The game’s backstory writing blends sci-fi with historical information. This is not just Twitter-style dunks, or gleefully dehumanising an aggressor that has branded its victims “Nazis”. It’s an absolute bloody farce: one in-game notification tasks you with hunting down Putin’s teddy bear. Putinist Slayer opens with a Star Wars-esque rolling preamble in which a drug-addled Putin has forged an alliance with evil aliens, obliging the player to travel into astral space to blast his minions, some of whom appear as flying orcs in reference to Ukrainian wartime slang. This laughter is life-affirming and goes hand in hand with our belief in victory it is part of the core that allows us to resist the terror of Russia, and strengthens the power of our spirit.” In the current situation, the only thing we can laugh at is our enemy, at his absurdities and failures. “But the mind needs relaxation, needs positive impulses. “It’s like closing your eyes and thinking about something good when you have a maniac with a knife behind your back,” the developer continues. Created by Bunker 22, an “avant garde” collective from across the country, it’s a viciously comedic piece of counterpropaganda, expressive of the idea that “ordinary humour has become inaccessible” to Ukrainians, in the words of the group’s anonymous lead developer.Ī bloody farce. Even in wartime, amidst all the bloodshed and tragedy, we choose not to lose our humanity.”Īmong the most outlandish Ukrainian games about Russia’s war is Putinist Slayer, a side-scrolling shoot-’em-up featuring the grotesquely freefloating heads of Russian state figures and celebrities, with unearthly cameos from Elon Musk and Boris Johnson. This is the reason I think it’s crucial for Ukrainian artists, including game developers, to continue doing what they do best and making art. “In the eight years since, that dignity is what we in Ukraine have been fighting as hard as we can to preserve. “You have to remember that russia’s invasion of Ukraine began in 2014, days after the Revolution of Dignity,” Prokhorenko goes on. Prokhorenko always writes “russia” in lowercase (and requested that the Guardian do so when quoting him), and many Ukrainian developers are in the process of changing Russian words in their games for Ukrainian equivalents – Chernobyl has become Chornobyl, for example, in GSC Game World’s Stalker 2. So games become yet another battleground, in a way.” “The idea of a free and independent Ukraine is something that russia despises and wants to erase. “I believe that games are storytelling, and storytelling is how you make ideas survive,” Prokhorenko says. But even these “therapeutic” plays are “weaponised” artworks, he says, devised by people who now split their days between their vocations and volunteering or active military service. Ukrainian Farmy casts you as a tractor driver stealing tanks, while Slaputin is about whacking Putin with a sunflower. Some of these games are more “lighthearted”, as Stepan Prokhorenko, one of the organisers of this year’s Ukrainian Games festival on Steam, explains. Other projects include Zero Losses, by horror game studio Marevo Collective, in which you play a Russian soldier destroying the bodies of comrades to prop up the Kremlin’s official casualty figures. Selishcheva is far from the only Ukrainian developer making a game in response to Russia’s struggling assault, which is dragging into its eighth month. They have been treated like objects, so they lose their self-image, lose faith that they are free.” I spoke with a psychologist who helps people with PTSD, and she confirmed that victims of violence, until they heal from trauma, are in a quantum state, between existence and nonexistence. Later I asked her if she was experiencing something similar, and she agreed. “There, inside it, I felt that I was at the same time, there and not there. “I put myself in her place,” Selishcheva says. Some characters flicker different colours, “like lightbulbs that are about to burn out”, as Selishcheva describes them – a depiction of trauma inspired by not just the war, but another woman’s account of harassment. A vivid portrait of life under bombardment … What’s Up in a Kharkiv Bomb Shelter? Photograph: Dahuanna
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