Hello
It is Oleksandr from Starni Games, and our entire team is extremely excited to share with you the joyous moment in the middle of the third year of brutal war raging in our country. It is the third Independence Day of Ukraine celebrated after the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine, and that in itself is an achievement. We sincerely hope that in one year this occasion will be more peaceful and the war will be over on good terms for Ukraine.
Today, we want to share with you how our team adapted to the ongoing war, as well as unveil some of our plans for the future.
When the war started back in February 2022, we spent the first few months adapting to the new reality:
- Looking for bomb shelters, making reserves of food and water supplies
- Living in the city with the enemy at its doorstep. (One advanced Russian group's APC was eliminated next to my colleagues' house in the middle of the city during the chaotic first few days.)
- One of our team was trapped in Bucha occupied by Russian forces and was hiding with his family in a garage basement for a week before evacuating to safety via road where some civilian cars were shot to bits later on the same day.
- Taking PC from office to home to be able to work. This seemingly simple action looked like a special ops operation - as public transport was unavailable and the whole city in curfew with barricades and checkpoints all across the city.
- Being forced to go to a bomb shelter 10 or more times a day - turning your whole day and night into the walk to and from a shelter (or sleeping on some mats inside).
- Catching some scum that wanted to exploit the situation or just was drunk and not in their right mind (in my house neighbors caught a guy trying to steal a bicycle). There were some photos of wanna-be looters tied to a tree with tape by the locals - to await the arrival of the police who had more urgent matters to attend to with the Russian troops just a few kilometers from the city. The guy we caught was saved from this fate by his mom coming over from nearby houses and “crying murder”. However, the next day we saw a photo of the very same guy tied to a tree, so his adventures did not stop at our place.
- Trying to make sense of the literal flood of information, misinformation, wild rumors, and made-up stories from all around. (That was one of the things that inspired us to be very cautious when working on Ukraine War Stories not to provide any unconfirmed information - and it paid off, as some of the claims we discarded as dubious and unconfirmed (even though they were made by some officials) were later debunked as false claims and there was a scandal. We avoided being mixed up in that and provided accurate accounts.)
- Going to the outskirts of the city 3 km from the Rissian positions to where my colleague lived to pick him up and invite him to live at my apartment for a while - as he lived in literally the outermost house in Kyiv - the closest to the frontline positions.
- Eagerly awaiting good news and sharing every new video or crucial report.
In April 2022 Russian troops were forced to retreat from the Kyiv region, and most people on the team who left the city have returned (around 50% of the team moved from Kyiv, while 50% remained in the city during the first month). Also, we more or less adapted to the situation and returned to remote work.
In June 2022 we returned to office work and moved to a bigger office in July 2022 as the price or rental dropped due to obvious reasons - half of the city left, and we planned to hire a few more people, with our old office already being overcrowded.
In July 2022 the buildings on the way to our office and the subway station we use were hit by Russian missiles, fortunately, none on the team was affected. The subway suffered only mild damage, so was quickly reopened. Overall, from July 2022 to October 2022 we worked more or less normally (the only issue was that public transport would not always work due to air alerts) We produced Ukraine War Stories from May to October 2022.
Later in October 2022, Russia started targeting the power grind much more. It resulted in regular power outages and scheduled power supply. We had to switch to remote work - as there was little sense in sitting in an office without power for 4-5 hours. It was hard due to different parts of the city having different “shifts” of when they had power, so different people would work at different times and to share/update the work we had to have power at the same time as the office (or partially overlap).
In December 2022 we finally managed to install a power generator in the office and returned to office work, switching between the central power and generator.
In May 2022 the power outages stopped and we could work normally without using our generator, until spring 2024, when Russians again started prioritizing power supply infrastructure and destroyed many of Ukraine’s power plants and other facilities.
From spring 2024 to now there have been scheduled power outages, but now we are better prepared - we improved our power infrastructure in the office - so it now switches to batteries seamlessly when the power is out and when batteries are at 50% - the generator starts automatically to recharge them (they are also recharged by normal power supply when it is back up). Also, if anyone works from home there was time to buy some large batteries for households to store some energy for when the power is out. Not enough to cook, but enough to recharge a laptop and some other stuff.
So, now we stopped caring about air alerts (maybe 3-6 months into the war), we heard enough explosions to treat them as “weather” if they are not really close. We adapted our work to be able to do our job efficiently despite power outages internet issues and other problems that might arise. We keep going, and Ukraine keeps going.
Today, the Independence Day of Ukraine feels so much more important than before the war - as now our country truly paid a horrible price for its independence and has truly become independent. (Despite what some say about the foreign help, it does not make Ukraine someone’s puppet - we just want to survive and come out stronger than ever - so that we can live peacefully after the war.)
As many of you have noticed - making games about World War II in the middle of an ongoing war is quite ironic. We also find a lot of similarities between the war in Ukraine and the Winter War or Continuation War we showed in Strategic Mind: Spirit of Liberty. I am even thinking of making a full Spirit of Liberty playthrough with my commentary - something I usually do only for the first few battles to leave the rest to various content creators, but since the game was released a year ago I might give it a go. Please, let me know if you would like to see a Lead Game Designer behind the game to play through it without save/loads and with commentary. Right now you can watch a fresh recording of me playing the very first battle - I played it last weekend:
We are also planning to communicate more actively on the Strategic Mind series games, as it's now back under our control as a publisher. Right now, we are celebrating Independence Day and participating in the Ukrainian Games Festival on Steam, so there are discounts for all games in the series
https://store.steampowered.com/bundle/16499/Strategic_Mind_Complete_Collection/
You could also check out Headquarters: World War II - our latest release (April 2024) mostly developed during and despite the war:
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1840800/Headquarters_World_War_II/
And, of course, visit the Ukrainian Games Festival on Steam to browse over 450 games created by Ukrainian devs and celebrate this wonderful day with us all:
Also, to celebrate this year's Independence Day we released the first Demo of our upcoming project - Robot’s Fate: Alice. You can play it for free, and share your thoughts on it with us:
https://store.steampowered.com/app/3091030/Robots_Fate_Alice/
Please, let me know if you want me to do a full playthrough of Strategic Mind: Spirit of Liberty. Or anything else really, that you want to share with the dev team - I am always happy to hear from you!
Support Ukraine!
With Best Regards from Kyiv
Oleksandr the the Starni Games team