The best Online Games You Didn’t Know Were Made in Ukraine

L’Ukraine est le plus grand pays d’Europe. Elle possède la station de métro la plus profonde, l’un des McDonald’s les plus visités et la rue principale la plus courte du monde. L’Ukraine est célèbre pour la beauté de sa nature et de ses villes et, bien sûr, pour ses jeux vidéo. Des jeux ukrainiens qui ont conquis des millions de cœurs et des millions d’heures de jeu, dans des genres les plus populaires tels que les jeux de tir, de stratégie, de survie et même les jeux policiers, mais commençons par le commencement…

 Ukraine is the biggest country in Europe. It has the deepest metro station, one of the most visited McDonald’s and the shortest main street in the world. Ukraine is famous for its beautiful nature and cities, and, of course, for its games. Games that have won millions of hearts and thousands hours of gamers playing. Considering the topic of Ukrainian games, there are a few of the most popular genres such as shooters, strategy, survival and even detective, but first things first.

 

S.T.A.L.K.E.R. is a game that absolutely every player knows about.

S.T.A.L.K.E.R. is a first-person-shooter survival horror video game series developed by GSC Game World. The series is set in an alternate version of the present-day Chernobyl Exclusion Zone in Ukraine, where, according to the series backstory, a mysterious second Chernobyl disaster took place in 2006. As a result, the physical, chemical, and biological processes in the area were altered, spawning numerous nature-defying anomalies, artifacts, and mutants. The player takes the role of a « stalker » – a name given to trespassers and adventurers who have come to explore the exclusion zone and its strange phenomena. The game has an open world and thousands of puzzles that gamers have solved so far.

The developers are members of Ukrainian company GSC Game World. At first they created small projects and sci-fi shooters against robots, but after a trip to Chernobyl itself they became interested in the apocalypse theme and released 3 parts of the game:

  • Shadow of Chernobyl (2007)
  • Clear Sky (2008)
  • Call of Pripyat (2009)

The game’s story is in order, so I recommend going through all the parts one by one.

The S.T.A.L.K.E.R. game series has received positive reviews from popular gaming websites and has been well received by critics. The aggregator site Metacritic, which shows the average rating of a game as a percentage of 100, has calculated scores for games in the series to be in the region of 75-82.

By August 2010, all games in the S.T.A.L.K.E.R. franchise had sold over 4 million copies. As of August 2021, sales of the S.T.A.L.K.E.R. series passed the 15 million-copy mark.

By the way, tens of books have been written based on S.T.A.L.K.E.R.

In 2022, the studio announced the release of S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Heart of Chornobyl in 2023 on the state-of-the-art Unreal Engine 5.

 

Sherlock Holmes video games series©unsplash.com

Sherlock Holmes.

Fans of detective stories, adventures and complex mysteries will appreciate the next masterpiece from the two Ukrainian companies Frogwares and Waterlily Games, which created a series of games about the adventures of Sherlock Holmes and his friend Dr. Watson, based on the books by Arthur Conan Doyle. There are 9 independents parts in total, which means that you can enjoy the last parts of this game with beautiful graphics and various mechanics without worrying about missing anything.

The first part, released in 2002, was one of the first games in the quest genre, which nowadays seems very primitive. On top of that, it had very low system requirements, so absolutely everyone could play the game.

The game continues to evolve to this day. The latest installment, Sherlock Holmes: Chapter One, released in 2021 in the action-adventure genre, has open world and graphics that takes us back to 1875, turning us into a real-life detective.

To tell you the truth, I haven’t played this game as I haven’t heard anything about it. While preparing this project, I found many of videos about this game and really got interested in this game and plan to pass it soon.

The Cossacks: European warriors©freepik.com

The Cossacks game series.

This is a real-time historical strategy game based on the European wars of the 16th and 18th centuries. More than 16 countries are in this game. Each country’s architecture, economy and technological advancements are designed with historical facts and features in mind. Each country has its own military advantages and disadvantages, unique troops and technology to ensure victory over any enemy. England is the most powerful naval power, Austria boasts its cavalry, and the pride of Ukraine are Cossacks.

History buffs and true strategists will love the game.

As for me, I am not a big strategy fan, but after trying this game, I ran home after school to turn back into a commander and continue the full-scale battle.

 

metro©pexels.com

Metro 2033-2034-2035.  

Well, the next series of games takes its cue from the plots of the books.

It began with a literary work by Dmitri Glukhovsky called Metro 2033, about the lives of people who survived a terrible nuclear war and moved permanently from a more uninhabitable surface to the underground tunnels. It was published in 2005.

Then two more of Glukhovsky’s novels came out, continuing the story of the original, Metro 2034 and Metro 2035, as well as many works based on this series from other authors who have turned the Metro universe around. Many of these works can be downloaded online for free.

The Metro project was soon joined by developers from the Ukrainian studio 4A Games, who released on PC (and console) a game based on Glukhovsky’s first novel of the same name, Metro 2033.

Released in 2010, the shooter Metro 2033 initially sold a small number of copies, but has rather become a cult piece.

As we mentioned above, this part was based on the books by Glukhovsky, but the developers managed to create an atmosphere of the end of the world and even added elements of horror.

The protagonist is a guy named Artem, who has never ventured outside his home station VDNH before. However, due to sudden attacks by frightening creatures, nicknamed « blacks » for their unusual appearance, he is forced to travel to the nearby friendly town of Polis to warn of the sudden danger and ask for help.

In May 2013, the next installment in the Metro series, Metro: Last Light, which is a direct sequel to the original, appeared. The game retained the very idea of the first part, but this time 4A Games did not use the motifs of the books, but offered its own version of the events of Metro. Great graphics, design, a lot of characters with a lot of dialogue and the inimitable apocalyptic atmosphere are many times better than in the first part.

Metro Redux is a re-release of the previous two series with numerous improvements, released in 2014 on PC and consoles. The community warmly welcomed the improvements and wanted to play the beloved game again with new graphics, detail, mechanics and artificial intelligence.

The latest installment in the series was released on 15 February 2019. All of the main character’s adventures have been relocated to the surface, unlike in the previous installments (most of the events took place in the underground). For gamers, this came as a big pleasant surprise.

The gameplay of Metro Exodus builds on the fundamentals of the previous installments: a first-person shooter with stealth action elements, with individual episodes occasionally transformed into an atmospheric, survivable horror. Enemies are post-nuclear war survivors of hostile factions, as well as mutated humans and beasts.

The graphics part of the game is still one of the best.

During the journey, the search party will visit dozens of memorable locations, encounter with new allies and enemies, in general, experience an exciting road adventure. By the way, in the course of the game the hero will have to make important decisions, which will affect the fate of his companions and determine the game’s end. According to the tradition of the series, the ending has several options, which can be conditionally divided into a « bad » ending and a « good » ending.

Unlike S.T.A.L.K.E.R., Metro is a « corridor » game where the player gradually walks through the locations according to the story and cannot go back. That is, the game is more like a movie, but this makes it even more interesting, as we can fully immerse ourselves in the gameplay and feel the role of the protagonist during the apocalypse.

I would like to make a conclusion: explore projects from Ukrainian developers and world-famous games that continue to be popular up to this day. Strategy, detective, survival, horror, action: everyone will find his/her favourite game and enjoy his/her time.

 

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                           Ihor Denisenko

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