Coincidentally, I was given Chernobylite to review the same week I finished the brilliant Chernobyl mini-series, so I was in the perfect frame of mind for this. Saying that you get about five seconds into the game before it diverges far, far from reality and into a world where the events of 26th April 1986 resulted in far weirder things than just nuclear fallout.
25 May 2022
16 Oct 2021
☢ Chernobylite | Xbox Series X | 7.5/10 | "A mystery wrapped up in a beautiful misery" ☢ @ChernobylGame #GameDev #IndieGames
I’ve always enjoyed titles by developers from Eastern Europe, there’s a way in which they embrace darkness and struggle with a twist of idiosyncratic humour that appeals to me.
From the well-meaning but overreaching Boiling Point: Road to Hell, White Gold: War in Paradise and Precursors to the...well, also well-meaning but over-reaching Hard Truck Apocalypse – which has a gorgeous acoustic guitar-led soundtrack that yearns to be released on vinyl.
The games were janky and tough to run on PCs of the day but they had such flair and character that I always got excited when I picked one up.
Of course, a game from that area of the world that was one of the most influential – and is currently coming back with a sequel – was S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chernobyl, which remains one of the most intense gaming experiences I’ve ever had - alongside Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth - and Chernobylite continues in that vein – a vein that very much scratches an itch that I didn’t even know I had in modern gaming. Good.
15 Aug 2021
☢️ Chernobylite | PC | Gameplay | Ten Minute Taster | "Stalker,Fallout & State Of Decay" ☢️ @ChernobylGame #GameDev #IndieGames