We are well aware of the names of the most successful Ukrainian games that managed to sell millions of copies and attract a huge community of fans - the S.T.A.L.K.E.R. series, Metro, Cossacks, and Frogwares' Sherlock Holmes games. But in fact, there are many more good games made in Ukraine, some of them were just unlucky. With the publisher, advertising, release time, the meticulousness of the developers themselves, etc.
Especially when it comes to games created in 1995-2010. Some of these classic and really cool projects suffered due to the immense ambition of their authors with no experience in creating large, complex worlds. Some of them suffered because of cooperation with Russian publishers who didn't particularly care about advertising and publishing Ukrainian games in the West, hiding revenues and contract details, and simply outright "abandoning" developers. Some suffered from poor management, bad game design, lack of testing, etc. Some were simply unlucky. And of course, the lack of accessible, transparent, and popular digital distribution platforms at the time also played a negative role.
We decided to recall such forgotten and underrated projects, especially since the Ukrainian gaming industry has accumulated a lot of them over the 30 years of its existence. Yes, these games are not perfect, and their authors are partly to blame for the fact that they did not become super hits, but still, each of the projects we mentioned had its own charm. The games below are sorted by year of release.
Chasm: The Rift
Year 1997
Developer Action Forms
Publisher Megamedia Corp., GT Interactive, WizardWorks
Platform MS-DOS
Genre shooter
The author of this text has a special relationship with Chasm: The Rift, Action Forms was the first Ukrainian studio we met and talked to in the spring of 1997. Mezha has a separate large article about this project.
At the time of its release in 1997, Chasm: The Rift was losing out to its Western competitors, as Doom II (1994), Alien vs Predator (1994), Marathon (1994), Star Wars: Dark Forces (1995), Duke Nukem 3D (1996), Quake (1996), Blood (1997), Shadow Warrior (1997), and Turok: Dinosaur Hunter (1997). The authors themselves admitted that Chasm was technically lagging behind. But the game still had its own charm, good pacing, some interesting innovations, and humor. Back then, in the late 1990s, the author completed the game at least three times.
In the United States, Chasm: The Rift was published by the small Megamedia Corp. and distributed by the mighty GT Interactive, publisher of DOOM II and the future Atari, Inc. Chasm suffered from a delayed release, including the acquisition of Megamedia and WizardWorks, which became part of GT Interactive in 1996. And Megamedia itself doesn't seem to have believed in the success of some Ukrainian project in such a competitive genre as first-person shooters (3D-action at the time), so it didn't bother much, although the game was advertised even in the paper (there were no other) American gaming media.
After its release, Chasm was praised for its detailed enemy animation, better than Quake's, breakthrough technology for shooting off limbs and destroying light sources, but criticized for the lack of real three-dimensionality (the engine did not support real multi-story levels).
Sales of Chasm: The Rift are unknown, but the game did not become a big hit. In the post-Soviet space, including Ukraine, the game suffered from piracy. Nevertheless, the income from Chasm allowed Action Forms to continue creating games, and the fact that a major Ukrainian game was released in the West gave hope to many Ukrainian developers, showed that we can cooperate directly with Western publishers and gave impetus to the Ukrainian gaming industry. Without Chasm: The Rift, there would have been no S.T.A.L.K.E.R.
As a reminder, the version of Chasm: The Rift for Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4/5, and Xbox One/Series X|S, which was released in 2023 and is available on Steam, was created with the participation of Russians and without the consent of all the authors of the original game.
Boiling Point: Road to Hell
Year 2005
Developer Deep Shadows
Publisher Russobit-M, Atari
Platform Windows
Genre shooter
Boiling Point: Road to Hell is an ambitious game by Sergey Zabaryansky and Roman Luth, who initially worked as a separate semi-independent division of GSC Game World, where they created a rather interesting shooter Codename on their own Vital Engine: Outbreak (2001), after the release of which the developers left the company and founded their own studio Deep Shadows.
Xenus became a victim of its own ambition. To create a huge game with an open world (25×25 km!), different factions, vehicles, and good shooter mechanics in the early 2000s by a relatively small team using an in-house engine was a miracle in itself. Even now, games like this suffer from numerous bugs and glitches (check out the number of S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2 patches), not to mention the times when domestic developers didn't care much about testing. So the buggy and poorly optimized Boiling Point: Road to Hell received a rather cold reception from reviewers and players. Later, the game was patched and those who played version 2.0 gave it a generally positive review, but this did not help sales.
In the "CIS", Xenus was published by Russobit-M, perhaps the worst of the Russian publishers, which was associated with pirates and criminal circles (in fact, this is true for many Russian publishers). Contacts with Atari also seem to have taken place through Russobit-M, so it is unknown how many copies of the game were actually sold and how much money ended up in the pockets of the Russian publisher.
But the money was enough for Deep Shadows to continue working and release the sequel Xenus II: White Gold (2008) and another game Precursors (2009), which will be discussed later. Both with the same Russobit-M, which seems to have been a mistake.
Interestingly, the gameplay mechanics used in Xenus later became the standard for the genre. Almost everything is the same in Far Cry 2 (2008) by Ubisoft and a lot is in S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chernobyl (2007), which came out after Xenus. And Xenus seems to have been the first Ukrainian game whose main character was based on a real person. Saul Meyers' appearance and voice were provided by actor Arnold Vosloo, who played the ancient Egyptian architect and doctor Imhotep in The Mummy (1999) and The Mummy Returns (2001).
In 2023, the re-release of Boiling Point: Road to Hell was released on Steam and GOG. The game's Steam rating is 73/100 (82 reviews), with sales reaching only a few thousand copies. The game's publisher, the American Ziggurat Interactive, acquired the rights to the Western version from Atari, which means that the re-release does not include Russian voice acting and content from the Xenus Gold Edition.
Mezha has an interview with the artist Ilya Gulyayev, who worked on the first Xenus.
Vivisector: Beast Within
Year 2005
Developer Action Forms
Publisher 1С
Platform Windows
Genre shooter
Another good shooter from Action Forms. In general, in the 1990s and 2000s, everything was fine with shooters in Ukraine, our developers knew how to create them.
The idea for Vivisector: Beast Within came about after the development of Duke Nukem: Endangered Species, which was supposed to be a logical continuation of the Carnivores series by Action Forms and in which the same Duke Nukem was supposed to hunt dinosaurs and other dangerous animals. It was a kind of hunting simulator with a twist and Duke Nukem's trademark humor. Unfortunately, the game was shut down, and Action Forms decided to remake the project into a beastmen shooter, partially based on Herbert Wells' novel The Island of Dr. Moreau and the classic film Island of Lost Souls (1932).
The development of Vivisector took a long four years by the standards of the early 2000s, and the game managed to become a bit outdated in the process. Although the game had some interesting features, such as naturalistic fur and the ability to shoot off limbs and body parts of enemies. For the latter, by the way, it was banned in Germany. Vivisector also had very good shooting, huge levels, and a lot of secrets.
Unfortunately, Vivisector: Beast Within received restrained reviews in the West and did not become a super hit. Sales of the game both abroad (published by the little-known German Frogster Interactive through the Russian 1C) and in the post-Soviet space, where they were handled by 1C itself, are unknown.
It is unfortunate that Action Forms had to change its direct contacts with Western publishers to Russian mediation. But the blame lies not only with the Russians, who deliberately promoted narratives about a corrupt and completely pirated Ukraine to the West, presenting themselves as a smart intermediary who knows the specifics of the market better, but also with Western publishers, who found it more convenient to work with a single entry point to the CIS market, both publishing Western games in Russia and Ukraine through 1C and obtaining the rights to publish Ukrainian games in the West for almost nothing.
Currently, Vivisector is not available for sale on digital distribution services. You can play it only if you have a CD-ROM, or rather two CD-ROMs with the game. And of course, if you find a place to read them. The alternative, unfortunately, is pirated resources.
Heroes of Annihilated Empires
Year 2006
Developer GSC Game World
Publisher GSC World Publishing, Koch Media, CDV Software and others
Platform Windows
Genre RPG/RTS
Heroes of Annihilated Empires is the last strategy game of the "old" GSC Game World and the last game by Eugene Grigorievich before he left the company. If in the case of Cossacks II: Napoleonic Wars and Cossacks II: Battle for Europe, he led the development under the supervision of his older brother, so this is 100% Eugene's project.
Heroes of Annihilated Empires is a mix of real-time strategy and action/RPG. It's kind of like our SpellForce, but based on the Cossacks with thousands of units in battle. The game had a good fantasy storyline, which was created by writer Ilya Novak (pseudonym of Andriy Levitsky). But the engine was used from Cossacks, which meant 3D maps plus 2D units, with only heroes and some large units in 3D. While the industry in general and RTS in particular were actively moving to 3D, this, of course, caused criticism from reviewers and players. Besides, the RPG/RTS mix is still a niche genre, and the successful SpellForce did not become a mainstream hit even in Germany, where it originated.
In addition, the game was distributed on 3 CDs or 1 DVD. The first option was inconvenient and made production more expensive, and not everyone had DVD drives, at least in Ukraine. But Heroes of Annihilated Empires was probably the first Ukrainian game to be released on Steam back in 2006, the year of its launch. At that time, the service was not yet mega-popular, so sales there were also low.
GSC World Publishing published the game independently, granting distribution rights to local publishers in various markets, including the post-Soviet space.
Heroes of Annihilated Empires was conceived as a trilogy, and the first part even paid off, but the profit was small, the RTS genre was already losing favor with players, Andrew Shpagin, the developer of the Cossacks engine, left the company, and the RTS department, which had been the most profitable in GSC for many years, ceased to exist. All the attention of GSC Game World was focused on S.T.A.L.K.E.R.
After the strategic department was closed, Yevhen Hryhorovych also left his brother's studio. The rest is known. Eugene returned in 2015 and asked Sergey to sponsor the development of Cossacks 3 and then S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Heart of Chornobyl. It seems that the relative failure of Heroes of Annihilated Empires taught the current head of GSC Game World a lot, including how to manage the development of large complex projects.
Heroes of Annihilated Empires is available now on Steam or GOG. On Steam, the game has an excellent rating of 88/100 (516 reviews), and sales on this platform can be estimated at 25-50 thousand copies.
You Are EMPTY
Year 2006
Developer Mandel ArtPlains, Digital Spray Studios
Publisher 1С
Platform Windows
Genre shooter
You Are EMPTY is a project with a Soviet aesthetic, but unlike modern Russian games, it does not glorify the Scoop, but rather tries to show all its vile essence, hypocrisy, and cruelty.
You Are EMPTY is a joint project of Kyiv-based Digital Spray Studios, which developed the game's DS1/DS2-Engine, and Mandel ArtPlains, which was responsible for art, design, and gameplay. The project was led by Denys Volchenko, who had already worked at Boston Animation, GSC Game World, and Deep Shadows. The art for the game was created by S.T.A.L.K.E.R. concept artist Viktor "Lukash" Marchevsky, and the script was written by one of the authors of WPC / Gameplay / Mezha Yaroslav Syngaievskyi.
You Are EMPTY turned out to be very gloomy, atmospheric, and repulsive in a good way. But a bunch of critical errors, which led to problems with the game's launch and resulted in extremely negative reviews in the West, literally buried the game (Metacritic - 34/100). In fact, You Are Empty was simply under-tested and rushed to release, most likely due to problems with cooperation between the two Ukrainian studios and pressure from 1C.
Western reviewers didn't understand the game's name, the slow gameplay, a bunch of references that Ukrainians don't understand, etc. They criticized the outdated graphics with simple lighting and the need to constantly look for keys. But not all of them, some even praised You Are EMPTY despite the bugs. Domestic players forgave the game for its mistakes and appreciated the atmosphere, the plot, and a bunch of locations based on real Kyiv streets and buildings.
You Are EMPTY failed to sell in the West, and unfortunately, the circulation in the CIS is unknown. Of course, there was also piracy. But... the game suddenly became an iconic game, partly even in the West. Video walkthroughs appear even now, collecting a lot of views and positive comments.
In 2015, Denis Volchenko expressed his desire to create a sequel to You Are EMPTY - Remind of EMPTY on the Unity engine, and even showed some screenshots from the game, but unfortunately, Denis is a very impulsive person who seems to have worked in almost all Ukrainian game studios, changing his job almost every year. So, very atmospheric screenshots of 2016 are all we have from Remind of EMPTY so far.
XIII Century / XIII століття
Year 2007
Developer Unicorn Games Studios
Publisher 1С
Platform Windows
Genre tactical strategy
Initially, the small Kyiv-based studio Unicorn Games set out to do a lot. Economics, politics, a global map, but after drawing up an estimate and a sober assessment of their own forces, they threw out everything but tactical battles from the future XIII Century. But still, reviewers and gamers compared the game to Medieval: Total War, which it certainly wasn't.
Plus, like many Ukrainian projects at the time, XIII Century suffered from a lack of testing time, bugs, poor optimization, and "management" by the publisher, which was, of course, Russian 1C.
But in fact, "XIII Century" had potential. As the author of "Mount & Blade: By Fire and Sword" Maxim Gorban, who worked at Unicorn Games, "there was a great team, technology, design. But bugs, marketing mistakes, the release of Medieval II: Total War (2006), which set new standards for the genre, and the financial economic crisis that occurred immediately after the game's release buried XIII Century's chances.
In 2008, the expansion XIII Century: Blood of Europe, but it didn't help the game. Then there were almost sequels Real Warfare: 1242 (2009) and Real Warfare II: Northern Crusades (2011), which did not seem to be part of the series but had similar gameplay.
By the way, the last Unicorn Games game, Eador: Masters of the Broken World (2013), which was created in collaboration with the Russian Snowbird Game Studios, was developed by Yevhen Grygorovych, the current director of GSC Game World and head of S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2 development.
XIII Century - Gold Edition, which includes the main game and the Blood of Europe expansion pack, is available on Steam and GOG, and costs a penny, but note that the game's publisher is Fulqrum Publishing, i.e. the same 1C. The Gold Edition has a Steam rating of 55/100 (109 reviews) and sales on Steam can be estimated at 5-10 thousand copies.
Collapse
Year 2008
Developer Creoteam
Publisher Buka
Platform Windows
Genre shooter/slasher
Collapse by Creoteam is an interesting combination of a third-person shooter and a slasher set in Kyiv in 2096. In the story, the capital, as well as most of Ukraine, turned into an anomalous Zone after a mysterious catastrophe in 2013 that took place in the center of Kyiv (the game was created in 2006-2008). Kyivans will recognize many famous locations, such as Independence Square, the Kyiv Pechersk Lavra, the Central Railway Station, and a bunch of typical Kyiv streets and courtyards, which are shown after 80 years of decay.
In some territories, Collapse was sold for some reason under the title After the War with the American and Chinese flags on the cover.
The driving force behind the development of Collapse was the game's art director and designer Roman Guro, who created the look of the characters and locations. Later, Roman worked on Prime World: Defenders (2013) at Nival Kyiv, and then went on to teach digital painting.
Like most Ukrainian games of that time, Collapse captivated with its atmosphere, art, soundtrack, locations, and interesting combination of gameplay, but it scared off with bugs, balance problems, and game design mistakes. Interestingly, domestic critics, who were not used to slashers, criticized the game for its complex combat system, while Western critics, who were raised on console slashers, considered the combat system too simple and rehearsed.
Subsequently, most of the bugs and problems in the balance were removed by patch 1.1, but the game did not become a hit. The studio continued to work and released in 2010 a supplement/sequel to Collapse: The Rage. By the way, Creoteam still works as a small indie studio, developing the Football, Tactics & Glory project.
The original Collapse is available on Steam. It has an overall good rating of 71/100 based on 668 reviews. But note that the game's publisher ESDigital Games is the same renamed Russian Buka. Sales of Collapse on Steam can be estimated at 35-65 thousand.
Cryostasis: Sleep of Reason
Year 2008
Developer Action Forms
Publisher 1С
Platform Windows
Genre shooter / horror
Cryostasis: Sleep of Reason is probably one of the most underrated Ukrainian games and the third game from Action Forms on our list. On the other hand, in the West, there is even a cult around this project.
Cryostasis is a narrative horror-shooter with survival elements, the author's project by Yaroslav Kravchenko, who led the development and was responsible for the script. It is a complex, multi-layered narrative partially based on Maxim Gorky's short story "Old Woman Isergil" (The Legend of Danko). The game takes place in 1981 on board the icebreaker "North Wind" frozen in the Arctic Ocean.
There are three layers of narrative in Cryostasis that overlap with each other, and some of the game's scenes are actually repulsive and frightening, such as the scene in which the hero feels like a cow being led to slaughter. Anabiosis also has deliberately complicated shooting and survival elements, where you have to constantly look for heat sources. Interestingly, one of the levels of the new Indiana Jones and the Great Circle seems to be inspired by Cryostasis.
For its time, the game's AtmosFear 2.0 engine showed a pretty good picture and had some interesting features, such as cold tracking, freezing water, and very cool ice and frost. Cryostasis, like many games on this list, suffered from bugs and poor optimization, but worse, many Western critics did not understand the idea of the game and its meaning. In addition, players complained about the awkward shooting, which was made so intentionally, because in fact it is not a shooter, but a narrative horror with shooter elements.
The game, which took a lot of time to develop, was not very impressive, so Cryostasis became the last major game from Action Forms to switch to mobile development and re-release its old projects on mobile platforms.
As for Yaroslav Kravchenko, in 2018 he joined GSC Game World and in the credits of S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Heart of Chornobyl his name is the fourth, he holds the position of Story Director and is responsible for the entire plot of the game.
At one time, Cryostasis was released on Steam, and I have this game in my library, and it still works well. There is even an unofficial Ukrainian translation that replaces the Russian one. But it's no longer possible to buy the game; in 2023, it was removed from the service's catalog, although new beta downloads closed to the public appeared a little later. Perhaps we are waiting for another Russian re-release, as was the case with Chasm: The Rift, as the rights to the game seem to have remained with 1C / Fulqrum Publishing.
Precursors
Year 2009
Developer Deep Shadows
Publisher Russobit-M, Game Factory Interactive
Platform Windows
Genre shooter / role-playing game
Deep Shadows' Precursors has often been called Xenus in space, and it's true. If Xenus once became the prototype for all Far Cry games starting with Far Cry 2 and for all shooters with RPG elements and an open world in general, then Precursors is the Ukrainian Starfield, which was released 14 years earlier than Bethesda's game.
It's a shooter with role-playing elements in an open fantasy world where you can fly spaceships and local transportation, work with different factions, including aliens, and so on. Yes, there are only six planets, not hundreds like in Starfield, but the size of teams, budgets, and technologies are incomparable.
Deep Shadows once again attempted something that was beyond their capabilities, so the game not only suffered from numerous bugs and poor optimization, but also ended up unfinished. "The Forerunners" breaks off literally in mid-sentence, as if the second half of the game was simply cut off and rushed to release what was available. This is due to pressure from Russian publishers, who were suffering from the effects of the global financial crisis and were severely cutting budgets. This seems to be exactly what happened with The Forerunners. The game was even officially supported for a very short time, so it was the community that dealt with the bugs and prepared unofficial patches. The release of Precursors on Xbox 360 was canceled altogether.
The fact that the game was not released on the most popular online platforms, such as GamersGate and Beamdog, also did not help the game. Precursors appeared on Steam only in 2017 and sold poorly. The game's Steam rating is 69/100 with only 58 reviews, which means sales of 2-5 thousand copies. I have the game, but I couldn't run it on Windows 11, it hung the whole system. And yes, the game's publisher is still the same Russian GFI.
Despite all this, some players call Precursors one of the most underrated games in history and are ready to forgive it for all its flaws. Precursors had the potential to become a S.T.A.L.K.E.R. game, but hasty development, lack of experience in managing such a large project, lack of finance, and "help" from the Russians led to a fiasco.
Deep Shadows never recovered from the disastrous release of Forerunners and has since released only casual games, mostly in the Hidden Objects genre. The last one was released on iOS back in 2021.
Cradle
Year 2015
Developer Flying Cafe for Semianimals
Publisher Flying Cafe for Semianimals
Platform Windows
Genre adventure
Although Ilya Tolmachev, Creative Director and Head of Development at Cradle, doesn't think that Cradle has been deprived of attention and love from players, we think this melancholic, very kind and cozy advent game with lots of small details, gorgeous music and a hand-drawn world deserves more. Because this is really one of the small game masterpieces.
The work on Cradle began in 2011, when a few months before the development of S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2 was stopped, Ilya Tolmachev left GSC Game World, where he was an art director for the projects S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Clear Sky (2008) and S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Call of Pripyat (2009).
The main problem with Cradle is its protracted development, which lasted almost 4 years. According to Ilya, this is due to the lack of plot at the beginning of the game, the story was added on the fly and it caused a bit of chaos. Initially, there were plans to release the game on consoles, but the Russian developers of the Unigine engine used in the game refused to go multiplatform.
Ilya Tolmachev describes Cradle as "a strange, beautiful dream filled with the anticipation of a deep, long-standing secret being revealed." Unfortunately, not all observers and players understood this dream. They didn't read and find all the information, which is actually a lot and is not imposed on the player, so the ending seemed incomprehensible to some. And some people didn't like the "dice game," which seemed unnecessary in the adventure.
But many gaming experts consider Cradle to be one of the most beautiful and enjoyable games created in Ukraine. Cradle was released immediately on Steam and immediately with Ukrainian localization. Its Steam rating is 69/100 based on 1784 reviews. The circulation was 57 thousand in 2020, and now it has probably reached 60-65 thousand.
Even now, 9 years after its release, Cradle looks and plays great. The only thing is that the font is too small for modern screens, and there are no accessibility settings in the game.
Back in 2020, Ilya Tolmachev said that the Flying Cafe for Semianimals studio was not closed, but frozen, and there was hope for revival. Now he is not so sure.
Ilya himself managed to work as a concept artist at 4A Games, where he created weapons for Metro Exodus and for the Sam's Story DLC. It's interesting that Tolmachev's name is even in S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Heart of Chornobyl, but he didn't work on the game, just some of his old compositions from the early 2000s are played on the radio in S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2.
The Sinking City
Year 2019
Developer Frogwares
Publisher Frogwares, Nacon (Bigben Interactive)
Platform Windows, PlayStation 4/5, Xbox One / Xbox Series X|S, Nintendo Switch
Genre action/adventure
The sales of The Sinking City, which have reached 300 thousand copies on Steam alone, do not allow us to say that this action/adventure is underrated, but in our opinion, it could attract much more players.
One of the problems of The Sinking City was a conflict with the publisher, French Nacon (formerly BigBen Interactive), which did not fulfill its contractual obligations, did not pay the money owed, and also published the game almost as its own, violating Frogwares' intellectual property rights. The Ukrainian company filed a lawsuit against the publisher and, pending the decision, the electronic version of The Sinking City was removed from sale on Steam, Epic Games Store, Xbox One, and PlayStation 4 in 2020. Of course, this affected sales.
And then Nacon unexpectedly re-released the game on Steam in February 2021. Frogwares accused the publisher of using a cracked version that did not match the game they had developed and urged players not to buy the fake. Players started a review-bombing of The Sinking City. Frogwares complained about intellectual property infringement and the game was removed from sale again.
It was only in early 2024 that Frogwares regained all rights to The Sinking City and re-released the updated game on Steam. Of course, all this chaos affected the game's sales, which could have been much higher, given the interesting setting and dense atmosphere of the project.
In March 2024, Frogwares announced a sequel, The Sinking City 2, which is supposed to be a survival horror game. The studio is currently preparing for a Kickstarter campaign. Some publications believe that The Sinking City 2 could be released as early as 2025, but we think that 2026 is more realistic.
By the way, right now The Sinking City is available at an 80% discount.
Good Ukrainian games of recent years that were unlucky to find a player
Erra: Exordium (2023)
The Moon Hell (2023)
Train World (2023)
Puzzles For Clef (2024)
Shapik: The Quest (2024)
Ukrainian games that we wish to become even more popular
Finally, we would like to mention Ukrainian games that are successful in their own segments and whose sales seem to be doing well, in some cases not even tens but hundreds of thousands of copies. But, in our opinion, these projects deserve better, and it would be great if as many Western and domestic players as possible tried them. Add your own options in the comments.
Ukrainian games that were lucky, but would like to do better
Football, Tactics & Glory (2018)
Ostriv (2018)
Cliff Empire (2019)
Titan Chaser (2021)
Bosorka (2023)
Farlanders (2023)
STONKS-9800: Stock Market Simulator (2023)
Menace from the Deep (2024)