Last week, I posted the Game Developer (dotcom!) staff's collective list of the top ten games of 2022, and this week, we're posting our individual lists! We're starting out with Senior Editor Bryant Francis and our frequent contributor Joel Couture, both of whom, I'm confident in saying, have fantastic taste in games.
Beyond what's become the usual for me (lamenting that I need to play all of these games!) Joel's final entry really hit me in the heart today. He picked What’s up in a Kharkiv bomb shelter which I had read a bit about on our site (and it shows up in our other end-of-year coverage), but I didn't have much breathing room last week to sit with it.
Without saying too much, I have someone very dear to me who is dealing with the events in Ukraine, and has spent plenty of time sheltering. I have a very powerful and complex brew of emotions that come up whenever I think about that: immense pride, intense fear, unfathomable anxiety. I haven't played this game, but Joel's notes on it were very stirring.
What’s up in a Kharkiv bomb shelter is a brief experience of the fear, uncertainty, and complex emotions of those who had to flee to bomb shelters during Russia’s initial attacks on Ukraine. You’ll hear the shrieking howl of bombs raining down around your shelter. Some of the explosions are terrifyingly close. The sirens wail outside, but you can’t see what’s going on. You just hear the rumble and roars above the general din of whispered conversations between the people who have come here in hopes of surviving. And what do you talk about when any one of those screeching, falling bombs could end your life?
The developer had been in two such bomb shelters during the early days of the conflict (the game itself was created within a bomb shelter) and had seen other such events in their life as well. It was important for them to capture that humanity within the horrors, giving players access to the varied conversations people had in the shelter. You’d hear people talking about their need to use the bathroom. To just get some air. Others would have domestic issues that were made far worse by being trapped in the shelter with their abusers. It was surreal, sad, and horrifying to experience.
The range of emotions you’ll encounter across this brief experience is heart-wrenching. It is an unflinching view of a real experience of real-world horror and the human side of dealing with it however you can. It is a vital look from a developer’s personal experience that makes you feel those mixed, overwhelming emotions that you would feel in such a situation, and demands empathy for those who endured it, and rage on their behalf at the people who would do this to them. It is also a testament to how games can make you feel human events and history rather than simply read about them.
That last line, especially, is everything here. Games can be special in this way.