The Perfect Antidote to the Monotony of Social Distancing: 2020 in Polish Video Games

cyberpunk2077_its_good_to_be_in_town_rgb-en.jpg, default, A still from ‘Cyberpunk 2077’, 2020, photo: CD Projekt Red, The Perfect Antidote to the Monotony of Social Distancing: 2020 in Polish Video Games

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The coronavirus pandemic disrupted the work of both large and small game development studios, but despite all the hardships, 2020 hasn’t been bad at all for Polish game industry. Plenty of titles have appeared that were worthy of attention – let’s look at the most important and interesting ones.

The release of Cyberpunk 2077 was the most important event of 2020 for the world of video games, not just in Poland but worldwide. It was postponed twice at first, which induced a bit of anxiety. Eventually, the launch took place in December, which is normally the last call for big productions to be released before the difficult period at the beginning of the year when consumers’ finances are still recovering from the Christmas splurge. The premiere was meant to be a huge celebration for gamers and the entire game industry, but it didn’t turn out that way – while the PC version received good reviews, reactions from gamers and critics to the underdeveloped console version were so harsh that the Cyberpunk launch started becoming increasingly catastrophic for the company as the days passed. Another game industry giant seems to be having a hard time as well – Techland, currently working on Dying Light 2. The game’s premiere, originally planned for spring, was postponed in January and it’s still uncertain when the game will come out. Probably not anytime soon.

‘Cyberpunk 2077’

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A still from 'Cyberpunk 2077', 2020, photo: CD Projekt Red

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The release of the game, meticulously planned as a huge media event, definitely ended up not being what the directors of CD Projekt Red had intended, though the game itself will likely still make its mark on the history of role-playing computer games. Cyberpunk’s place of action, Night City, is one of the most beautiful video game cities ever. One can truly immerse oneself in it. It’s easy to forget about the game’s storyline and justwalk around admiring the details of this futuristic metropolis. These details can be analysed just like in a real city – by looking at the buildings and seeing not just walls, doors and windows but its inhabitants’ lifestyles as well, along with the history of each precinct and their cultural influences. The script, as always in the case of games made by the creators of The Witcher, is gripping and excellently written, with memorable characters whom we meet along the way. CD Projekt Red’s scriptwriters, widely considered some of the best in the entire game industry, confirmed their top-notch skills once again.

The gameplay mechanics are not quite as impressive – they’re not all well-polished and not all of them add anything significant to the whole. It seems that the creators got slightly carried away by their ambition, attempting to fit all the solutions they could into one game. Some (myself included) are pleased with the developer’s slightly overachieving attitude, but others feel disappointed. Anyway, technical errors aside, the Cyberpunk world is one of the most interesting places you can visit in contemporary video games. New patches that improve its quality keep appearing, so hopefully we should be able to enjoy the game just as the creators envisioned sometime soon.

‘Ghostrunner’

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A still from 'Ghostrunner', 2020, photo: One More Level SA, 3D Realms, Slipgate Ironworks

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Cyberpunk 2077 is my no means the be-all and end-all of Polish cyberpunk. Ghostrunner doesn’t aim at creating an enormous universe within which the player can do whatever he or she wants – as a cyberkiller with superhuman powers we’ve a clearly delineated task (to eliminate a cruel dictator), and the location of the action is a huge tower in which the few surviving humans sought shelter after a huge catastrophe. Despite Ghostrunner’s spectacular 3D design, which includes full cyberpunk staffage (neons! skyscrapers! giant machines!), it’s actually an ultra-difficult platform game of the Super Meat Boy variety.

We spend most of the time making long leaps over huge precipices – even the tiniest mistake can cost the main character his or her life. From time to time, we need to fight our opponents, reacting quickly enough to be able to escape the bullets that come our way. We die time after time, just to immediately come back to life and try again. This cycle of attempts and failures is a constant element of the crazy, trance-like rhythm of the game. Ghostrunner is one of the most interesting and craziest action games of the passing year – no wonder that it’s been so highly appreciated by players (on Steam, it’s been reviewed by 96% of users).

‘Werewolf the Apocalypse: Heart of the Forest’

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A still from 'Werewolf the Apocalypse: Heart of the Forest', 2020, photo: Different Tales

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In previous years, Poles have become experts on making computer games based on well-known RPG systems. CD Projekt Red made Cyberpunk 2077, while Draw Distance is creating more visual narratives set in the world of Vampire: The Masquerade; recently, this club has been joined by the studio Different Tales and their Werewolf the Apocalypse series. Heart of the Forest is the first game placed in this universe, as well as the first one whose plot is based exclusively around Białowieża. Werewolves, whose role is to protect nature from human interference, find themselves in Białowieża Forest during the recent logging. The game presents all the conflicted sides’ points of view – from the activists defending the ancient forest, through the local community, to the policymakers who decided to allow the logging.

The creators have managed to turn a local issue into a universal one – the story of werewolves in Białowieża Forest becomes a story about the relationship between humans and nature, about wrath and rebellion, tropes very well-timed in the age of climate change. The audio-visual design deserves appreciation as well – though Heart of the Forest is a text-based game, every part of the narrative is accompanied by superb, disturbing illustrations, and the sparingly-placed sound adds to the atmosphere while still leaving room for the imagination.

‘Metamorphosis’

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'Metamorphosis', source: author's archives

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Digital Kafka. Although the title only points to Kafka’s Metamorphosis, the game is actually a hybrid of Metamorphosis and The Trial – Gregor Samsa turns into a cockroach in his friend and co-worker Joseph K.‘s flat and observes the course of his case from an open drawer, a desk lamp and even a crack in a wall. The cockroaches also have their own surrealistic world, whose centre finds itself in the Tower – an embodiment of the bureaucratic nightmares that haunt Joseph K.

The stronger points of the Ovid Works game include the sense of scale achieved by presenting the human world from a cockroach’s perspective, as well as the astonishing development of the cockroach world, which begins as a set of knick-knacks scattered over desks and cupboards and ends as an entire city built around an old movie projector. The most impressive elements are the gigantic archives containing information about the citizens investigated by the authorities, which can only be reached with huge machines; for a cockroach, arriving at the end of a machine arm griping document tubes constitutes quite the expedition. It’s a vision as overwhelming and sinister as the case of Joseph K. and the role it requires Gregor Samsa to fulfil.

‘Carrion’

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A still from 'Carrion', 2020, photo: Phobia Game Studio

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Carrion is a classic science-fiction horror – a strange shapeshifting creature escapes from a secret laboratory in search of freedom, as well as revenge. It obviously feasts on humans, whom it shreds to pieces and devours, and whatever it devours is quickly transformed into new limbs, adding to the creature’s enlarging body. It can hide in air ducts, pull massive metal doors off their hinges with one quick movement, clear out a room full of armed soldiers within seconds, and go through a grate supposedly able to provide protection from all kinds of aggressors. The thing is, the player doesn’t play as a hero trying to save the station from the monster – you play the monster itself.

Carrion is gruesome to the extreme, but its visual design and conventions referring to games from the 1990s helps the player distance themselves from all of the atrocities appearing on screen. The highlight of the entire game is the animated monster, consisting of a bunch of wiggly tentacles, ready to shoot in any direction at any given moment. When it moves through the screen, clinging to walls, ceilings and floors, it evokes both terror and awe. Players and reviewers complained a bit about the game becoming quite repetitive after some time, but they appreciated the perverse dark humour, unconventional retro-style graphics, and the appearance of the main ‘character’, whose form moves from one room of the station to another casually and with monstrous grace.

‘Yes, Your Grace’

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A still from 'Yes, Your Grace', 2020, photo: Brave At Night

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There’s a common belief that ‘an emperor’s life must be hunky-dory’ [a reference to a famous Tadeusz Chyła song] . Yes, Your Grace asks the player to step into a king’s shoes and see how power doesn’t make one happy, but quite the contrary – it can turn one’s hair grey. The game consists mainly of listening to subjects who ask various things of us. Your small kingdom’s limited resources, however, constitute a problem that forces the king to make difficult decisions. Except for caring for his subjects, the king must ensure the country’s relative stability, be prepared for potential invasions, and tackle the consequences of natural disasters. The king even has to make his daughters stop arguing all the time, as when he isn’t fulfilling his royal duties, he’s spending time with his family, for instance in the castle garden.

The action takes place mostly on the castle grounds, from the throne room to the castle walls from which one can admire the landscape or watch out for enemies. The visual retro-style design is of the highest quality – beautiful, colourful images consisting of large pixels and evoking associations with the prettiest adventure games from the 1990s. Yes, Your Grace took almost 5 years to create – in 2015, Rafał Bryks (back then a student of game design at the University of Huddersfield) organised a Kickstarter fundraiser. The game’s painful birth took place between Great Britain and Poland. Some had already written off the entire project, but, fortunately for the players, it was finally released this year.

‘Waterworks!’

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'Waterworks!', a browser game – Mateusz "Scriptwelder" Sokalszczuk and Wacław Kulczykowski, source: author's archives

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What happens when an archaeologist teams up with a game developer to share the results of their work? Wacław Kulczykowski, a researcher of Grudziądz’s water supply systems at the University of Gdańsk, contacted his friend, the well-known Polish creator of indie games Mateusz Sokalszczuk. That’s how Waterworks! came to be. The player takes on the role of an apparently immortal (or at least extremely long-lived) administrator, responsible for supplying water to the inhabitants of Grudziądz from the Middle Ages up until the beginning of the 20^th century.

We start with water carriers, but with time, as the population grows, we expand the infrastructure – the pride of mediaeval Grudziądz. Then, we create modern water pipes. The gameplay mechanic is very elegant, based on a card game which requires us to manage all the randomly assigned cards designating employees, documents and inventions as well as possible. We also need to keep our eye on where and how the population grows so that we can distribute staff and pipes appropriately – a catastrophe can happen even to a well-supplied quarter if we introduce too many inhabitants.

The city, along with its elegant, pixelated visual design, changes constantly, constituting an additional source of satisfaction for the player. To make things even better, the game is free. Waterworks! is a perfect example of how to popularise local history – people from all around the world play a game about mediaeval Grudziądz, which deservedly appears in the most important free game charts of 2020.

The coronavirus pandemic has marked a peculiar period for the video game industry. On one hand, it has made the work of big teams much more difficult, forcing them to switch (at least partly) to remote work. On the other hand, games turned out to be the perfect antidote to the daily monotony of social distancing. They’re an excellent way to interact with others, be it online or at the same console or computer. The upcoming year will be equally interesting for the Polish game industry. We can await at least a few Polish releases: Dying Light 2 by Techland, Outriders by People Can Fly and perhaps even the anticipated Witchfire by The Astronauts.

Originally written in Polish, Dec 2020, translated by AWP, Dec 2020

Language English

polish computer games

digital culture