Soviet City

Canceled

Release Date: cancelled

Strategy, Economic, Cold War, Polish, Indie Games, City Builder, Singleplayer

Controversial city builder game, showing the absurd and cruelty of communism in Russia. The game was developed by Polish studio Chicken in the Corn, the developers of a dark adventure game 1heart. In Soviet City, we assume the role of a Soviet mayor, whose task is to develop the town, and sustain the strong-arm regime. This task requires not only the construction of buildings and necessary infrastructure.

5.9

Steam

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Plot
Mechanics
Game modes
Technical aspects

Soviet City, released on PC, is an unusual representative of the popular genre of city builders, concentrating on absurd and cruelty of Russian communism. A polish developer studio, Chicken in The Corn, established by Pawel Slabiak, is responsible for the creation of the game. The studio was known earlier from a dark adventure game 1heart. Still being in the early access stage, the production has stirred a lot of controversy – especially among Russian users of Steam platform, who accused the game of falsification of the image and the history of the Soviet Union, and demanded the game’s withdrawal from the sales.

Plot

In Soviet City we assume the role of a mayor of certain Soviet city, and our task is to build another communist powerhouse, applying the pressure of the terror apparatus when needed. Practically, this means not only a carefree town development, while meeting the needs of a local population. Terror is an also important aspect of the gameplay, which, on the one hand, allows to control the oppressed populace, but on the other hand can lead to a rebellion.

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Mechanics

The mechanics of Soviet City connect the inspiration with classic city builders like SimCity 3000, with the human resources management, known from the titles like Prison Architect. During the gameplay, we mainly occupy ourselves with the expansion of our town, building new structures and buildings, inspired not only by the architecture of the Eastern bloc, but also that of Cuba or China. The gameplay is filled with clear accents taken from communism era, and its role model was the history of the Soviet Union, and the oppression policy present there. To properly control the town, one needs not only urbanist talents, but also to exercise constant control and surveillance over the citizens, controlling whether they work or slack off drinking vodka and smoking cheap cigarettes.

To increase the efficiency of the buildings and citizens, we can resort to ruthless methods of intimidation, like shooting civilians or making meat out of them (motif taken from Welcome to Russia, novel by Dimitry Gluchowsky). Additionally, the player is able to build various special buildings (for example, crematoriums) which influence the level of terror in the city. Maintained on an appropriate level, the terror meter really improves our grip on the citizens. But this aspect of the gameplay has to be thoroughly monitored, as excessive terror can lead to a rebellion, while the low level of terror will lead to a recall from the mayoral chair.

Game modes

Soviet City is a singleplayer-only game, and in contrast to most city builders, which allow for many hours of fun in free mode, is orientated towards short sessions, each of them offering randomly generated town with different initial conditions and some other goals to achieve.

Technical aspects

The grim flavor of the gameplay is emphasized by dark and tawny colors. In technical terms, released on PC, Soviet City is on fairly average level. Commendable elements are the hand-drawn, animated cut scenes and soundtrack, maintained in the climate of Russian techno and dubstep.

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