When a game designer lacks confidence in their core loop, they desperately pile on mechanics to artificially deepen the experience. "Look at this thick atmosphere, and you can do so many things!" But this only works in the developer's head. In reality, it exposes a weak vision and kills immersion. None of these mechanics serve the core gameplay. Underneath, this is just a walking simulator with hunger, stamina, cold, melee and ranged combat, hiding in lockers, driving, drone piloting, and every possible QTE. Honestly, the developer's favorite console must be the Nintendo Wii if he loves so much that you need wiggle your mouse to do nearly any interaction.

I don't get why game need this mountain of mechanics when the game fundamentally fails to explain what to do through gameplay. It is packed with potential soft locks and painfully blunt text prompts like "You need to check the next corridor." There is a magical thing called intuitive feedback. It wouldn't hurt to read a game design book or play more games. I don't understand how someone plays their own build like this and thinks: "Hell yeah, the mechanics synergize perfectly."

The narrative is equally flawed. Characters don't speak; they dump exposition and pseudo-philosophical musings like a tedious lecture. Yes, the protagonist Ignat is a young boy, but I'm highly doubt the players are his age. Unironically sitting through these dialogues in your 30s feels like watching Dora the Explorer with a straight face. The pacing is a disaster. For 90% of the game, we just chase a signal to find Ignat’s father. We are supposed to care about his family, but we know nothing about them. The only developed character is our "radio uncle".

Then, the final 10% panics and dumps a convoluted soap opera on us. Ignat was crippled by medical malpractice, the dad took revenge, the mom was killed by cops, and the dad's mind is now in a combat drone. And where is it? Conveniently lying in a random shed next to Vernadsky's glasses, the most important tech in the world. Suddenly, the game forces emotional choices. We must choose twice whether to spare a spider robot stalking us because we hit its "child" with a car. Does this robot have a human soul? Why does it have parental grief while others are mindless killers? The logic is ignored. Then comes the ultimate forced tear jerker: rip the battery out of our loyal radio uncle for the father's new drone body. After 10 hours of neglecting character development, the game hastily shovels in artificial drama.

Exploration is frustrating. You find neat post-Soviet easter eggs, but little else. Puzzles are creatively bankrupt, usually involving opening a dark drawer or a safe using a year as a code. Worse is the absence of spatial logic. Why, in a brutal apocalypse, would you write the safe password on the wall right next to it? Or leave a math puzzle note a meter away? It shatters the world's rules. It feels like the designer bought a puzzle asset pack and shoehorned them in so the money wouldn't go to waste.

Every gameplay problem is a contrived situation. Take the boat: it needs a motor. You must assemble it, but this is a potential soft lock. If you spent resources on meta progression instead of saving them, you are screwed. Instead of fixing this with unique quest items, the developer chose the laziest band aid: a text line saying "Hey, maybe don't spend your resources." It is absurd. And naturally, you then backtrack again for a gas canister. The locked door trope is a staple, but it is about how you present it. Here, it is pure, unadulterated busywork and no one will fondly remember backtracking for a gas canister.

The tragedy is that there is a lot to love here. The game is visually stunning with an incredible atmosphere. There are well crafted levels where the developer realizes that less is more. The aesthetic of a snow covered Soviet cyberpunk apocalypse, driving a UAZ to Viktor Tsoi style post punk, is pure magic. But the bad outweighs the good. If I'm ever think about replaying it, my brain will hit the brakes: "Remember that awful level? The soft lock? The clunky inventory and dumb plot?"

A weird game, no shooting, walks slowly, quite a slow game. Lost interest.

Not fun, puzzles lame, gameplay clunky, some parts are the type where you just have to play, die, play, die, and memorize the perfect way to get past it. A player should have a chance to beat any sequence the first time. This game must have been ranked highly by many fake accounts. Story is bland at best, and annoying at worst, at it interrupts gameplay at the worst times. Graphics are from 15 years ago. Just don't buy it.