Island of Winds News

The Gorge (image above)

When designing the look of Island of Winds our team has been highly inspired by the nature of our native country Iceland. Here above we have an image of one of our levels which goes by the name “Gorge”. The Gorge is inspired by the many gorges of Iceland such as Stuðlagil, Múlagil and Fjaðrárgljúfur, of which the image below was taken.
Since we are not only inspired by the landscape of the country but also the culture and folklore of
it´s 17th century we strive to keep the integrity of the land and scenery from that time, while still hanging tight to our games colour palette and design scheme.

Fjaðrárgljúfur (image below)

On Reykjavík Cultural night, we at Parity games, showcased our game and our design process at the National museum of Iceland (Þjóðminjasafnið). The exhibition was a great success, a lot of people came and tried out Island of Winds. We are honored to be in this collaboration. It enables us to get access to 3D scanned artefacts from the museum that we use in our game.

One of these artefacts is the “álfapottur” or the “Elfpot in English. The name originates from a 19th century folklore story that claims this pot originally comes from elves.
The story takes place on a New Years Eve in the Westfjords of Iceland. A local man was standing outside at midnight as he saw people walking by in the distance. Intrigued, he went over to see and was surprised to find a small child following them. As he approached, the child that called for it´s mother, threw something on the ground and disappeared. The man went to pick up what he saw was a pot and realized that he had just seen elves. He decided to keep the pot preciously, it passed down in the family, sometimes being used to cure illness, before ending up in the National museum. And now at last it will be found in a computer game.

We are delighted to announce that we will be at Gamescom! Both us the developers and our game Island of Winds. The game will be playable at the ID@Xbox booth and we will be present there on Thursday. We are so excited to attend and to answer all the questions you have, don't hesitate to send us a message if you want to meet up with us.

Derived from the Viking longhouses the Turfhouse or Torfbær evolved through the ages in Iceland and just in the last century people still lived in them. It is a way of building not known anywhere else in the world and a part of Icelandic cultural heritage. In Island of winds we have houses that are inspired by the Icelandic turfhouses.




The beating heart of the Dreitill village and unofficial headquarters of the Balance Keepers. Island of Wind's grass-roofed houses are undoubtedly a part of the country’s persona and heritage. Through the rough climate and isolation, the turf houses kept people warm.

Properly called the Elder House, although tradition dictates that any sitting Elder gets her name attached to the building for the duration of her rule. To Brynhild, it has always been Hrymja's House. To Hrymja, it still seems like Margrét's House. And so on and so forth, as it has been for a thousand years, going back to Gjóla's original settlement. The Elders come and go, but the core of their magic and teaching remains the same, passed down from leader to leader. With Hrymja and the whole clan gone, however, the future of the House remains uncertain.

There are regular spiders and then there are Húmabryðja’s spiders. Brynhildur never minded the first type. In fact, she has always been rather fond of arachnids and admired their artful skill at spinning intricate patterns. There is magic in a spiderweb. A mesmerizing balance of beauty and death. It is one of life’s great mercies that human beings are too large to be caught by any normal spider. However, that does not apply to the brood of Húmabryðja. Every now and again a Balance Keeper will venture into the Spider Caves to harvest glowshrooms and return with tales of spiders as big as cats and dogs. The general theory is that as Húmabryðja absorbed more of her spiderlike qualities, bits of her humanity were somehow transferred into her spiderkin, making them grow in size and adapt certain anthropomorphic qualities. Each time a Keeper is spooked, Hrymja will go to great lengths to convince them that the spiders are perfectly harmless and probably just curious. That might well be, but they have never come this far out of the caves before and these spiders are certainly not acting harmless.