Chernobylite is a story about a search for lost love, a fight against unknown outliers out of this world and a mysterious organization that wants to use the knowledge gained in Chernobyl for its own interests. However, it is not enough just to move forward blindly firing your gun - everything needs to be carefully planned, and this can take days or even weeks. Thus, a seemingly simple (?) task becomes an attempt to survive in a completely unknown environment.
The basis of the idea for the game was an attempt to find an answer to the question of what would happen if people lived in the zone. Of course, this question came to our minds before we went to Chernobyl. Until then, we had no idea that people actually lived there! These are mainly the elderly, the most often ill, who refused to leave those areas years ago. They live in small villages, in which of all the houses, there is one left that somehow can be used. In part, it was them who inspired us to create Chernobylite.
But we were just as inspired by the stories of people who live in the zone illegally, that is, spend quite a lot of time there for a specific purpose. These are not tourists or a team like ours who came for a day or two days at the most. We think it is safe to call them stalkers. These people have a specific goal of being in this zone. We, too, gave Igor and the other heroes we met along the way a specific reason for being in the forbidden place.
It is interesting to note what ways these people have to survive in the zone for more than 1-2 days. At the basic level of gameplay planning, we were guided by the question "what if someone wanted to survive in the zone". So such a person would have to acquire resources, protect himself from radiation, avoid NAR patrols, etc. Of course, in a real zone, if a stalker is caught, he will be taken out of it, he will pay a fine, and that's it. We wanted to turn up the atmosphere a bit: we changed the policemen who only perform routine activities into an army of mercenaries, for whom killing a stranger in their area is nothing unusual. Especially since that's what they were hired for by a dark secret organization.
But every element in the game at the real level (that is, apart from all supernatural phenomena and creatures) has some sort of embedding in reality. For example, the fact that Igor and his companions are hiding in some bunker. We assumed that anyone who would like to illegally travel to the zone for a longer period and survive there would have to find some shelter. He would also have to take care of the resources necessary to survive, such as food, medicines, protective clothing, a bed, so as not to sleep on the floor and catch a cold, or worse. It was all partly due to real needs, only we tweaked them a bit in the game. We wanted to see what gets players engaged.
If someone had decided to go to the zone for a few or a dozen days ago, sat in a cold and dirty bunker, he would certainly have returned with joy to a warm and comfortable home, but stated that he would come back in some time. However, we wanted the tension resulting from being in the zone to increase day by day, so that we would still have the feeling that there was a task to be done, there would be twists and turns. Hence, all these changes that make our zone generate more adrenaline than it really is.
This is the very idea behind the Chernobylite survival. But what does it look like in practice, and why is the weapon not so important in this? We will tell about it in future reports.
Meanwhile, we continue our little game in which you can win Chernobylite keys for PC and consoles. We remind you of the rules: we ask a question related to the game, and the fastest correct answer wins.
What was the reason for us making the village in Red Forest?
We will announce the winner and the correct answer in the report and in the comments on Monday.
That's it for today!
Take care, Stalkers!
Will you join us? Let us know in the comments or on Discord.
Before we start the report, we would like to share a reminder that Chernobylite was nominated by the Polish section of IGN to fight for the title of "Best Polish Game" of 2021. All nominated titles have a chance to win an audience award in that category. Please vote for Chernobylite! The voting lasts until June 5. Thank you for all your support!
Hello Stalkers!
The world in Chernobylite is not only a cluster of polygons and textures merged together by lines of code. It is also the experience of visiting buildings dominated by vegetation, crumbling walls, and a unique atmosphere that is difficult to imitate. And these cannot be recreated while sitting simply at a desk.
While working on both the Chernobyl VR Project and Chernobylite, we made a lot of trips to Chernobyl to gather the materials we needed. Being there, we felt like we were thrown in the middle of a computer game. Well, our trips in some way defined how the player explores the Zone in the game. But at the same time, we were quite aware that we are dealing with a place that exists in the real world.
From the very beginning - when we were creating the Chernobyl VR Project - we tried to show the Zone as close to reality as possible, not only in terms of its appearance, but above all, how it evokes emotions. It seems to us that Chernobylite stands out from other post-apocalyptic games, because the action of the game takes place in a real place. And it can be seen not in some imaginary concept sketches, but in photos, recordings and venturing through the Zone on our own.
Of course, there were some "tweaks" in how the game represents the world of Chernobyl, here and there. The Zone itself is a very quiet, peaceful and deserted place. We tried to reflect the atmosphere of the place that exists in the real world as accurately as possible, but at the same time to slightly colorize the elements that made it unique, to make the experience more intense. Everything we did in relation to the visualization of the Chernobyl Zone was intended to reflect the emotions we felt when visiting the zone, only more intense.
It was thanks to the trips to the Zone that we were able not only to absorb this atmosphere, but also to recreate it as it is. It was the experience that determined how we worked on the game.
Finally, we have something special for you! With this report, we are starting a contest series, where you can win Chernobylite PC and console keys every week. The rule is simple: we ask a question related to the game, the first correct answer in the comments wins. However, be warned: the questions will not be easy. Only for the hardcore Chernobylite fans.
Ready? So here we go!
What is the name of the locksmith's brother?
The correct answer and the winner will be announced on Monday in the comments section and in this report.
EDIT:
Answer: Athanasius
Congratulations to RenTGen :)
Oh, and for a #Friday leisure time:
No one: People who drank too much at a party:
That's it for today!
Take care, Stalkers!
Will you join us? Let us know in the comments or on Discord.
Before we start the report, we would like to share a reminder that Chernobylite was nominated by the Polish section of IGN to fight for the title of "Best Polish Game" of 2021. All nominated titles have a chance to win an audience award in that category. Please vote for Chernobylite! The voting lasts until June 5. Thank you for all your support!
Hello Stalkers!
In the last post we elaborated on how the Chernobylite world was born and what was the origin of the idea of dividing it into several areas. Today we will explain why we put the open world idea aside and what it has to do with technology. We will also share how dividing the map into smaller parts benefits the player.
You need to understand that in Get Even we had more freedom when it came to creating the world, unlike Chernobylite, where we had to reflect the real world. Additionally, the world presented in Get Even was closed and very linear. This means freedom of arranging the levels according to our will, but also the necessity of dealing with many complex technical aspects, like: how to open these levels, how much physical space should we give to the player, etc. In addition, we had to somehow make moving through endless corridors more attractive by putting some items here and there, adding events. We also needed to figure out how random they should be.
In the case of Chernobylite, we focused on a semi-open world. Why didn't we put the entire Zone into the game right away? Because it is way too big. People associate this place with photos and videos that show the most interesting places in the Zone, and these are only a fraction of the whole area. A big map means big problems. Preparing all this content so that running from one end of the map to the other would be interesting would require a lot of work. We preferred to focus on a few specific and most characteristic places and refine them to such an extent that they would look amazing and be fun to explore.
We have a lot of materials from the Zone itself. For some time we even had a problem sorting them properly, there were so many of them. We had entire walls covered with photos to feel the atmosphere of those places. We also had scans and videos. Thanks to all this, we were able to capture the atmosphere of the Zone, so it almost felt real.
Okay, we've divided the Zone into several characteristic places. But how to encourage the player to explore them? In this case, we've done our best to ensure that the player has several paths to choose from, no matter where they are on the map, and each path leads to something different. From one path the player will see a building they can enter, another one is in an alley, and elsewhere they see a powerful radar in front of them. It encourages the player to progress and explore in search of all the things that we have hidden on the map. We can almost guarantee that every time the player visits, there will be something interesting for them to find. It can be some resources to collect, an event, or perhaps a scary opponent.
This way, the player is rewarded for their decisions and wants to continue exploring the map. Each piece of the level has been designed with the player in mind, so that exploration makes sense.
You already know the reason why we gave up the open world from the design perspective. Now, it's worth clarifying this issue from the technical side. Making games in the open world is expensive and requires a proper approach to gameplay. We wanted our game to be more intimate. Additionally, you have to remember that Chernobylite is a game created by a very small team, even many times smaller than the one that worked on Get Even - the size of 30 people! The downside is that you have to make compromises. A lot.
Making an open world game requires a lot more attention to the optimization and performance of the game as a whole. If we decided to give the players the entire zone, large pieces of it would probably have to be generated longer. We know this because we tried to do it, but in the end the quality did not satisfy us enough to go this way. That is why we preferred to achieve maximum quality rather than forcibly create an open world. In other words: it's better to create something small and have full control over it than to create a huge project that will be buggy or not working at all.
Whether or not we made the right call, in the end will be decided by the players.
That's it for today!
Take care, Stalkers!
Will you join us? Let us know in the comments or on Discord.
Before we get to the main course, we have a special announcement! The editors of the Polish edition of the IGN nominated several Polish games to compete for the title of the "Best Polish Game" of 2021. Needless to say, Chernobylite is one of these games.
Frequently we’re getting a lot of questions from you about the world of Chernobylite itself. For example, why did we decide to divide our game into several smaller areas rather than designing a fully open world. To fully understand our decision, you need to go back to the very beginning. In the next reports, we will be presenting the origins of the idea for dividing the Zone and how we translated this idea into something interesting to the players.
As you probably know, the idea for Chernobylite came from our earlier project - Chernobyl VR Project. We got very interested in Chernobyl, more and more the longer we were traveling there to collect data. We decided that this is a great place and the virtual tour itself is not enough - it was worth making a game there. Furthermore, we had a lot of scanned materials, over time we gained experience with photogrammetry so it would be a shame to waste it all without doing anything else with all this background.
In addition, the very fact of creating a horror game in Chernobyl triggered the imagination of players more than a psychological thriller, the action of which was set in a psychiatric facility (in Get Even, we used a public facility for the mentally ill, founded in 1838 in Owińska and operating until World War II). So we already got the amazing foundation and a location. After that, there was the question how to transfer the Zone to the game.
The scans we did in Chernobyl offer a surprising quality comparable to what can be seen in AAA games with a lot less workload. But it’s not only rainbows and sunshine with photogrammetry, there are some limitations and obstacles with this technology. One of them is the huge amount of memory used - each scanned wall of a building is another texture, the meshes are very complex and many other elements that together weigh a lot. If we decided to include huge locations in the game, they would take up an awful lot of memory space and impact the performance really badly.
In addition, we ourselves - as game developers, but also as players - were a bit tired with the open worlds, where we spend most of our time running around huge maps back and forth, while the actual gameplay takes only a small percentage. All this resulted in the decision to divide our game into specific stages and focus on the essence of the game - on the gameplay that we would refine as much as possible.
But it's not that the idea just suddenly came out of nowhere. It took us a while to think about how to convince the gamers, who are used to open worlds, that what we are doing makes sense. In the end, the solution was brought to us by... reality. When we enter one of the highest floors of the unfinished reactor in the power plant, we can see practically the entire area of Chernobyl and Pripyat. While standing there admiring the beautiful view, we asked ourselves a question: what if the player had such a view every day, and from this perspective they could choose the place they would like to go to? They could also see directly how their actions affect the whole world, without having to run from one end of the map to the other.
This solution also allowed us to circumvent certain technical limitations that usually result from open worlds. But we will tell you about this and the benefits for players of splitting the map in the next section.
That's it for today!
Take care, Stalkers!
Will you join us? Let us know in the comments or on Discord.
In last week’s report we talked about the weather in Chernobylite. You can read about why the game has four weather conditions and how they affect the "decor" of the Zone and the overall atmosphere in the post below:
But as we mentioned, there is another weather phenomenon in the game just as important: the dark Chernobylite Storm.
The Chernobylite Storm occurs when a player remains at a given level long enough. In an instant, the sky darkens, lightning starts striking the ground, creating flames in these places. The Chernobylite storm is not only an unusual atmospheric phenomenon, but above all a warning - here comes the Black Stalker, in all his glory. He moves from place to place, wielding a powerful weapon that can cause considerable damage. He has one goal: to get rid of the player.
Okay, everyone knows that. But no one really knows what the story is behind the Chernobylite storm. Why did it arise, how did its concept change, and how does it relate to the Black Stalker? We will answer all these questions today.
From the design side, we set ourselves two goals: to make the player feel the Black Stalker's breath on his neck all the time and to emphasize that the only place that is truly safe is the base. In general, the idea was for our nemesis to be constantly present in the gameplay and for the player to reasonably manage the phases of the day.
At the very beginning of designing the game, we placed a watch in the upper right corner that counted down the time until the appearance of the Black Stalker. Also, this character was very powerful to make the encounter with him suitably traumatic. Unfortunately, this design choice was very poorly received by the players, because it only gave the feeling of a "time limit", after which the antagonist appears and murders the player. Among the critics, there were a lot of supporters of slow exploration for whom this solution was unacceptable. One thing is worth emphasizing here: it was not a time limit. It was a feature that was not fully understood.
Therefore, we decided to modify it a bit. We weakened the Black Stalker and threw the watch away in favor of something more immersive - that is, a brewing Chernobylite Storm. Its occurrence can be predicted by observing the sky, and even slowed down with a special device built on a map. Everyone liked this solution much more because it was unique and visually attractive. The Black Stalker, on the other hand, could be defeated, escaped, or heavily delayed.
WARNING SPOILERS
But the question is, what does the storm have to do with the Black Stalker? Well, you have to remember that Black Stalker was treated with chernobylite, so he can only move freely between places where its concentration is high - i.e. a power plant and a storm. Such conclusions could be reached by collecting information about the Black Stalker. It is thanks to them that you can understand how the Chernobylite world works.
Chernobylite nominated for Digital Dragons awards
We are extremely proud to announce that our game - Chernobylite has been nominated for four Digital Dragons awards this year:
Best Polish Game
Best Polish Game Design
Best Polish Game Art
Best Polish Game soundtrack
Thank you for the recognition and nominations. The award ceremony will be part of the Digital Dragons conference this Monday, May 16th! Wish us luck and keep your fingers crossed!
Meme contest
We have a contest for you where you can win game keys and an Autumn Dread Pack on PC, PS4 / PS5 or Xbox One / Series. Details can be found on Facebook and Twitter.
Hurry up. We are waiting for your applications by Sunday.
That's it for today!
Take care, Stalkers!
Will you join us? Let us know in the comments or on Discord.
We really enjoy doing two things on our social media: replying to comments from our community (it's about you!) and posting screenshots from Chernobylite. In the latter case one thing needs to be clarified: we don’t just shoot some photo in a random place and call it a day. If that was the case, we would post new photos on social media 15 times a day.
Taking pictures in a game is a very complex process with things like setting the right frame, positioning the camera, lighting, etc. You know, just like in real photography. But doing it in the game gives us the advantage of setting the right mood with the help of the weather.
As you know, there are four types of weather in the game that appear randomly on the maps: sunny, cloudy, rainy and foggy. And someone might consider it extravagant. Surely It was enough to give some sunlight and that's it, so what are all these goodies for? Probably the best answer to this question comes from our level designer, Sebastian Nowak. “We didn't want to stay in one static light, mainly because the Zone itself is also changing. When wandering through the Zone, we feel certain emotions - this place can both delight on a beautiful, sunny day and scare when it is cloudy, dark, and raining. Foggy places make it a complete horror movie."
It's hard to disagree. For example, Kopachi looks fabulous when the rays of the sun break through the branches of the trees.
And Pripyat Central in the fog looks like the Silent Hill. (Fog has also an additional advantage: we’re less visible to enemies).
The weather sequences are of course not just for show, but also serve a certain purpose. The Zone was never supposed just to “look nice”, but also to affect the player's imagination in a specific way. "We wanted to add it to the game, so that we could admire the Zone, graphically absorb how beautiful it looks, but at the same time feel the terror and the history behind it. To do this, we have prepared four weather scenarios: two a little brighter and two somewhat darker. The idea was for them to appear in sequence, eliciting the feeling of anxiety about what the next day would bring."
But it is not everything. In addition to these four basic weather zones, there is another additional one - the chernobylite storm. It is directly related to game story and the nemesis of the main character, Black Stalker. But we will talk about him next time.
That's it for today!
Take care, Stalkers!
Will you join us? Let us know in the comments or on Discord.
We are especially curious to see how your bases with Blue Flames look like now. Also, don't forget to take a closer look at your companions (and opponents) in their new stylish masks.
Also let us know if you managed to find all the photos scattered around the Zone.
Today however, we'd like to take a closer look at the new weapon we've added to your arsenal: the crossbow, also known as the Silent Assassin. The weapon was teased by us many times, also as a part of our April Fool's joke. Today we will tell you what advantages and disadvantages the new toy has.
You don't need as many resources to craft a crossbow as in the case of a Blaster or Railgun, but you’ll still have to reckon with some ‘expense.’ However, at the end of the day, the balance will be positive anyway, because, unlike our BFG, the crossbow is an ideal ranged weapon for those who appreciate stealth elements in games.
First of all, there are a few questions you may ask. The first is: why the crossbow? As you probably know, Chernobylite was not supposed to be an action game, in which there is usually a huge arsenal of rifles, which are played very similarly. We wanted to limit the number of weapons, but make each one of them unique, characteristic and very customizable. Hence the crossbow - it perfectly fits the idea of a slow, strong and silent weapon, which was missing in our game’s arsenal. In addition, it seemed to have a great potential for crazy improvements.
The second question is, why didn't the crossbow appear in the game from the beginning? "You cut it out of the game because you wanted to get some extra cash from us hurr durr," the spiteful reply would be. The truth, however, is quite different. Chernobylite was created thanks to the efforts of a very small team, so every element of it was refined in the smallest detail. This was also the case with weapons. If we were to add more weapons to the game at once, it would be difficult to ensure their quality, as well as other elements of the game. More weapons mean a bigger game, so more things to test and less and less time to do it. And that means one thing - bugs… Maybe the crossbow did come quite late, but we believe it was worth waiting for!
The crossbow is extremely quiet. A bolt fired from it pierces the body of one of the NAR soldiers will not alarm his companions, so you can camp in the bushes at will, waiting for the right occasion.
You just need to remember one thing: not to shoot the enemy, being aware that there is another patrol three steps away from him. They may not hear the gunshot, but they will rather notice a buddy falling face down on the ground with an arrow in his back.
The crossbow has basically one drawback: one shot and you must reload it immediately. Therefore, in the direct clashes with a group of opponents, we rather propose something more... dynamic.
Fortunately, the crossbow is a highly modifiable weapon. Therefore, there is nothing to stop you from transforming it into a tool which even William Tell would not be ashamed of...
...a real war machine, which can make quite a stir with one shot.
There is nothing else for us to do but wish you a good (silent) hunt! Did you try the crossbow yourselves? What do you think of it? Let us know in the comments!
That's it for today!
Take care, Stalkers!
Will you join us? Let us know in the comments or on Discord.
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