“Patriotic” computer game “Troubles” came out on the Russian platform VK Play. The creators claim that this is a historical adventure action-RPG (role playing game), that is, the player controls the main character. In the case of “The Troubles” this is Yuri Miloslavsky. In the story, at the beginning of the 17th century, the hero joins the militia in Nizhny Novgorod to liberate Moscow from Polish troops.
490 million rubles (a little more than five million dollars) were spent on the development of “Smuta”. The game has been developed since 2020 by the Russian company Cyberia Nova, which received two grants from the Internet Development Institute. He, as Meduza writes, allocates money for so-called patriotic content.
The characters in “The Time of Troubles” say, for example, the following lines: “The state needs a strong king so that no one muddies the waters” or “You better look at the boyar – he does not ride ahead of the army, but does great things.” There was also room for criticism of “European values.” For example, an excerpt from a conversation between the main character and a German, or, as he is called in the game, “with a German”: “And they also say that when no one is looking at you, one turns his back to the other and bends over like a woman…” “Oh, you filth! Now we’ll make you into a woman!”
But sometimes, in the struggle for “strengths” and traditional values, the dialogues of the characters take an unexpected turn: “Really, dying for the Christian faith, will we regret earthly property? No! To support our army, we will give all the gold and silver. And if this is not enough, we will sell the property Let us pawn our wives and children.”
Here’s what social media users say about the game:
- “Trouble” is not worth your time. Not for a minute.”
- “Real garbage for the state budget, carrying out propaganda, great power tasks, with the murder of Poles, xenophobia and all that.”
- “Then a Russian game came out, “Smuta”. I looked at it. It seems okay, the music and voice acting are not bad, the graphics, for me, are generally excellent. However, the optimization is really really lame. In general, the game is like a game. With shortcomings, but certainly no worse than many.”
- “So far, this is some kind of fucking shame. But I didn’t plan to criticize the game, on the contrary, I waited and had hopes. Some kind of hellish mess on all fronts. It’s a shame. I’m upset.”
Even in the comments under the walkthrough of the game on YouTube, which, by the way, has already been watched by more than a million people, they write that “The Troubles” is not a game, but a game-containing product.
One way or another, you can buy “Smoot” on the VK Play service for approximately $20. It is currently only available for PCs, and the developers have previously stated that they have no plans to release a version for consoles.
After the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, many large distributors left the Russian market. Now, for example, residents of Russia cannot directly buy games on the popular gaming platform Steam. And many studios have abandoned Russian localization: including Bethesda, Sega, EA and Ubisoft. Thus, the game “Stalker-2” will be released this year without Russian voice acting.
And “The Troubles” was supposed to be a project that “will set in motion the locomotive of Russian video game development.” Whether it will be the choice is up to the players.
