...

"You can see all the DNA in the demo that's still in the game. We wanted to have combat with depth, puzzles, a lot of platforming, a companion, big enemy variety, big bosses - but we were nine people at one point, new grads, not knowing what we were getting into."

Echoes of the End has been nine years in the making / Myrkur Games, Deep Silver

Dadi Einarsson, performance director and senior cinematographer who joined Myrkur in 2018, was one of those nine at the time.

He said: "It's this sort of plate spinning thing where a chunk of the team is developing the fundamental basic things of the game itself and then every few months, we have to make a demo because we're trying to get this company off the ground."

But PLAION saw the project and concept and liked it, with pre-production for Echoes of the End truly starting in 2021 and a larger team was able to be recruited to work on it.

"When we were prototyping, we were going out with a phone camera and taking pictures of rocks, as photoscanning is not nearly as widespread as it is now through scanning and we were discovering this technology," Kristjansson added.

"But when we started production, we were scanning glaciers for the game."

Echoes of the End also has a number of puzzles and a lot of platforming as well as action-heavy combat / Myrkur Games, Deep Silver

From there, Myrkur Games grew out of an attic and into its own office space, with its workforce eventually more than quadrupling from nine to around 40 to develop Echoes of the End.

And there's one key moment along that journey that stood out for both Kristjansson and Einarsson in particular.

"The most rewarding time for me was the alpha of the game," Kristjansson said. "That was the first time we had this game from A-Z. Even though it wasn't quite ready and rough around the edges, that was where I could see the full thing.

"Working on a new IP and story is challenging, you have all these different perspectives, but it was magical when every single one of the team sat down and played it and it clicked with everyone.

"We wanted to show areas of Iceland that haven't been shown before. The vast majority of the cast is based here in Iceland, the studio is here in Reykjavik. We felt Iceland has this fantasy feel to it, there are beautiful visuals here and it's the perfect setting for the kind of fantasy we wanted to do."

Einarsson added: "I remember when it was confirmed we were making this game, Halldor went up on a table to make a speech, and we had to stop him as he's telling us the good news, as a volcano erupted in the local area.

"And the team went on a hike, up that mountain to have a look at the volcano. So, naturally, we ended up putting a volcano in the game. Why wouldn't you? It's a no brainer at that point, we were looking at lava!

"On development, there were plenty of hardships, having to throw away parts of the game that you developed that you loved, but that moment when the whole team played the alpha and the team was on the same page, that was magical compared to all of that, I agree.

"I'm getting the opportunity to play the whole thing as we've been playtesting and it's been a lot of fun, I can't believe we've created this. I had an emotional moment where there's a cinematic that leads into a fight and I had this visceral emotional reaction that I couldn't believe we were here after all this time, after all the hardships that got us to here, and now it's ready."

Ryn, the main protagonist from Echoes of the End / Myrkur Games, Deep Silver

So after nine years, the acorn has finally grown into the mighty oak. The team wanted to make this game because it's the genre that got these people into the industry at all.

And they've done exactly that.

Echoes of the End releases on 12 August on PS5, Xbox Series X/S and PC.

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