One of the most anticipated survival shooters Road to Vostok received a completely new demo. It’s very similar to the old demo, the developer even calls it “Public Demo 1 Version 3”, with one huge caveat: Road to Vostok now runs on the Godot game engine, not Unity.
The in-development post-apocalyptic shooter takes place in an abandoned border zone between Finland and Russia, where you, as the protagonist, will have to cross the territory from one side to the other. The game concept requires advanced, fast 3D rendering and a powerful physics engine – which means the core game engine is very important.
Developer Antti said in a video update that he decided to switch to a different game engine about three months ago. Now the Road to Vostok project
…completely ported, taking a total of 615 hours of development. You may ask if those 615 hours were worth it, I think they were. During this time, I received a platform that minimizes the risks that worried me, has great potential for the future and, most importantly, is fun to work with.
Antti, solo developer of Road to Vostok, is just one of many developers moving from Unity to the open source Godot game engine. A few months ago, he published a long post about how difficult this decision was and why he chose Godot. The exodus of developers from Unity began this year when Unity attempted to change its pricing structures, causing virtually every game developer to become enraged.
Road to Vostok received a lot of attention after its announcement early last year, with more than 400,000 players participating in its first public test. This is a game about decrepit post-apocalyptic landscapes and the fears of those preparing for the end of the world. It’s not just about whether there are good custom weapons, but also whether the player can physically carry and use ammo and supplies to survive.
You can find Road to Vostok on its website, and new demo on Steam.