“One of the jury members was the mother in law of Blanka and another one owns the dance studio where her dancers are employed. I’d rather not use the n-word but it does smell of nepotism”
- Swedish commentator about how Polands jury voting in their elections was rigged
local woman relieved and embarrassed to report that the task she had been postponing for two months ended up taking a grand total of 4 minutes to complete
If you play computer games, I recommend you to try the game “Black Book” by Russian game studio “Morteshka”. The game was released a couple of days ago. It’s based on real Russian folklore of Perm region (and not just on tales about poor old Baba Yaga who for some reason always is evil in western interpretations :).
The game is about a Russian peasant girl who becomes a witch for the sake of saving her lover. In the game you will meet various Slavic spirits, talk with them, fight them and/or take them into service. The genre is a RPG/visual novel/card game (fights in the form of a card game).
Flaws:
1.
The developers did not have a big budget. So that is why graphics don’t exist (models are funny). Still far landscapes are pleasant and atmospheric.
2. Some of the English-speaking gamers in Steam are talking that it’s difficult to understand and follow all the lore in the game. But still they like it so just be ready for tons of text about folklore, believes, terminology, religion stuff and etc.
Merits:
1. There are English subs and dubs (but I recommend Russian voices).
2. The game is based on the Russian folklore and a bit of Finno-Ugric (since Perm Region is also a home for Finno-Ugric people). There is a lot of information. If you interested in Russian folklore you MUST play it :)
3. It’s interesting and atmospheric. And that’s not just my opinion :)
4. You can meet demons who possess samovars, speaking demon-cats, depressed demons who is sad because their masters forgot them, demons who want to bring progress to common people, demons who torture sinners… and you can play with all of them in the card game (well most of them). You can help common people or curse them. You can befriend a soldier with pyrophobia, a cat-domovoi, a speaking head… Why yall still don’t play it?
accurate slavic/balkan/eastern european representation. or at least more of it.
and im not talking about the ‘russian/serbian guy is the main villain’ trope, im talking real representation that there was actual effort put in. i wanna see albanian dances, i wanna see polish and czech food, i wanna see the nature, heck i even wanna see slovenians and their weird obsession over mountains. i wanna hear the music, i wanna see real struggles talked about.
i want to hear the accents and the beautiful languages talked in. i want to see balkan noses and all of the slavic features shown.
