Prepare to work your butt off.
Imagine if a Minecraft server went so horribly wrong that the U.S.S.R. was forced to come in and instil the virtues of communism into the vigilant masses in order to restore the world. Great.
Now imagine if you can't dig into the ground to hide because it's quicksand 2.0, and hiding in the darkness starves you to death while the monsters thrive in light and dark. And speaking of monsters, every monster is ten times your size at minimum. And resources are always low because all of your hard work is constantly being stolen by the less patriotic citizens. And a few corrupt officials.
Sound good? Then you are ready to help Mother Russia!
Set in an alternate timeline, the U.S.S.R. launched a brainwashing project that would access the collective unconscious and allow the most equal of all Communist officials to transcend to a higher plane of existence, and rule the world under glorious communist idealism. Unfortunately, it turns out that humans have more Reality Warper powers than expected; the entire planet has been transformed into a white sphere, where food, building supplies, and most of humanity are locked inside strange landscapes that occasionally materialize for a few days, then evaporate into dust.
You play as a Projection Clone, a little girl whose body is dependent on the sun to survive and can respawn at any nearby Communist-approved town. Your tasks are twofold: harvest supplies in the procedurally generated landscapes, and serve your town by building the necessary structures needed to survive. Daily schedule is usually as follows: go to a landscape, mine the fuck out of it, head back, desperately try to build something with what little resources you have, defend the town, rinse and repeat.
The game was released for PlayStation 4 in 2016 by Q-Games, available for only a year before being shut down in 2017. After regaining ownership of the title from Sony in 2021, an Updated Re-release was announced by Q-Games, along with development logs through the web series Postcards from the Void. The re-release, titled Phoenix Edition, launched in September 2022.
This game provides examples of:
- Adam Smith Hates Your Guts: Funnily enough in a game using the aesthetic flavors of the Soviets, while some basic tools have fixed prices, anything from Eagle Corp is going to probably cost you two arms and a leg and then just keeps on going.
- Fantastic Caste System: The "proletariat" is now the common citizen who gets basic rights and are the first to lose their rations in famine, the "bourgoise" are the player characters and other workers, and the "Bourgoise Rezidenty" are the elite of all workers. Supposedly, the system gives more to people who actually do work, but this doesn't account for the leaders who live underground and don't have to lift a finger.
- Hard Work Hardly Works: Bad news is, most of your weapons and tools take time to use and are ineffective against monsters/terrain. Good news is, you can just buy advanced technology from Eagle Corp, America and bring the HURT.
- Pint Sized Power House: According to the papers provided at the beginning, Projection Clones are only 115 cm/3'8.
- Rigged Contest: Surprisingly, democratic elections on which governor has jurisdiction over your town are frequent and somewhat fair. However, only the bourgeoisie (the players) can vote, and only from a predetermined set of permanent governors who will also rule over other towns.
- We Will Use Manual Labor in the Future: despite all the technology at your disposal, manual labor by the Projection clones is the main method used in the most important jobs; mining, fighting, generating electricity, etc. Somewhat justified by the strange properties of Projection clones and the prevalence of the collective unconsciousness, but it would be nice if your leaders, oh I dunno, gave you mining vehicles to go with your floating bus.
