Some Russian-made games spend a surprising amount of time in ordinary places: snowy courtyards, village gardens and flats with faded wallpaper. These small details can feel very familiar to people who grew up in Russia.
Others take you into plague-stricken towns, forests full of spirits or a Soviet future populated by robots. They draw on Russian history and folklore, then take the stories in directions of their own.
I've picked 23 games and visual novels, from quiet exploration to full-scale horror. You can enjoy many of them without speaking Russian, though the language options differ from game to game.
The settings range from recognisable Russian places to fictional towns, supernatural worlds and alternative history. Several games contain violence, frightening scenes or adult themes. Most were made by Russian developers or teams with Russian roots; in a few cases, the setting is easier to identify than the team's background. Check each store page for available languages, content warnings and regional availability. These games offer artistic impressions of Russia, not factual guides to life there today.
What kind of Russia will you see?
Cosy rooms, summer gardens and quieter adventures
Decorate a flat, search for cats in Moscow, spend a summer at the dacha or explore transport and fishing. These five games focus on everyday interests, with room to look around and enjoy the details.
Panelka · Панелька
Arrange furniture, choose wallpaper and build a cosy apartment or garage. You can experiment with layouts and small household objects, creating rooms that look as though someone has just stepped out to make tea.
The apartment layouts, furniture and decorations evoke homes of the late 1980s and early 1990s.
Hidden Pets: 101 Cats in Moscow
Search a hand-drawn city scene for 101 cats. Click each one you spot, zoom in to inspect small details and enjoy the quiet soundtrack as you work through the picture.
The illustrated buildings and streets use Moscow as their visual theme.
DACHA · Дача
Spend time at a summer cottage: plant vegetables and flowers, pick apples, make compote and grill kebabs. Alongside gardening, there are small jobs around the house and garden, including cleaning and repairing the fence.
Vegetable beds, homemade preserves and outdoor cooking show how gardening and summer leisure come together at a Russian dacha.
Metro Simulator 2
Take the driver's seat on Moscow Metro Line 6. Choose a starting point and route in free mode, or follow scenarios with dispatcher instructions, timetables and situations that require careful driving.
The game recreates 24 stations on the Kaluzhsko-Rizhskaya line. Their designs reflect different periods in the Moscow metro's development.
Russian Fishing 4 · Русская рыбалка 4
Choose your tackle, find a fishing spot and learn how weather and time of day affect your catch. You can fish from the shore or a boat and gradually develop skills, equipment and techniques.
The Russian locations show riverside landscapes and fishing as an outdoor pastime. Some destinations in the game are outside Russia.
Russian towns, apartments and everyday spaces
These games take you into apartment blocks, courtyards and village gardens. One lets you look around at your own pace; another gives you everyday chores; several turn familiar interiors into horror settings.
It’s Winter · ШХД: ЗИМА
You spend time in a snowy residential area, walking between apartment blocks and a small flat under a grey sky. There are no quests or mysteries to solve. You can go outside, come home and look around at your own pace.
The small kitchen, radiator, worn stairwell and wide courtyard capture the details of post-Soviet apartment life.
Know by Heart... · Помни...
Misha lives in a quiet Russian town where his days have settled into a familiar routine. When an old school friend returns, he reunites with people he grew up with, and their shared memories come back into focus.
Soviet-era traces in the streets and public spaces place the town around the turn of the twenty-first century.
Russian Village Simulator · Симулятор русской деревни
You settle into a village and take care of everyday jobs: tending a vegetable garden, looking after animals, fishing, gathering mushrooms and berries, chopping firewood and improving your home. Most of your time goes into these small, practical tasks.
Kitchen gardens, preserved food, mushroom picking, firewood and the village bathhouse, or banya, form part of its portrayal of rural life.
Uncanny Tales: 1992
Fourteen-year-old Anton moves with his family to a small town, then finds himself alone in his grandmother’s apartment. As rumours of missing children spread, the quiet streets and familiar routines begin to feel increasingly unsettling.
The furniture and apartment interiors frame a small-town setting in autumn 1992, shortly after the Soviet Union's collapse.
September 7th
The game takes place in an ordinary residential setting decorated for the winter holidays. The rooms feel less comfortable the longer you stay.
The apartment's New Year decorations draw on a major family holiday in Russia.
From the Darkness
You enter your late grandfather’s abandoned apartment to collect a family album. Once inside, the small rooms and corridors begin to feel threatening, and leaving becomes far more difficult than expected.
Wallpaper, old furniture, narrow corridors and family belongings evoke a Soviet-era apartment.
35MM
Two survivors travel through a world emptied by an epidemic. Along the way, they pass ruined buildings, forests and roads, finding traces of the people who once lived there.
The roads, infrastructure and settlements draw on Russia and the wider post-Soviet region.
Childhood, forest mysteries and visual novels
Forest paths, childhood memories and family stories run through both visual novels in this section. Their settings and approaches to horror are quite different.
Tiny Bunny · Зайчик
Based on Dmitry Mordas's short story of the same name, this visual novel follows a boy whose family moves to a settlement near a forest. Then local children start disappearing, and rumours spread at school.
School friendships and rumours recall the frightening stories children pass around, against a backdrop of a snowy provincial settlement in the late 1990s.
The Sin · Грех
Set in a village losing its residents, this visual novel follows a family drawn into troubling events. Local rumours and the possibility of something supernatural make the story increasingly tense.
Local stories about witches draw on folk beliefs. The creators have cited field research and collected accounts of supernatural beliefs as influences.
Village stories, folklore and regional mythology
There's much more to folklore from Russia than a handful of familiar fairy-tale characters. These games explore local beliefs, old stories and images associated with particular regions.
Banebush · Тварюк
While fleeing pursuit, Alexei is drawn back into memories of the village where he spent his childhood. His grandmother's frightening stories, haunting memories and the forest nearby begin to take on new significance. The visual novel has several endings.
Visits to a village and frightening stories told by older relatives connect the game with childhood memories and oral storytelling.
Black Book · Чёрная книга
Vasilisa, a young sorceress, moves between villages and the supernatural world. You talk to people, make difficult choices and fight using cards in a story built around regional folk beliefs.
The spirits, rituals and village stories draw on traditions of the Perm region and the Russian North.
One-Eyed Likho · Лихо Одноглазое
You try to escape a fate linked to Likho, a one-eyed figure associated with misfortune in Slavic folklore. Along the way, you solve puzzles and encounter strange characters in a bleak fairy-tale landscape.
Likho is a one-eyed figure associated with misfortune in Slavic folklore.
Vasilisa and Baba Yaga · Василиса и Баба Яга
Vasilisa undertakes a dangerous journey through the forest to meet Baba Yaga. The game reimagines the folk tale Vasilisa the Beautiful with hand-drawn imagery and short interactive challenges.
Baba Yaga, a dangerous forest and household tasks are recurring motifs in Russian fairy tales.
The Mooseman · Человеколось
You travel through three layers of a mythical universe, seeing spirits and collecting artefacts inspired by ancient beliefs. Its spare illustrations and measured pace give the journey the feel of an old legend.
Bronze animal figures and imagery draw on Komi and other Finno-Ugric traditions, using cultural material from the Perm region.
Imagined Russia and alternative Soviet history
These games borrow Russian and Soviet history, architecture and imagery, reshaping them as fantasy, satire and science fiction.
Kujlevka · Кужлёвка
A flying saucer crashes into the home of a collective-farm chairman. As the village becomes humanity's first point of contact with the visitors, your decisions shape how this extraordinary encounter unfolds.
The struggling collective farm and economic hardship place village life in the upheaval of the early 1990s. Social satire runs through the story.
Pathologic / Pathologic 2 · Мор. Утопия / Мор
A deadly plague overwhelms an isolated town. In Pathologic 2, you play a doctor with twelve days to help its residents; the original game lets you experience the crisis from several perspectives.
Medical institutions, civic buildings and social hierarchies sit alongside steppe-inspired customs. The town and its traditions are fictional.
INDIKA · Индика
A young nun leaves her monastery and travels through a bleak, imagined version of imperial Russia. She struggles with religious visions and life beyond the monastery in a story that mixes drama, satire and unsettling fantasy.
Monasteries, provincial architecture and religious language draw on late imperial Russia within a deliberately distorted setting.
Atomic Heart
In an alternate 1955, the Soviet Union has made huge leaps in robotics. When the systems begin to fail, the resulting chaos drives the action.
Monumental buildings, posters, retro machinery and music draw on Soviet-era design and ideas about scientific progress. The futuristic technology belongs to an alternate history.
Which game should you start with?
Your first pick depends on what you'd like to see and how much horror you're comfortable with:
| You want to see... | Choose... |
|---|---|
| Everyday life | Panelka, DACHA, Russian Fishing 4, Russian Village Simulator, It’s Winter |
| Moscow | Hidden Pets: 101 Cats in Moscow, Metro Simulator 2 |
| Small-town stories | Know by Heart…, Kujlevka |
| Russian folklore | Black Book, One-Eyed Likho, Vasilisa and Baba Yaga, The Mooseman, The Sin, Banebush |
| Horror & unsettling worlds | Uncanny Tales: 1992, September 7th, From the Darkness, Tiny Bunny, The Sin, Banebush, 35MM, Pathologic / Pathologic 2, INDIKA, Atomic Heart |
Not sure which game to choose? Let chance decide.
Can video games help you learn Russian?
If you enjoy games, the story gives you a reason to keep reading in Russian. Visual novels such as Tiny Bunny, Banebush and The Sin have plenty of written dialogue and narration. Exploration games help connect words with objects and places, while Black Book introduces vocabulary from regional folklore.
Be prepared for colloquial speech, old-fashioned or regional words and deliberately unusual dialogue. Some games barely use dialogue; others involve a lot of reading. English subtitles don't necessarily mean there's an English voice track.
Check the languages available in your edition, then try a short scene with Russian audio and subtitles if both are offered. Note down expressions you hear more than once or need to follow the story. Then keep playing: you don't have to translate every line.
When something feels particularly Russian, it's worth looking up where it comes from: life in the 1990s, a village custom, a legend from the Perm region or something the writers invented for suspense or satire.
What to learn next
Want to explore some of these places and themes through books? My reading guides to Russian classics and contemporary fiction are arranged by language level.
Want to understand more of what you hear and read?
In my Russian lessons, we can work with stories, dialogue and cultural topics that interest you, at a level you're comfortable with.