Recently, the developers of the walking simulator Echo of Prypiat released a Ukrainian teaser trailer for the project, and we were interested to talk to someone from the Chornozem Interactive studio. Mykyta, the environment artist who actually initiated the creation of this game and is now in charge of Echo of Prypiat’s development, answers the questions of the Fringe.

Oleg Danylov: Good afternoon, and let’s start right off the bat. Is the attempt to release a game about Chernobyl in the year of S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2 release an impudence, an attempt to get on the hype train and save on advertising, respect for developers and the subject matter, or something else?

Chornozem Interactive: Good afternoon. First of all, our team of 4 people can’t compete with S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2, so I don’t see any big problem in making a game about Pripyat. The fact that you compare us to Stalker is really flattering. Secondly, I have always dreamed of creating cinematic 3D games in the first or third person. I can’t answer the question of why I decided to make a game about Pripyat directly, because in this case I would have to break the promise of non-disclosure that I gave to another company.

To give a little hint, I made an environment for a test task for one studio, but they were not satisfied with the quality, even though I spent a lot of time and effort on it. So I decided that instead of throwing away what I had done, I could finish it, add an interesting story, and create my dream game.

The reason why we decided to show it now is because anything can happen because of the war, again without specifics, something that may never make a game, even though we have always dreamed of it. So I thought, if not now, then maybe never.

As for the hype train, I’m not going to lie, there were some thoughts that the release of S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2 might help us a little bit in drawing attention to the project. But these thoughts were quite secondary and had very little influence on our decisions. With this game, we could have really diluted the expectations of S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2 players and drawn a little attention to the project. But unfortunately, we don’t have time to do it in time, one of the main reasons is the power outage and the desire to create the highest quality and most interesting game we can. Moreover, Echo of Prypiat focuses on completely different things, not like S.T.A.L.K.E.R.

Oleg Danylov: As I understand it, the choice of the “walking simulator” format is a desire to save on programming and pay more attention to the story. Will there be any gameplay in Echo of Prypiat, figuratively speaking, or just admiring the “beauties” of the Zone and monologues/dialogues?

Chornozem Interactive: Тak, it’s a desire to reduce the amount of programming, because I personally am not very good at programming Blueprints in Unreal Engine yet, although I am learning, and we are also communicating with programmers now. If there is a Blueprints or C++ programmer among the readers of Mezha, and you are interested in our project, please contact us. One way or another, I know that we will make Echo of Prypiat without a programmer, but it might take longer.

Besides that, my personal favorite games are cinematic games with a focus on story, atmosphere, and a lot of cutscenes, such as Detroit: Become Human, Call of Duty (not all), Mass Effect, Alan Wake 2, Dragon Age: Origins, etc. We’d like to take the cinematic and atmosphere of these great games and leave out the gameplay, leaving only what will help emphasize the story and visuals. Of course, as much as we can do it, as a team with no experience of finished games yet.

Oleg Danylov: Have you been to the Zone, how did you collect materials to recreate the world? Why are you attracted to the Exclusion Zone? Will the game somehow reflect the events of the Russian-Ukrainian war that took place in the Chornobyl zone in 2022?

Chornozem Interactive: I have not been there personally, but I have spent many days looking for high-quality photos and videos from different parts of Pripyat, and I am getting to know it better and better. Many thanks to the people who, after the teaser was released, volunteered to help us with additional references and advice about the zone and the city itself. In general, we would like to thank the gaming community, news channels, and individual developers for their support, who help us, give us discounts as a local team, and spread the word about our game as much as they can. We have a very positive community and it helps and motivates us a lot.

No explicit events of the Russian-Ukrainian war will be reflected in Echo of Prypiat, but the story is written in the context of the current war, so of course there will be references in the game.

Oleg Danylov: As I understand it, your team has no experience in game development yet. How many employees does Chornozem Interactive have in total and what is the average age of the team?

Chornozem Interactive: Everyone who has been working on the game for the last two or three months has never worked for a game company, but we are driven by the desire to realize our ideas and create the game of our dreams, as well as the opportunity to make a small contribution to the popularization of our culture, our realities, our geography and history in Ukraine and abroad. We have a young team, the average age is probably 25.

Oleg Danylov: The new screenshots from Echo of Prypiat are very impressive. What tools are used and what system requirements are planned. Do you need a powerful PC?

Chornozem Interactive: Thank you very much. We are trying to squeeze the maximum out of the image that we can in order to create a very good game. We use completely different programs to create Echo of Prypiat. The game engine is Unreal Engine 5. To play on maximum settings, you will need a powerful PC, but we will try to optimize the game so that it can run even on weak computers, so that the largest possible audience can play, if not everyone.

Oleg Danylov: Echo of Prypiat uses Unreal Engine 5. Have you contacted Epic Games and tried to apply for Epic MegaGrants, which helps small promising Ukrainian teams with money?

Chornozem Interactive: Yes, we applied for Epic MegaGrants about a month ago, but we haven’t heard back yet. If they could help us, it would make it much easier and faster to create our game and realize all our plans.

Oleg Danylov: What story of the Zone are you going to tell? Is it horror, drama, comedy? Who is working on the game’s script and how long will this journey to the Zone last?

Chornozem Interactive: We want to focus on realism and down-to-earth, I think there are a lot of games in the gaming industry that don’t use fantasy or a lot of violence, we want to try something new for sure. We want you to try yourself in the role of an ordinary person, without superpowers, without Rambo’s superpowers, and so on.

The scriptwriter of Echo of Prypiat is Bohdan Dykyi, a professional writer for games, who wrote, in my opinion, a very interesting script and dialogues between two characters Miller (a Canadian journalist) and Ivanovych (a Ukrainian guide to Pripyat).

The idea for the game was inspired by a video by the YouTube channel Kreosan where they restored an apartment in Prypiat. To be honest, I’m not sure if these actions are right, and to be honest, I’m even a little bit negative about it, but the video itself was very interesting and allowed me to feel Prypiat from the inside, to imagine how it would feel to live in the completely abandoned city of Prypiat alone. This is the kind of emotion we will try to convey in the game.

Oleg Danylov: The Ukrainian voice acting in the new trailer of the game is really good, as I understand it, we will get full English and Ukrainian voice acting. How many actors will be involved in this?

Chornozem Interactive: I’m glad you liked it. We’re going to have several characters, and among the Ukrainian voice actors we’ll have the incredible, well-known voice of Mykhailo Voychuk and the voice of the GameWiz YouTube channel. It seems to me that with our storyline and this duo of voices, half the work for an interesting game has already been done. Next, we need to think through and work out every nook and cranny of the environment so that you can do something to occupy yourself, listen to the comments and conversations of the characters, come across wild animals, explore the wildlife, and so on.

Oleg Danylov: A compulsory question about AI. Do you use it in your work on the game or do you plan to use it?

Chornozem Interactive: We hardly ever use AI in Echo of Prypiat because Steam asks us to indicate it on the game’s page. I sometimes use ChatGPT to make it easier to find information for the game, and Topaz Gigapixel to improve the resolution of the images. Sometimes I play around with ChatGPT’s image generation, but that’s about it for now.

Oleg Danylov: As I know, you are now planning to launch a Kickstarter, how much money do you want to raise, or is it not really about money?

Chornozem Interactive: In fact, money is very important, because it affects the speed of creation of Echo of Pripyat, as well as the amount of everything we can add to the game, and possibly even the final quality of the project itself.

The most important things we need money for are to pay for English-speaking actors, to do at least minimal paid marketing abroad, and to realize the main difference between our game and others, namely a deep immersive experience from the game, to have a large and reliable gene pool of animals and plants, etc. We know how to realize this. But even if we don’t raise a single penny, we will realize the game anyway, it will just take longer, and it will probably feel a little less professional, but that’s not a fact, because we will try.

Oleg Danylov: Echo of Prypiat has very few followers on Steam so far. How do you plan to promote and advertise the game?

Chornozem Interactive: The number of Wishlist additions is growing, we have about 1000 Wishlists now. I know that Steam starts actively promoting a game if it gets more than 7000 Wishlists, so I think it’s a good start. We still need to reach it. As for followers, I don’t know how important this indicator is, as far as I know, Wishlists are more important.

Oleg Danylov: The word “echo” does not exist in Ukrainian. Echo is just a Greek nymph, the personification of an echo that can be heard in the mountains and forests. Why, then, “Echo of Prypiat”?

Chornozem Interactive: We liked this name because it is concise and hints at the city’s past and its former inhabitants. “Echo” is indeed a very beautiful Ukrainian word. I think it will be difficult to change the name now. Are you sure there is no word for “Echo” in Ukrainian? Moreover, it is very convenient for us when the Ukrainian and English names are similar. Maybe there are doctors of philology among our readers who can give us a precise answer? Because I personally do not yet see a problem in using a Greek word that is also used in English and many other languages.

Oleg Danylov: 2024? Isn’t this too ambitious for a game that wants to be a Ukrainian What Remains of Edith Finch and Firewatch (as Steam defines your game), or are you overestimating your own strength? Especially since, as I understand it, most of the employees are still working on Echo of Pripyat in their free time, and the power outages that will only get worse in the fall are making adjustments to the priority of tasks.

Chornozem Interactive: Firewatch and The Vanishing of Ethan Carter are examples to give you an idea of what the gameplay will be like and what we’re focusing on. Our main goal is to create an interesting game that we ourselves will want to play, and the pace of development is such that we have time to do this in 2024.

When I compared the game to Firewatch, I meant that this game is a conceptual reference point for us. I don’t know if we’ll be able to compete with it, because it’s the first time we’re doing this. Firewatch is at least 4 hours long, and Echo of Pripyat is still planned for 1.5-2.5 hours. If we manage to increase the budget, then we will be able to afford to extend the time and improve the quality of the game. As far as I know, Firewatch was made by experienced people. We are still all beginners, but with a great desire and purpose. So, we can make an interesting game, but whether we can compete with the best games of the genre is only God knows, but we will do our best to make it work.

Oleg Danylov: Thank you for your answers and good luck with the game.