Tunguska: The Visitation - top-down survival shooter inspired by S.T.A.L.K.E.R. series

[LESS T_T]

Venture across desolate villages, abandoned factories, and perilous swamps of Tunguska from the Soviet era. Live the life of a Ghoul Hunter and uncover the dark secrets of Tunguska's past in this top-down survival horror.

Tunguska: The Visitation features twin-stick combat mechanics from a 3D top-down view, infused with survival elements such as food, medicine, body energy, hazardous environments, and inventory management. The survival gameplay is designed to minimize chores and hassles for the player while encouraging strategic planning before each combat engagement:

• Highly challenging human and mutant NPCs
  
• Radiation and poisoning effects mitigated in multiple ways
  
• Supernatural anomalies player must constantly watch out for
  
• Grid-based, Diablo-like inventory with weight limit
  
• Power-ups crafted from mutant body parts with both positive and negative effects
  
• Freedom to play stealthily, or grab a shotgun and be a champ
  
• Wearable detectors to assist the player across different situations
  
• Arsenal of Soviet-era weapons with matching ammunition

The story-rich quests and lores of Tunguska encourage exploration and discovery. Information and side-quests can be discovered from dialogues with NPC, fire-side conversations, or from documents and notes found throughout Tunguska.

Inspired by Roadside Picnic and S.T.A.L.K.E.R. series - one of the greatest games in history, Tunguska is one man's vision of an Exclusion Zone with not just horror and danger, but also the freedom and opportunities sought after by many near the fall of the USSR.

Demo: https://rotorist.itch.io/tunguska

Stealth gameplay:

 

[Parsimonious cook]

Looks interesting - will try the demo and post impressions later.

 

[deuxhero]

Kravshenko there looks familiar, but I can't place my finger on it.

 

[Ol' Willy]

Revolver that isn't Nagant with a silencer...

 

[HoboForEternity]

damn looks promising

 

[lightbane]

Cheeky Breeky in 2D! Will it have hyper-autistic mods?

 

[Baron Dupek]

There were some Men of War 1/2 mods based on Stalker but this might be better.
At least it's closer to release than these abandoned STALKER mods combined.

 

[Parsimonious cook]

Hail to labour comrades! I tried out the demo of this highly cheeki breeki Slav gaem and I am ready to share my findings with the party apparatus of the RPG Codex:


Overview:

• In many aspects (good as well as bad) Tunguska reminds me of the flawed 2003 gem called Cold Zero: Last Stand (also known as Cold Zero: No Mercy), which was a top down single character tactical/action RPG with heavy emphasis on stealth (though balls to the wall action was also viable most of the time), the problem of that game was clunky controls, which also applies here
• Control scheme is somewhat unusual (you rotate camera with mouse wheel for example), but manageable once you get used to it. It is clunky though, for example walking over tight spaces like improvised bridges can be bit of a pain in the ass (like in Stalker, water is radioactive so falling into it is baaad)
• First quest you get is a doctor researching effects of the Zone on the digestive tract, he asks you to bring him 15 individual pieces of human shit (I shit you not)
• The area in the demo has Cossacks (actually ethnic Russians who talked about how the Zone gives them freedom from communism, but still blast the Soviet anthem and Katyusha out of their radio in their base, they seem to be the equivalent of Stalkers, though there are various organised groups like Lake Cossacks or Railroad Cossacks which form a loose alliance) fighting for dominance over a swamp area infested with ghouls (mutants) against Chechens (I shit you not again)

Combat:

• Combat is surprisingly functional (considering the controls), shooting works better than melee (which is complicated by the clunkyness), though again, I guess I will get better at it over time, you can block in melee, but there is no dodging/rolling
• Human enemies will fight the ghouls and wolves when they encounter them (obviously can be used)
• Ranged combat is open to LoS abuse (ie you can shoot the enemies at the fringe of your view range and they will sometimes not respond), but it works both ways (enemies with AKs will sometimes open fire while off-screen), other than this I didn’t notice stealth much, perhaps its not fully implemented in the demo (well, the human enemies seem to have shortened LoS at night, but they do use flashlights so it doesn’t matter that much)

Enemies I encountered:

• Ghouls: mook zombie-like mutants with melee attacks, not dangerous
• Spitters (type of ghouls, which is what mutants seem to be generally called in the game), look basically like Snorks form STALKER (gas mask dudes who run on all fours), these ones spit poison in addition to melee, not too dangerous
• Scythes: ghouls with blades instead of hands, not extremely though but more dangerous than other types, their attacks cause bleeding
• Feral Wolves: huge wolves, not very dangerous
• Army deserters: humans with firearms, range from mooks with shotguns to armoured SF-types with cool slav guns, firefights are extremely dangerous

Items and mechanics

• There is a simple but cool “alchemy” system, you can use all kinds of shit (ghoul hearts, ghoul blood, various herbs, alcohol etc) that can be found in the environment at the chemistry station and apply various levels of heat during the process to produce various serums and such (there are recipes for basic shit, but I guess you can also discover random shit by experimenting), there is a serum for treating erectile disfunction for example (once more I shit you not), overall this is fairly inclined
• Items are basically ripped straight from Stalker – there is food (sleeping is the only way to save, saving without eating exhausts you and doesn’t restore health), bandages, various anti-radiation drugs (including vodka), gas masks, armoured and anti-chemical suits etc
• Plenty of weapons from matchets to Bisons, Dragunovs, AKs, shotguns etc, at least some weapons should be customisable (silencers, scopes), though I didn’t see it directly
• There is a functional system for conversations (there are various topics to select, interesting aspect is that you can pick up on certain key words to generate new topics)
• There is a day and night cycle (you have a flashlight), its generally a bad idea to go out at night (ie you should find a safe spot to sleep), unless you want to risk some stealthy shit

Environmental hazards:

• Water is radioactive, there are gas clouds blocking some areas, others have high radiation
• Anomalies are literally 1:1 rip from STALKER, though I didn’t manage to find any artefacts so far (again, might not be implemented in the demo)
• You have to be very careful, since anomalies are pretty frequent along with other hazards, just heedlessly running around will get you killed very fast – the question is how will this affect the full game, since I can see this getting old in case you would be required to back track a lot or travel long distances, but generally it paints the picture of the dangerous Zone pretty well, the environment is more dangerous in the demo than in most areas of Stalker
• There are various damage over time threats (bleeding, poisoning, radiation, also some psionic/anomaly related shit) and ways to counter them (protective gear, medical equipment, drugs), again the usual Stalker deal

Technical side

• Demo is (unsurprisingly) buggy as fuck, playable, but for example key NPCs don’t spawn when you reload, enemies sometimes move through solid cover to kill you and such
• You can judge the graphics from the screenshots that were posted

Verdict after roughly 2 hours of gameplay:

As you probably guessed yourselves, there are many great ideas and concepts in the game, it certainly has makings of “top-down Stalker.” Atmosphere is top-notch, in game texts are passable (ie not the average “Russian translation” type of deal), combat is serviceable and exploration along with the survival mechanics is very good. The controls… I guess are acquired taste, but most people should be able to live with them. Of course the game needs a metric ton of polishing though and the devs ability to do that will be what decides whether the game ultimately ends among the numerous “great idea, but…” indie titles or becomes something truly good. If it gets plenty of meat for its solid bones (multiple areas, quest lines etc) it could end up p. good. The humor in the game (shit collecting quests etc)... well we will see, hopefully the dev doesnt take it to the point where it becomes lame.

In any case I am willing to keep playing the demo and will keep an eye on this. Steam says it will release in June 2021 (doesn’t mention EA), which gives me mixed feelings. If the June date is full release I sure hope the game came a long way since the demo in terms of polish. If Stalker was some western corporate game I would be woried about the dev getting the shit sued out of him, but things being as they are, I guess its all cool.

So yeah… if you are up for some highly cheeki breeki (obviously i v damke) action in radioactive Slav land, don’t mind clunky controls and indie production values, this is a game to watch.

 

[lightbane]

he area in the demo has Cossacks (actually ethnic Russians who talked about how the Zone gives them freedom from communism, but still blast the Soviet anthem and Katyusha out of their radio in their base, they seem to be the equivalent of Stalkers, though there are various organised groups like Lake Cossacks or Railroad Cossacks which form a loose alliance) fighting for dominance over a swamp area infested with ghouls (mutants) against Chechens (I shit you not again)

Sounds very Russian indeed.

 

[Ol' Willy]

The area in the demo has Cossacks (actually ethnic Russians who talked about how the Zone gives them freedom from communism, but still blast the Soviet anthem and Katyusha out of their radio in their base, they seem to be the equivalent of Stalkers, though there are various organised groups like Lake Cossacks or Railroad Cossacks which form a loose alliance) fighting for dominance over a swamp area infested with ghouls (mutants) against Chechens (I shit you not again)

Dev is obviously not Russian (or Slav for that matter) and has some vague ideas about Soviet/Post-Soviet societies

Also, this could explain the quality of text, it was originally conceived in English, not translated

 

[LESS T_T]

I'll just say that dev is subscribing "interesting" channels on YouTube.

 

[Parsimonious cook]

The area in the demo has Cossacks (actually ethnic Russians who talked about how the Zone gives them freedom from communism, but still blast the Soviet anthem and Katyusha out of their radio in their base, they seem to be the equivalent of Stalkers, though there are various organised groups like Lake Cossacks or Railroad Cossacks which form a loose alliance) fighting for dominance over a swamp area infested with ghouls (mutants) against Chechens (I shit you not again)

Dev is obviously not Russian (or Slav for that matter) and has some vague ideas about Soviet/Post-Soviet societies

Also, this could explain the quality of text, it was originally conceived in English, not translated

You are right, I sort of automatically assumed that this would be made by some Russian or Ukrainian dude, but the dev is likely an American (judging form the fact that most of the videos on his youtube chanel show him shooting ARs, lol). That explains both the "Cossacks vs Chechens" thing as well as the quality of the writting.

 

[Savecummer]

 

[Savecummer]

single guy dev, this aint gonna get finished and be good anytime soon

 

[Fluent]

that's really cool. good for him. thanks to 'dex once again i learned of this game and will definitely be checking it out sometime. anything that looks like and is created to be like stalker is a serious win to me.

 

[Don Peste]

Full Version (Beta 0.72) available to download for free: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1luc114ErpLSm0Akkhmwgk_x-gINgNewo/view?usp=sharing

Rotorist [developer]
https://steamcommunity.com/app/1601970/discussions/0/3151934575295537749/
Hi, this game is not a RPG so i didn’t implement skills system, progression or character creation. You can change outfit once you find the new armor and helmets. Thanks!

 

[Parsimonious cook]

Damn... will give this a spin.

 

[Parsimonious cook]

Alright, played the beta for about an hour. A few impressions:

• You are a US journalist sent to USSR to investigate the stories of strange occurrences at the Tunguska impact site, you manage to get there, but you get caught by soviet border guards who let you through in exchange for all your money
• The Zone itself is cordoned off by military, but there are ways to get in if you know the right people, the few initial quests in the starting area (a village at the border of the Zone) let you earn enough street cred with the locals to get in
• Quests are standard fare (go to an area and clear it, bring back item XY etc), but at least so far I haven’t seen anything outright broken or retarded
• There is still a lot of whacky stuff (I killed a bandit in one of the quests while he was playing a guitar while sitting at a campfire, he just kept playing forever) that will hopefully get fixed, there is a working stealth system (both LoS and sound matter), enemy AI in combat is serviceable, but certainly nothing special
• An interesting mechanic is the actual journalism that you can engage in – you can find out various stories about the Zone by talking to NPCs, discovering various documents etc, which you can then report to your editor via payphone (costs 100 rubbles to make each international phone call, which isn’t much of a problem though) in exchange for money

You can only save by sleeping (which should ideally be done by a campfire and after you ate something), which is a nice touch and creates plenty of tension (you cant sleep all the time and combat is fairly dangerous, especially against human opponents). The day and night cycle is very important too, since monsters in the Zone are more active at night.


There are various attempts at humour (“I was an adventurer like you, then I took a bullet to the knee,” there is a guy called Artyom in the starting village who used to work in Moscow metro and stuff like that) which are mostly not very good, but otherwise the atmosphere is quite spot on.


The game will definitely need a lot more polish before release, but there is obvious progress from the demo that I played a while ago and I think it has pretty good chance of turning out well in the end – of course one has to approach it with an open mind and realise it’s a one man indie project, but I can see this providing a lot of cheeky breeky entertainment upon release.

 

[Rewrite]

Teh guy took down the demo because it was the full game. xD

 

[Parsimonious cook]

Its out on Steam!

 

[Falksi]

Any turn-based option?

 

[Parsimonious cook]

Any turn-based option?

Nope, its a single character top down survival game/shooter.

 

[Parsimonious cook]

OK - the release version is a little more polished than the beta, but before you jump in a few notes:

- AI is a mixed bag (speaking of human opponents), sometimes they do pretty cool things (like breaking away from close combat if they have a ranged weapon and making a run for cover), but sometimes they act retarded and there are glitches too (sometimes they kill their friends with grenades, if you kill an NPC that is sitting at a campfire, they keep sitting down even in death)
- Some bugs (once got stuck while looting a crate, had to alt-tab out, one lock up on saving, though the save itself was fine)
- Generally I have to stress that this is pretty impressive for a one man indie job, but obviously you have to be ready for some clunkiness

If you are OK with the above, the game is worth trying.

 

[mikaelis]

How does it play with mouse + keyboard? (WASD with following camera + mouse to aim or something different?)

 

[Parsimonious cook]

You rotate the camera with the mouse wheel, aim with mouse and move with WASD, controls need some getting used to, but are generally OK.