The best Russian games of recent years - Igromania

“Womgla” is not a hindrance to talent.

If you look through the pages of old Russian magazines about video games, you get the impression that the Russian gaming industry was born in a state of severe crisis. And every year everything only got worse: the word “Womgla” did not appear out of nowhere. But while game journalists lamented the disastrous state of affairs, players from all over the world were enjoying themselves. “Truckers“, King’s Bounty, “Corsairs“,”Space Rangers“,”IL-2 Sturmovik“,”Mora“, “Tetris”, eventually.

Time has passed, what has changed? Yes, budgets Red dead redemption 2 Russian studios still do not shine – but in general they do not shine to anyone. New Minecraft on wide open spaces did not arise, but Minecraft and there may be only one. Otherwise, the picture is the same: people from all over the world are playing Russian games. We decided to recall a dozen games of recent years, over which the mythical “womgla” was not in control.

“Knock-Knock”

Ten years ago the studio Ice-pick lodge received a strange letter with a proposal-demand to make a game based on the attached materials – photos, notes, videos. The mysterious package strongly resembled a “letter of happiness” from the category “Forwarded this message to ten friends, otherwise your mother will die.” However, the creators of “Mora“Decided to try their luck … This is exactly what the official version of the horror survival version of the game sounds like “Knock-Knock“…

The protagonist of the game is a certain philosopher, and he, apparently, does not particularly like to leave his abode. However, at night, his house and the nearby forest become an incredibly dangerous place. Scary monsters, whom the game calls “guests”, are approaching from everywhere: they seep into the house through cracks that look like a human eye, extinguish the lights in the rooms and look for the owner. At first, the hero has a simple task – to stay alive until the morning. But then it gets more complicated when Buka starts to approach and the streak of nervous tension begins to melt before our eyes … In general, the game came out unusual, stylish and very strange – quite in the spirit of Ice-Pick Lodge. Despite the simplicity of the “external” idea of leaving the comfort zone, it gives the widest scope for theories, conjectures, speculation and all kinds of readings. Finally, she’s really scary.

Although if we evaluate it as a real answer to the “letter of happiness”, then something went wrong with it: after the release of “Knock-knock-knock” the next studio game appeared only six years later and turned out to be a financial failure. But that’s a completely different story.

Beholder

Many games, TV shows, films and books tried their best to impress the audience with a simple idea: totalitarianism is bad. But few have succeeded in conveying this message more convincingly than the authors. Beholder (read, by the way, our interview with them). Even though its creators try not to give moral assessments to the hero’s actions and decisions.

The idea is simple. The main character is the caretaker of an apartment building inhabited by living and very different characters: each has its own occupations, characters, goals and problems. And the duty of the protagonist is not so much to monitor the health of the water supply system and the presence of light bulbs in the corridors, but to watch the residents and inform them about any suspicious activity. You won’t have to look for violators for a long time: someone has smuggling in their suitcases, someone is listening to a forbidden radio, and someone seems to be doing nothing, but still suspicious … Shouldn’t he throw something into his desk drawer? Polite people in uniform will quickly come for him and the unsympathetic tenant will disappear somewhere in the dungeons, but the hero will be paid a cash bonus. And money is medicine for the wife and daughter, it’s education for the son, it’s a chance to leave the country and find yourself somewhere in a European paradise, where you don’t have to constantly look around.

And it seems that it is easy not to be a bastard, but in fact, all events and decisions are tied up in such a tight tangle that any stray thread means death. Or the hero, or his family, or someone from the inhabitants of the house.

Punch club

At the time of release Punch club many found it hard to believe that we were dealing with a domestic product. Although, if you look closely, the Russian roots in Punch Club are very noticeable: both from the bear in the name of the developer studio, and from the mass of references to the 1980s and 1990s, which are best understood by the inhabitants of the CIS. In fact, the whole game is one continuous reference to memes, films, songs, popular culture and the realities of those years. Everywhere you look, you will see Terminator, Chuck Norris, Jay and Silent Bob, Batman, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, “Mortal Kombat” and dozens, hundreds, thousands of other Easter eggs – right down to carpets and balalaikas.

The hero of the Punch Club is a talented novice boxer, whose father was killed by an unknown killer, who now needs revenge: in general, everything is like in action movies of the 1980s. To do this, the guy builds a primitive gym in his garage and begins to pump the characteristics with training. And in order to have something to live on, finds a job, at the same time participates in street fights, gradually earns a rating, communicates with friends … In a word, a life full of events quickly begins to resemble a grind with a constant lack of time. But the process, oddly enough, is incredibly addictive: in no case should you stop if you do not want the boxer to lose shape before doing justice.

Sales of Punch Club in the first year brought to the creators – a small St. Petersburg studio Lazy Bear Games (at the time of work on the Punch Club, her staff consisted of only three people) – a million dollars. Even convinced pirates admitted that they could not help but pay for such a game. So the incredible popularity of the street boxer simulator came as a surprise, first of all, to the creators themselves.

Atom RPG

Atom RPG most often compared with the first, classic parts Fallout, fortunately, the setting of the nuclear post-apocalypse is very similar. In addition, the system of characteristics is a close relative of SPECIAL, and the game has the ability to cope with any test with any set of statistics. And, of course, no one is going to lead the player by the handle: the task is issued, you yourself think how and where to carry it out. But you can easily forget about comparisons with the legendary creation of Brian Fargo and company, because Atom RPG is Russian to the core, in all its details and aspects (remember Gulchatay?).

The game has something to scold for. For old-fashioned until completely obsolete graphics, for cumbersome and inconvenient interactions with the inventory, for zero motivation of the hero, for a useless economy, an ocean of water in dialogues and the stupidity of artificial intelligence … But all this is miraculously forgotten, you just have to plunge headlong into a simple plot, start look for a bunch of references to the “post-apocalyptic 1990s” with Yakubovich and Galustyan, or run into a moral dilemma in which someone’s pain and fear breaks through the usual jokes. And in a standalone supplement “Trudograd”Released last year, it all worked out even better.

The great perhaps

There are Russian games, according to which you cannot immediately say that they were made in the vast expanses of the state. TO The great perhaps this certainly does not apply: she immediately gives herself away with giblets. The story of an astronaut with a magic lantern who flew to the destroyed Earth is imbued with a well-known nostalgia for the not so distant times of the USSR. It is no coincidence that the game has such conflicting reviews: it makes a much less impression on those who do not understand why Tsoi is alive, why you should not bend over to the changing world and how wonderful it is that yours is far away.

The devastated post-Soviet world from the creators of the game turned out to be so convincing that they seriously argued on the forums that this mosaic was seen at a nearby metro station, and some even tried to find real places from the game screenshots. To no avail, of course: it’s all invented, but crafted with talent and incredible attention to detail. And even if not everything was perfect the first time, the name of the studio Caligari Games worth remembering. Moreover, she is already working on the next project: the quest Whateverland…

Escape from Tarkov

Hardcore multiplayer shooter Escape from Tarkov has been around for quite some time, but the game is still in beta testing. Yes, its version just a few days ago changed to 0.12.10.2.12528, so 1.0 is still very far away. Nevertheless, the developers and the community act as if the release took place a long time ago. The studio holds serious championships, sells branded T-shirts, baseball caps and early access kits with might and main, and recklessly mows out cheaters. Moreover, he shoots TV series based on game raids. And the players managed to survive the non-playable state of the alpha version, have long been accustomed to regular resetting of progress and their massiveness now and then beat online records. And they even do tattoo in honor of your favorite game.

Where does this fanaticism come from? This is because Escape from Tarkov can be called one of a kind without hesitation. In terms of scope of ambition, scale and quality, even though there is no release date on the horizon. Developers from the St. Petersburg studio Battlestate Games We were not afraid to make the game “not for everyone”, to knock players out of their comfort zone, to make them suffer – and at the same time tirelessly ask for more. The whole gameplay is about forays into the fictional city of Tarkov for weapons, resources and supplies, but the gameplay is replete with details that many other shooters don’t care about at all. A well-developed system for customizing weapons, where each barrel can be disassembled almost to the last screw, detailed setting of all items of equipment, up to the contents of the pockets of the unloading vest. Realistic physics of shooting and movement, a custom market where players directly influence price fluctuations. Locations in which the real landscapes of the Russian hinterland are recognized, and not just their miniature versions.

At a little-known studio Battlestate Games from St. Petersburg it turned out that the eminent creators of the very promising creators did not master Survarium… After all, in what other shooter can you die from the fact that you forgot to insert bullets into the magazine of your gun?

The Life and Suffering of Sir Brante

Small independent studio Sever as if she took the postulate of the “most reading” nation as her credo – her first major work, The Life and Suffering of Sir Branteis almost entirely based on reading. We read the diary of a nobleman, telling about everything that happened to him from early childhood until his death (possibly early and very tragic), and we influence his life path. How did his relationship with his arrogant older brother develop? Did he manage to save the family from the schism that threatened once and for all to quarrel the descendants of the eminent house? Did he help make the revolution or sided with the system? All this, on the one hand, is very realistic, but on the other, some kind of mysticism is going on here. Society is divided into castes, all people, like cats, literally have several lives, and each death brings you closer to understanding something completely extraterrestrial, unthinkable. Those who are interested in “polygon” role-playing games will surely recognize this universe: the concept and setting of The Life and Suffering of Sir Brante was developed by Fedor Slyusarchuk from Krasnoyarsk, one of the authors of the universe “Mascot“.

Loop hero

If we assume that the games owe part of their success to their publishers, then the autobatler Loop hero and its authors, a small studio Four quarters, lucky from the start. She took the team under her wing Devolver digital, which has proved more than once that she has an incredible nose for unusual projects and non-standard solutions.

Loop Hero has enough unusual and non-standard features. The powerful lich literally destroyed the matter of space and time, but the main character, who lost his memory, miraculously survived on an island in the middle of a black abyss. Now he needs to rebuild the lost world: remembering places, creatures, objects and other scraps of the past, he builds new islands in the middle of the abyss, gradually folding into a path. But we have no power over the hero: he moves and fights on his own. We only help him remember, and then we use the fragments that surfaced from oblivion, laying out cards of monsters, treasures, power-ups and locations on the map. At the same time, individual buildings and territories affect the hero both by themselves and in combination with each other, and under certain conditions the world begins to change … In short, fans of experiments will not soon break away from studying possible combinations.

The gameplay came out at the same time difficult, unpredictable and addictive, from the category of “well, one more circle – and sleep.” Therefore, the success of the game looks well deserved: in a week since its release, its circulation exceeded half a million, and the peak online on Steam reached 51 thousand people – not bad for a modest pixel roguelike from an independent studio.

Partisans 1941

In the old days, fans of military strategies spent days and nights playing games of the series “Behind enemy lines“Created on the territory of Ukraine with the participation of the Russian company”1C-SoftKlab“. And now the Moscow studio Alter Games released a project that literally takes us back to the rear of the enemy: “Partisans 1941“. The real-time strategy was released on Steam last fall and has already managed to get the add-on “Back to battle“.

Since the action of the game takes place under the noses of the invaders, and our heroes are partisans, the main emphasis is on quiet subversive operations, infiltration, sabotage, espionage and work with the local population. But this does not mean that fans of decisive measures cannot pick up machine guns and mow down all the Germans on the map: for the sake of this, even cover is provided. And you can devote moments of respite to the arrangement and development of a partisan camp in the depths of the forest, or send your warriors to pick mushrooms or go fishing.

The release of Partizan 1941 was greeted by the players with excellent reviews. Although in terms of tactical depth and variety, the game does not (yet?) Match the best parts of the famous Desperados or CommandosThe fact that fans of WWII games can get distracted from the beaches of Normandy and the indispensable cranberry already puts it in a place of honor in our selection.

***

No matter what they say about “womgla” and a deep protracted crisis, in all respects the Russian gaming industry is experiencing a noticeable rise. Domestic developments already occupy up to 2% of the world market, and this figure only seems small.

We talked about the most important and notable games, but at the same time we left behind, for example, Pathfinder: Kingmaker, to which Chris Avellone had a hand, Breathedge, which did not impress with the gameplay, but pleasantly surprised the authors with a sense of humor, Snowrunnerthat looks decent against the rest of the series, or a recent Demon Skincreated by a single self-taught developer. And on the horizon are already looming King’s bounty ii, Black Book, “Remember …“, Selfloss, and Atomic heart, from which a lot is expected. And we are in favor of fulfilling the highest expectations!

The best Russian games of recent years – Igromania