The Consequences of Pollution in the Krasnodar Krai

Source: SSL Volunteers

In December 2024, two tankers carrying petroleum products sank near Anapa. Tons of fuel oil spilled into the water, coating birds, fish, dolphins, and miles of the coastline. Local residents and volunteers immediately rushed to save the shore and its wildlife, and a few days later, people from all over Russia flocked to Anapa. I wanted to go to the coast—if not as a journalist, then at least as a volunteer—but I ended up doing neither.

Hi, I'm Anna Orlova, one of the developers of Sinemorsk, and I didn't go to Anapa.

I tried to make it happen several times, trying to tag along with groups of friends. I wanted to become a remote volunteer, I wrote posts about the catastrophe, gathered materials, and read the updates from my volunteer friends, but I just couldn't manage to break away and join the cleanup myself.

And the whole time, I kept thinking: if not through my physical presence, how else could I help?

What impressed me the most was how quickly a volunteer community formed around the disaster, complete with its own micro-media, inside slang, manifestos, and distinct aesthetics. There were anarchists, communards, systemic activists, and artists in the broadest sense of the word. They spoke about what was happening partly through the language of art: the fuel oil represented death (and not even metaphorically), while shovels, sieves, sorbents, and respirators became symbols of life. Even back then, I thought to myself: this perspective could yield some kind of long-lasting statement that would continue to draw attention even after time has passed.

Attention. Especially attention over time—that became the real problem. Scooping up fuel oil, saving birds, and building a volunteer infrastructure took months, while the media gradually shifted focus to other headlines. There were no longer enough volunteers. There still aren't enough of them today—the sunken tankers in Anapa continue to leak fuel oil, and in nearby Tuapse, oil spilled into the sea following a drone strike. And then there are the annual wildfires, minor local leaks, illegal dumping grounds...

The Consequences of Pollution in the Krasnodar Krai

Source: SSL Volunteers

That is how the idea to make a game about volunteers and a fuel oil disaster was born. We took Anapa, eyewitness accounts of the catastrophe, and the actual structure of volunteer headquarters as a foundation, but moved the plot to a fictional town. That is how Sinemorsk came to be.

I wanted to tell the story through the eyes of someone who became a volunteer by accident. Someone like me, like my friends, and maybe like you, the future players. An accidental bystander who had no plans to get involved. A newcomer who hasn't even had time to figure out the situation or grasp the danger, yet is already running somewhere with a shovel at the ready. A person hit by problems from all sides, with absolutely no clue how to dig themselves out. Or rather, herself. That is how Lena came to be.