Video game lets you do nothing in particular in a suburban Russian tower block | Hacker News Reader

Video game lets you do nothing in particular in a suburban Russian tower block

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234 pointsthe_decider87 comments

Same genre, sort of:

I love the concept of this game:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/My_Summer_Car

> My Summer Car is set in rural Finland during the summer of 1995, where the 18-year-old player character has the family home to himself while his parents are on holiday in Tenerife. The player has to assemble, restore and upgrade his father's dilapidated Satsuma AMP (modeled after the Datsun 100A) using the car parts scattered inside the garage, as well as by purchasing new parts.

> To earn money for parts, the player can perform various countryside chores for neighbours such as delivering firewood on a tractor-pulled trailer, using a vacuum truck to empty their septic tanks, making kilju (Finnish homebrew sugar wine) and selling it to an alcoholic neighbor, and picking up the aforementioned neighbor from the town pub in the early morning in exchange for a small sum of money.

>After passing the Satsuma at the vehicle inspection office and installing the appropriate aftermarket parts (which can be obtained by mailing an order form to a parts dealer), the player's car is eligible to enter a weekly amateur rallying event for a chance to win a trophy and prize money.

Writing for Rock, Paper, Shotgun, Brendan Caldwell called the game "Funny, detailed and thoroughly confusing"; while writing for Kotaku, Nathan Grayson called the game "Janky and weird as fuck, but fun".

:-)

Having grown up in the Swedish countryside - all of this seems very authentic.

What a wonderful game. Something to contrast today's shooters filled with violence and horror with simple, wholesome game to relax to.

I would say shooters have become less violent and bloody over time, TBH. Gotta keep those games in the Teen rating!

It's kind of weird how Doom 2016 is such a stark contrast to every other AAA game of the time, because if you were to ask the average person who played it, it is probably how their 90's version imagined Doom to be like twenty years in the future.

Funnily enough, I think the newer games are much tamer than the horrific gore and human mutilation that's constantly shown in the originals. I'm kind of glad they didn't go that far, because it was probably tolerable only because of the low-res art.

I think actively moving a character around, aiming a weapon at another (human played) character, and pulling the trigger, then relishing in the victory of killing another is a greater degree of violence than any amount of blood or gore.

So you think paintball is more violent than a movie like Saw, because they involve actively targeting another player? How about a game of tag?

There are some shooters, but they are hard/expensive to make and not that common among indie games.

Don't be fooled, this game has "PERMADEATH FEATURE"

Don't skimp on those jack stands. Purchase only those made in the USSR

Just gotta love the website for it.

http://amistech.com/msc/

Did I just time travel back to the 90s? That site looks like it's straight off Geocities. :) All it needs is an "under construction" GIF somewhere, and it would be perfect.

read to the end of the giant orange "ABOUT THE GAME" box. you will find what you seek underneath the scrolling "<purple rotating skull and crossbones> PERMADEATH FEATURE", er, thing.

And the wallpaper ..actual wallpaper that we prolly all remember from childhood. >_<

Oh my word, that changelog:

-Made house fire smoke higher so player can see it from greater distance

-Weight now also affects how much you can drink alcohol

-Driving fast without Windshield can lead to bumblebee hitting player's face

-Teletext forecasts also local weather, on page 188

-Grandma can now call about food deliveries

This game is Dwarf fortress-levels of "dev thought of everything".

Check out caves of qud for some similar amazing changelogs (and probably one of the best rogue style games ever)

> Driving fast without Windshield can lead to bumblebee hitting player's face

Haha, that's absolutely hilarious!

Cards on the table:

I am making this game because this game needs to be made. This is not made because this is fun game, but because it is NOT!

Having known a couple of Finns, "janky and weird as fuck, but fun," seems like exactly their style.

I lived in a tower block in Moscow for a year. This brings back a melancholy feeling that I'm not really fond of. Eating kolbasa and eggs in my concrete cage while the snowy dark winter taps on my window was very much the experience I had. If the purpose of art is to move something inside the audience, this looks quite successful to me. I think I won't be playing the game though.

What was your favorite and least favorite part about that experience?

I had this experience in a small city in Ukraine in winter; I liked the daytime working in the office, but at night in those concrete (quite decrepit) buildings, I only wanted to go back home. This building in the game looks much better but the feeling when I watch it indeed is the same.

I grew up in a building constructed as part of the series that just barely preceded the infamous Khruschevkas. This game feels quite real. That said, I’ve lived most of my life in a dilapidated building in New York. The models and textures would have been different, but the feeling remains the same. I’ve certainly had enough of cold, dark winters for one lifetime.

I'm originally from Ukraine, Odessa. It indeed brings a lot of memories (mostly from childhood), but I have a slightly different perspective on it. When I moved to New York, ~8 years ago, my budget for rent was around $2,000. I checked 20+ different apartments, worked with a ton of agencies. I couldn't believe my eyes – so many people in NYC (Manhattan specifically, the place I always wanted to live in) live like rats, an order magnitude worse than what you can get in Odessa for $300-400. I ended up getting a decent studio for abysmal $2,700. I moved to Brooklyn since then and live at a much better place now, but a ton of people still live in conditions, IMO, way worse than the ones shown in the game, paying $2000 a month ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Sure they do it by choice. You also have the option to live somewhere else though

> I couldn't believe my eyes – so many people in NYC (Manhattan specifically, the place I always wanted to live in) live like rats, an order magnitude worse than what you can get in Odessa for $300-400.

Odessa is a city of less than a million people while 8 million are crammed into New York. The more apples-to-apples comparison would be Moscow (12 million).

Plenty of people are willing to trade space for location. They want to be in the center of all the action.

And prices are dropping rapidly as the city empties out because of Covid: https://www.cnbc.com/2020/11/12/big-drop-in-manhattan-rental...

Fascinating, when comparing rat-holes New York is the expensive one, Moscow a bit less....it nearly sounds like unlimited communism was not much worse the unlimited capitalism.

Where I live you can get a decent apartment for $600/mo. It may be in a poorer area, relationship issues pop up with your neighbors more often, and homelessness crops up more, the place in of itself is completely acceptable. I've lived in one of these slums too. They're not that bad and in a pinch if you have to, moving there will get the job done.

Assuming they're far enough removed from my lived experience, melancholy/lonely settings have always had a comforting/evocative/alluring effect on me. I think anything that's sufficiently distinct from my present reality can act as escapism, even if it's not an alternate reality that I would actually want, per se. It's a weird sort of feeling.

Melancholy is the happiness of being sad.

I like this quote :)

Original version:

    La mélancolie, c'est le bonheur d'être triste (victor hugo)

Melancholy is what you feel watching the movie Melancholy.

It’s weird, I’ve heard that definition before. But it has never clicked in my mind. I feel melancholy in a different way. I’m lucky though, I had a happy childhood and I have a happy adult life too, I also haven’t lost too many relatives/friends in my lifetime. So when something reminds me of my childhood I’ve never experienced sadness. Is there another word that would fit better my feeling?

Nostalgia, maybe. That's the pang you sometimes get when thinking back on better days, or on days that seem better across a span of years than they did when they were new.

There can be different reasons to be sad for a long gone past:

* You were sad in the past and you're remembering being sad

* You were happy in the past and you're a bit "sad" this time has gone or that you forgot what it was like to be X etc

I believe melancholy is the latter. You're not truly sad because you're also enjoying a nice memory but at the same time you're also a bit sad it's gone (hence the "happiness of being sad")

Looks exactly like some of the suburbs in Finland as well. Gives me the same feelings.

4chan has, for years now, had these threads in /b/ wherein everyone pretends to live in some giant tower block with a vaguely Soviet feel. People complain that the water is out on certain levels, or other segments have malfunctioning food extruders. It's all quite dystopian.

I think this comes from a similar impulse.

The genre term for this type of game, lacking in explicit goals or win-state, is Walking Simulator https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adventure_game#Walking_simulat...

If you’re into this genre checkout this one made by an Indie Argentinian dev https://store.steampowered.com/app/1345370/Promesa/

Another famous one is called Proteus https://store.steampowered.com/app/219680/Proteus/

A recent one that many love is called A Short Hike https://store.steampowered.com/app/1055540/A_Short_Hike/

A Short Hike is a great game and another one of my favorites, but I wouldn't call it a walking simulator since there are challenges. I'd call it a parkour-inspired game.

Possibly qualifying - a game called Everything: https://store.steampowered.com/app/582270/Everything/

Many walking simulators are very linear and railroad you into doing specific things and going to specific places. An example of this is Firewatch.

IMO the defining feature of a walking simulator is that they have no actual mechanics. Many games tell stories through exploration, finding audiologs etc., but they usually have other gameplay mechanics like shooting, puzzles, survival, whatever. Most gamers see gameplay as pretty essential to the medium.

A walking simulator strips all that away and leaves only the most basic possible mechanic: walking around. Most don't even let you interact with the world or with characters. I think this precludes this game from being a 'sandbox' as the article suggests.

Incidentally, I happen to have made one for an event called Gamma 256, which took place 13 years ago today: http://doomlaser.com/trekking-across-the-northeast-for-gamma...

Of course, in 2007 the genre didn't yet have a name.

"You ... see the courtyard covered in snow, illuminated by street lamps and the cold neon glare of store fronts. You turn on the light switch ... a new immersive game made by developer Alexander Ignatov and poet Ilia Mazo ... despite the game having no clear plot or mission."

Sounds more like art than a game to me. (Good news - I like art at least as much as games! - looked at but never actually played 'Myst' )

Art and game are not mutually exclusive.

Myst was definitely also a game. Damn those puzzles were hard.

FYI After USSR was destroyed many factories were selled as a scrap metal (you know - fast money), but it`s had some side effect - many cities were built around and for that factories. So people there slowly dying without any reason to live. Also I know something similar happened in USA when factories were moved to Asia. But this game show some post-soviet specific.

> FYI After USSR was destroyed

that's an odd choice of words; I believe most people would say it dissolved

Well, actually it was a choice of bureaucracy to destroy USSR, without active resistance from other side of government. People voted to keep USSR, but bureaucracy wanted to have private property.

> most people would say it dissolved

Thats what propaganda told us, because you need somehow legitimate your property ;)

I think I'll give it a try right after I'm finished playing with my "My Dinner with Andre" action figures!

Reminds me of Militsioner [1].

[1] https://store.steampowered.com/app/1373530/Militsioner/

I recently played Rainy Season (梅雨の日) that is a similar game where you play a day from the author's childhood that involves exploring the house (Gone Home style, this one looks more advanced). It is short and has some (non-gamebreaking) bugs but is still one of my favorites.

https://inasa.itch.io/rainy-season

It is also currently in the Humble Trove.

Unfortunately it looks like this one (It's Winter) isn't available DRM-free :(.

Think I'll pass on this and wait for the "northeastern USA" map expansion to drop in a month or two. It'll be called "my life right now".

It's a bit more midwestern, but Adios is coming out soon. https://store.steampowered.com/app/1271400/Adios/

Do 'nothing in particular'? What the hell? The trailer of the game shows a man eating a full packet of a meds and getting into a filling bathtub, that's quite a lot of freedom!

This looks great!

Not doing anything in particular was also a lot of fun in GTA games.

Also I am reminded of the Onion's modern warfare simulator video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yuTkgi7scKo

Desert Bus is the same sort of thing from 1995: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penn_%26_Teller's_Smoke_and_Mi...

Now we can supplement the heavy blanket of bleak wintertime isolation provided by COVID19 lockdowns with the heavy blanket of bleak wintertime isolation provided by a soviet-era concrete tower block simulator.

Now if only Dismaland would re-open again...

Has Dismaland ever reopened or was it only a one time event?

I still have nostalgic feelings from my teens and early 20ies in Russia towards these windows lit up in darkness and cold of the winter night. It's a really nice time to be an introvert, chatting away on some IRC channel or playing video games in your brightly lit, warm flat, looking out into darkness and cold and seeing the dozens, or hundreds (or a few if it's really late), of the windows lit up - every one a person or a family. You have a strange sense of connection and an extra cozy, safe feeling.

As someone who has spent his childhood in one of these, I would download a VR version of this in no time. Could be a "fun" way to keep nostalgia in check :)

How hard is it to go from a bunch of photos to a game like this?

Would it be possible to have a multiplayer version of something like this which essentially was a glorified chat room? Does something like this exist already? I never tried Second Life but it seems like a sad, edgy Second Life actually might have more of a chance.

The "modern" Second Life is VRChat, which despite the name supports flatscreens too. There are a bunch of mildly eerie/sad maps available, as well as a bunch other varied stuff.

Reminds me of the movie The Death of Mr. Lazarescu https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Death_of_Mr._Lazarescu

I love how the game catches one often overlooked aspect of living in a panel block: (at least during my childhood) those places were really badly lit - probably to save on electricity.

It has a sequel, with more "action", but the article probably missed the most important part: for some the game evokes memories, and for some – their purified reality. It will be completely alien and boring to outsiders, like this¹ game which is "a bit too real" for Jon from UK.

¹ https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=IMXsIW56sIA 7:54

Everlasting Summer [1] is pretty much in the same vein culturally, but it is a visual novel, not 3D. It'the only game I played in the last years.

The story of its development by 2ch members is also fascinating.

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Everlasting_Summer

The more games I see like this, the more I think we're finally ready to adapt Ubik.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ubik

Things like this make me believe we’re in a super-advanced universe-sized mmorpg created by aliens who reached type III on the kardashev scale and just got bored.

Surely if you reach type III you can also control for boredom?

Routine Feat? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZExWeqHajLg

I've never really gotten into 'walking simulator' type games but I do think they might be better suited to VR than a monitor.

I've found them hit or miss, because they rely so much more on good storytelling (and sometimes visuals). I quite liked Firewatch though. Pretty art-style, great writing and setting.

i thought games were supposed to be an 'escape' from real life lel

They are if you don't live in a Russian tower block. I live where the sun nearly always shines, I enjoy having on a series of YouTube videos of trains driving through the snow while I work and turning the air con up sometimes :-).

These sort of games are not really for the general public. They are made for streamers and content creators to do something funny while their audience watches. It’s a spectator game. Imagination not included. Guaranteed there will be some Let’s Play video called something like “Let’s do nothing in particular inside a Russian tower block.”

I always wanted someone to recreate my childhood game “Funeral” where you lay in a box being dead while people come pay their last respects.

Your pessimism seems unwarranted in this case, per the article, it’s actually one part of a five part art piece:

http://iliamazo.ru/itswinter

> The game has been released as a part of a larger project by poet Ilia Mazo, which also includes a book, a play, a short film, and a musical album (turn on the radio in the game to listen to the music).

Getting the translations of the other four pieces would be fascinating.

What is the object of the game?

To immerse you in an experience.

A game must be more than that.

Why?

Because that is the definition of a game. A toy is not a game.

I got genuinely curious. What's your definition of a game, and how does this piece of software not meet that definition? Could you add something to this software so that it becomes a game for you?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com