Could there be a more than universally relatable quote shared by indie developers than: “We really just wanted to make a small game”? Of course, there’s little to complain about when games like Cuphead or Owlboy finally see the light of the day, demonstrating what wonders growing ambition can often bring.
Having said that, I’m not entirely surprised that Vladimir Semenets, the lead game designer of Militsioner, sits in front of me on Zoom and tells me how they initially envisioned a six-month project, “something very fast”. Yet, here we are, three years and more than a dozen developer vlogs since TallBoys’ surreal runaway sim first captured everyone’s attention (including one state-owned Russian news channel). If not for its Kafkaesque premise, which pits players against a ten-story tall looming policeman in a quest to escape a small town, then definitely because of the game’s ambitious voice recognition feature that promised real-time conversation instead of pre-written dialogue.