Spakoyno: Back to the USSR 2.0 is a visual novel set in the dying days of the Soviet Union. We play as Kirill, son of the President that lives alongside his brother in a run-down apartment. Kirill has little in the way of backbone so everyone takes advantage of him. Some of the first things you see in the game are your brother’s fist and a measly ten Ruble to go buy him some cheap beer. Not enough to even get the beer as you find out after your stroll through the city. You’ll also find out that darn near everyone is a douche and is also where you’ll encounter the first choice of the game. Go through a shady looking alley or go the long way. It’s an inconsequential choice but future ones can lead the story to new directions or end the game.
There is no voice acting and text is set to Russian by default. To change this simply click on the Soviet flag on the main menu then it’ll swap to English. The translation is wonky at times and has the occasional typo but is never bad enough to the point where you don’t understand what they are trying to get across. While the plot starts off simple enough, pretty soon you will be introduced to quite a slew of characters that get embroiled in something bigger. True to the bleak theme of the game, most will be conniving and untrustworthy individuals looking out for themselves. As the democratic revolution starts to gain ground, it becomes pretty interesting to guess who among your father’s communist party has become a turncoat.
Neither side of the conflict are presented as neither good or bad. Everyone is typically out for themselves and will leave your head spinning from how fast many people suddenly embrace the democratic side once their side won and gained control of the government. Before you know it you find yourself alone and a target for being the son of the former communist president, but you do not feel much sympathy for our character either since he is just a terrible a person as anyone. All is bleak and everything sucks, yet life moves on regardless. It is a fascinating premise, unfortunately, it was as if the writer behind the story discovered the wonders of crack cocaine as it suddenly takes a massive nosedive. It was never a well-told plot, don’t get me wrong, but it was interesting and the setting it takes place in had massive potential. And suddenly you find yourself reading random gibberish that sounds like it was written by people that think that random equals funny.
As an example of what a major departure it is, you will end up time traveling in a car powered by grain and fighting off Native Americans who are in ancient Russia somehow. It was as if they spliced in a toddler’s fanfiction of Back to the Future after they realized they were out of vodka money and immediately uploaded it up to Steam, instead of finishing their game. This change of tone would have worked if it was just a quirky branching path you could take, though it isn’t and ruins the entire narrative as a result. The other paths you can take will lead to short scenarios that result in your untimely demise before being booted back to the menu to try again. They are still strange but far less so than the actual plot line. With the story out of the window and the characters being unlikable by design, it falls to the humor to lift it back up. Well, up until then the dry humor served to increase the uncanny vibe of the world and it doesn’t really hold up on its own.
No doubt you’ve noticed the peculiar artstyle by now. It blends photos of real-world locations and adds in MS Paint characters on the foreground to create an unusual contrast. There is no animation, when movement is required like say in a fight, the screen will transition to black multiple times while the drawings are re-positioned to give the illusion. The music found here is pretty decent and enhances the scenes without being intrusive. In total, it took me less than an hour & a half to complete the game multiple times with 100% and see all it had to offer. Spakoyno: Back to the USSR 2.0 is an odd title that started off actually trying to tell a story but for some reason gave up and decided to suddenly become a “meme game” without any prior setup. With its plot destroyed, it possessing no characters to sympathize with, and unenjoyable humor, there is little else to prop it up into something worthwhile. This is one visual novel that you may want to miss out on.
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