In the summer of 2017, I had the good fortune to be invited to take part in a collective brainstorming session at Myrkur Games, a brand-new game studio here in Reykjavík, Iceland. The goal was simple: to help develop the premise for a brand-new video game.

Every person in that room was passionate about video games, about stories and adventures, about characters and small moments that had stuck with us for years. We talked about the games that inspired us, about the kind of game we’d like to make, and in the end, we emerged from that conversation with a simple conviction I hadn’t expected. The belief that we could do it, too.

That belief is what kicked off the journey that would become Echoes of the End, a cinematic third-person action-adventure game set in Aema, a fantasy world of our own creation, inspired by the untamed beauty of our home.

Echoes of the End follows Ryn, a warrior and vestige, one born with an affinity for ancient, destructive magic, as she fights to free her brother from the clutches of a totalitarian empire and prevent a looming invasion. It features high-quality, motion-captured cinematics and gameplay animations, a visceral, fast-paced combat system, tight, reactive platforming and engaging puzzles, as well as a companion that is at your side the whole way through, offering invaluable aid in the face of every obstacle.

It’s a story that spans a wide variety of environments, all inspired by our home country of Iceland, from cavernous depths and glacial mountaintops, to ruined cities and bubbling lava fields. In short, it’s the sort of game that, until recently, a studio like ours could only have dreamed of making.

That meant finding creative ways of punching above our weight. Fortunately, the past decade has been revolutionary in terms of how accessible game development technology has become. Those environments I mentioned earlier? They’re not only inspired by Iceland, they’re largely recreated through photogrammetry, a process we’ve been practicing and iterating on for eight years now.

Take the glacier above. That’s Sólheimajökull, a stunning attraction found in the south of Iceland. It’s a perfect example of the beauty we wanted to capture for Echoes of the End, and so, armed with a single drone, we scanned the whole thing and placed it in our game world. It’s not the only notable landmark we’ve done this with either. Kirkjufell, a mountain that’s become a symbol of Iceland in recent years, can be seen in our announcement trailer, and in playing the game players may find many more. It’s a bit of an easter egg hunt, really!

We use a similar process for our character models. We started with one camera and a rotating stool that we used to spin the actor around and capture them from different angles. Later, that rig grew to nine cameras and a heavily modified cheese platter, and eventually a 360° solution that thankfully requires no spinning at all.

Motion capture, too, has become massively more accessible in recent years. It was once the exclusive domain of AAA studios with massive budgets, but we decided early on that we were going to build our own stage. I remember working with an actor who had done some motion capture back in 2007. At the time, that studio used 200 cameras. Our mocap studio today has sixteen, and has been crucial in enabling us to do what we do.

And that’s not even mentioning the game engine. It’s difficult to overstate how much of a gamechanger Unreal Engine 5 is for a studio like ours; how all of these advancements have allowed us to build a rich, immersive world without compromising on scope or fidelity. It’s what makes it possible for a small, passionate team to bring a big, ambitious game to life.

Echoes of the End is still the game we set out to make in 2017, but it’s grown and evolved alongside us through the years. We’ve poured our love into it for nearly a decade now, and we can’t wait for you to get a chance to experience it for yourself. 

We recently released an announcement trailer, and the full game is available August 12 on Xbox Series X|S. We hope you’ll check it out, and that the next time you find yourself dreaming about that game you’d like to make one day, you’ll carry with you a simple conviction. The belief that you can do it, too.