Hollow Home, an RPG inspired by Disco Elysium, is a memory of Mariupol before the invasion of Russia

The Ukrainian city of Mariupol came under heavy bombardment in the early months of Russia’s 2022 invasion, a program of artillery and airstrikes that damaged or destroyed most residential buildings and killed or dispossessed thousands of people. It has now been occupied by Russia for nearly two years, during which time, as the Associated Press reports, Russia has demolished, rebuilt and renamed much of the city, erasing its Ukrainian heritage.

Hollow Home, an RPG inspired by Disco Elysium, is a recollection of pre-war Mariupol. It’s not a 1:1 scale recreation, but a collection of details, colors, personalities, and a few familiar buildings, carefully assembled and offered up for dereliction. During a brief demo at Digital Dragons in Poland this year, artist Anastasia Hlyniana drew my attention to the plants that protrude from old car tires around the game’s isometric map, which she says are common in Mariupol.

Hollow Home began development in 2022, just after the occupation of Mariupol, and is partly inspired by newspaper coverage of the invasion, though its characters and story are fictional. The game takes place over 30 in-game days, beginning shortly before Russia’s vicious attack, and places you in the role of 14-year-old Maksym, who must survive and help others survive. There is no combat in Hollow Home, and apparently no direct or “graphic” depictions of violence. Instead, the game explores the impact of war on civilians and the decline of individual neighborhoods as residents are killed or flee the city.

Hollow Home’s pen-and-paper RPG and bright graphic novel colors immediately recall ZA/UM’s game, but the English writing is relatively straightforward and respectful, as one might expect given that the devastation of Mariupol is both a lived and ongoing reality. “It’s our take on what happened, and we also want to tell the story of the people and how the city has changed,” Hlyniana sums up.

Maksym is given a limited amount of action points each day, which you’ll use to perform tasks like cooking and first aid, based on traits like sociability and skill. However, during the early part of the game, before the war, these points are reserved for more innocent activities: climbing onto a roof to fix a satellite dish, telling lies about why you’re skipping school, beating your friend’s high score at the arcade, and trying to chase away an older boy who’s bullying you. During these teenage escapades, you’ll meet and map out a community of shopkeepers, auto mechanics, nosy neighbors, and local slackers, all speculating on reports of troops massing at the border.

“Some places will be destroyed, others will appear, like shelters, volunteer centers,” Hlyniana explains. “People will die, new ones will come, and the game will have multiple endings. We aim to offer about 24 hours of gameplay, and the game will have about three city districts, which will make it a large, typical Ukrainian city.”

At the risk of centering my own responses as someone whose country is not currently under attack, I found it odd to hear the situation in Mariupol described in terms of video game critic concerns like game length and choice of endings. Unfortunately, my language skills were not up to the task of asking Hlyniana what the developers thought about positioning this commemorative work as a commercial product on Steam, where it must present itself as a consumer product alongside RPGs for whom an apocalyptic setting is an escapist fantasy. Hollow Home is slated for release in 2025.