About

An isometric story-driven turn-based strategy that takes players into the heart of 1917 Russia, when a once mighty empire is crumbling. Fate strikes a terrible blow to one family when a new power is born, forcing them to flee St. Petersburg to save their lives. This new power is the harsh and dangerous Bolshevik state – a state that seems destined to wage permanent civil war against its own citizens in order to create a new type of society.

Players will witness radical changes in society as they depart on a journey through the largest country on Earth.

You will dive deep into tactical combat with various characters. Use cover, melee combat, or deadly grenades and machine guns. With enough skill, you might even be able to get on a train and make it back home.

All of that in our unique hand-drawn graphics with "old school" animations and in distinctive environments powered by Unreal Engine 4.

SUMMARY

Planned platforms: PC/Windows, Mac, Linux

Release date: late 2017

Gametime: 7-10 hours



Interested in vKontakte?

Больше информации вы найдёте в нашей группе на сайте Вконтакте.

“Maybe you are not interested in war, but war is interested in you”, - Trotsky.

Our story follows the journey of two brothers through a country on the brink of collapse. We created fictional characters that provided us with the most opportunity to explore interesting places and to experience the breaking points of the war and the revolution. The year is 1917 and the world war has been raging for three long years. People are starving, the army is disintegrating and radicals from all sides preach the advent of a new era. Earlier in the year, Nicholas II, former Tsar of the Russian Empire and Archduke of Finland, had abdicated, leaving the country to face something never before witnessed in Russia - democracy.

The provisional government pushes for reforms and elections for the Constitutional Assembly are coming up. But Russia is still at war. This is a great chance for professional revolutionaries employed by the Germans to topple the government and create a cabinet that would cease hostilities, ending the war on the Eastern front and enabling Germany and Austria-Hungary to move their troops to France and Italy to face the Entente forces.

Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov, also known as Lenin, was dispatched from Switzerland to Saint Petersburg in an armoured train to finish the job. His enemies - liberal democrats and moderate socialists - were facing a crisis, which presented him with the opportunity he needed. People are angry with the provisional government and its ineffective policies, especially in the big industrial cities of Petersburg, Moscow, Tambov and others.

On 7 November, the date our game starts, the coup began.

We meet Pavel and Vilem, both sons of Czech immigrants, on the streets of the capital. They are about to sell off their family estate and leave St. Petersburg, heading for Kiev where a large minority of Czech and Slovak people reside.

Individual parts of the story are separated by cut scenes in form of animated comics.

The man who was about to buy their small brewery is nowhere to be found and the streets are getting heated. A boy on the street shouts that the Winter Palace is about to be stormed by the Red Guard and sailors from the Baltic fleet.

In the wake of this news, the two brothers’ plan to move out peacefully is faltering.

But how can they leave this boiling city with no money? How far would they get?

500 FB shares - LINK - storyteller of our game is a character based on actual American journalist based on John Reed. If you can help us spread the word we definitely add one "fake news" side quest! :)



200 retweets - LINK - with this achievement you won´t get a sweet bird. Rather a lizzard with three heads - Zmey Gorynch himself will feature in the game! Very different experience for a while? Let´s see!



1.000 backers - that is a lot of people! It looks like you all just give us a chance to tak you into Red Army training camp! A joy to see that many faces! :)

When we first came up with the idea of making a game about the Bolshevik coup and the bloody and devastating civil war that ensued, we were stunned. There are very few films about those events, and virtually no games that could help you understand the surge that was shaking up society (now - let’s all pretend for a minute that Assassin’s Creed Chronicles: Russia never happened). This surge led to the emergence of a totalitarian superpower that ruled half the world for over 60 years.

We are not creating a parallel history, nor are we pointing to some secret societies that orchestrated it all, with a story at the end of which you should go “oh, it was all a conspiracy!”. We don't have to. The real events are powerful enough on their own. We believe it's important to talk about this moment in history. While providing us with some very grim recipes on how to enslave a population, break down resistance, and defeat the enemy, many of the ideas on how to establish a just and fair society are still very much alive today. Would you believe that not everybody was a communist? Would you believe there were major differences between the socialist parties? No, this is not a black and white story, no shortcuts in trying to grasp that day and age.

In the course of the game, players will get a glimpse of the thinking of some important historical figures, such as Lenin, Trotsky, Stalin, and Kolchak. They will witness major historical moments starting with November 7, 1917 - the day the Bolsheviks took power by force. It would be easy enough to say that in those days people were dying in their hundreds from starvation and others were shot on sight in order for their killers to have some “results”. We want you to meet those people, we want you to see their plight.

The year 1917 was a very important moment in human history. While we have hundreds of titles focusing on WW2 or Vietnam or the Cold War, we have none about the revolution that changed the lives of millions. And we believe we need such a game. Interested?

Tactical combat - We love X-Com and Jagged Alliance, and we want our game to convey the same intensity. That feeling of watching the bullets fly and hoping the plucky little fellow on the screen makes it through to see another turn. Is it better to move on and get some medical aid or just hunker down and pray? Or is all-out assault the only viable option?In Legion 1917, players will have many tactical options to choose from in their attempt to bring all their characters to safety. We believe that the core of every game experience is making meaningful choices. Which is why you will have plenty of them. Make cautious approach, moving from cover to cover? Snipe from a distance? Or would it be better to go “charge!” and just run your opposition into the ground? Or even use artillery and machine guns to make the battlefield your home ground? Perform a coup de grace from behind? We got you there!

Road-game story – This is going to be one hell of a ride every step of the way. From the opulent streets of Saint Petersburg to the frozen woods of Siberia. From shell-shocked Moscow to the rocky shores of lake Baikal. From newly independent Ukraine to the archaic and beautiful Kazakhstan. We will take you on a journey through Russia, an emotional journey full of stories and individual human destinies. Our story aims at honouring the “road movie” (or, as we call it, the road game) and offering players a unique experience.

Travel back in time - Russia in its turbulent years of revolution and civil war will rise right in front of your eyes. We are proud of our cooperation with historians and military associations. We have put a lot of effort into “getting it just right”, having period-accurate weapons, clothes, and even mannerisms. You will be submerged in Russian culture and get a vivid picture of life as it was. We want to bring you immersion that has never been seen before.

Side quests - There are so many things to discover! So many situations and sensations. Various political views and “truths”. Unable to pack it all into our main storyline, we wanted to give players more opportunities - opportunities to explore the various locations, to explore the society, and to experience different human stories. We played World of Warcraft, like many of you, so we have had our fill of the “get me 10 dead wolves pelts” type of quest. We want to bring you something more alive. Our side quests will have varied outcomes depending on your choices. Characters in your company will be affected by your decisions and will get various special abilities based on your actions. But it’s not only your characters that will be affected. Think about all the people you can save, or let die. The choice is all yours!

Special abilities - Throughout your journey you will meet all sorts of characters, and some of them will join you. No two are alike (except for those weird twins from Yekaterinburg!), and each will bring something special to your party. In addition to having their own personalities, they will also play differently. Players will be able to create combinations of those abilities to solve even the most perilous situations. Alternatively, you can also use them to perform the perfect ambush.

Sit back and read - Let’s be absolutely frank here: one of our designers plays every Assassin’s Creed game as a guided history tour. And you know what? Why not! We want to incorporate into the game an encyclopaedia that you can access from your inventory, your journal, or the main menu. We want to offer everyone a comprehensive overview of the events of 1917 and beyond. Let’s get in touch with our past; see the good things, face the vile ones, take a minute to ponder. Less than a 100 years have passed since - it’s not really that long ago.

Legion 1917 will transport you back in time. The year is 1917. Russia. The war has been raging for three long years now and the country is devastated. Industrial production has plummeted and many people are struggling to survive. At the same time, many others passionately strive to transform the world into something better.

“The speculators took advantage of the universal disorganisation to pile up fortunes, and to spend them in fantastic revelry or the corruption of Government officials. Foodstuffs and fuel were hoarded, or secretly sent out of the country to Sweden. In the first four months of the Revolution, for example, the reserve food-supplies were almost openly looted from the great Municipal warehouses of Petrograd, until the two-years’ provision of grain had fallen to less than enough to feed the city for one month....”, writes John Reed in his book Ten days that shook the world. Whatever we may think about his political views, his description is pretty accurate when it comes to simply looking at the situation in Russia.Players will be able to explore the world in real time when out of combat. You can look for vendors, talk to people, and uncover side quests. Or even search for collectables and just enjoy the visit.

Our game is not a sandbox. It’s a railroad with many turns. From time to time you arrive at a station where you can do pretty much whatever you want.

During summer, we would like to release a closed beta version of our game. This will allow all the backers at tier HERO FROM ZBOROV and higher to get a taste of our work. There will be a few starting missions to enjoy, and some side quests to investigate.

Our game runs on Unreal Engine 4, which offers us a great base for development. We are working in a 3D environment into which we implement our 2D handmade animations. We are confident this combination will produce some stunning imagery and create a great atmosphere to delve into.

Unreal Engine’s blueprint technology gives each member of our team a chance to be part of the creation process. Our level designers and artists are able to put their hands straight on the pulse of development in a quick and easy fashion.

Check out our Youtube Channel where we upload our making of videos and more.

It is always tricky to create the right plan of approach to videogame localisation. Our game is going to give you a lot of text through the encyclopaedia, the journals, and dialogue. We will have texts in Czech, English, and Russian. We will try to add more languages (French, German etc.) as we move along.

When it comes to languages, the other issue is voice acting. Due to the depth of the conversations in the game we are designing, voice acting will have a supporting role in creating outstanding atmosphere and unique immersion for the player.

We want to have our voices in languages appropriate for the characters. In other words, Russians will speak Russian, Germans will speak German and Czechoslovaks will speak their respective languages (including accents).

“Whatever happened to English?” you might be asking now.

We discussed this issue at length and decided to avoid English voice acting. There are two reasons for this:

a) Casting and recording high-quality English voice acting is very complicated and expensive for a Central European game studio, and we would like to invest our time and money into something better than low-quality voice acting.

b) The second reason is more “artistic”. We believe a lot of people are tired of hearing English with a Russian accent. It might be relevant in movies, but in our case it is not that essential. We are creating a game about Eastern Europe and Russia, and almost all the characters hail from that part of the world. It makes sense to provide our players with an experience that reflects that, and original languages play a very important role in this.

CREDITS:

Tomislav Cecka - writer, creative director

David Wagner - design

Milan Mancel - programming

Mark Sidlovsky - lead artist

Silvester Bucek - design/level design



Please stop by on our FACEBOOK PAGE!

Больше информации вы найдёте в нашей группе на сайте Вконтакте.

There are three main reasons why we are here and why we made you watch our weird faces in the video above. :)

DEPTH + SCOPE -While the core of our game mechanic is coming to life, we want to put more content in it. We are talking about the main quests, side quests, and various outcomes that arise from your decisions; additional game mechanics and tweaks; production values such as music, characters, animations and levels. All this needs funding, so our team can focus solely on the game instead of looking for part-time jobs and second careers. Without this funding we would only be able to release a limited part of our vision, or work on the project for years to come in our spare time, which seldom results in a great game.

COMMUNITY -We are a small independent studio of gamers. All of us have, at some point in their lives, discussed various games on forums, comment sections, and in bars over a beer. Kickstarter offers us a great opportunity to hear your opinion on our project, as well as your feedback and ideas on how to do things better. We want to develop our ideas together with the people who are interested in the final product, rather than those merely concerned with cash flow in Q3 in 20XX or whatever. We can't wait to hear your thoughts and feedback, and we want to provide you with a unique experience in your gaming career. Cut out the middleman.

INTEREST - There is a chance that we are completely wrong and that nobody is actually interested in a tactical, turn-based strategy about the Bolsheviks, the White Army, and the long Siberian nights, in which temperature drops below -35 degrees Celsius. We hope not, but Kickstarter is a great way of finding out how interesting our idea and its execution really is.