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The devs of surreal escape sim Militsioner explain how they’ve shrunk their giant ambitionTallBoys cut their voice recognition feature and added a tutorial
TallBoys cut their voice recognition feature and added a tutorial
Image credit:TallBoys
Image credit:TallBoys
Having said that, I’m not entirely surprised that Vladimir Semenets, the lead game designer ofMilitsioner, 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 Russiannews 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.
While this optional tutorial feels like a great way to introduce newcomers to the basics of stealth sims, TallBoys admit that wasn’t why it was added. “Some testers completely ignored the Militsioner and most of the mechanics, like the time system, that we spent a lot of time to make. It felt like they were playing someone else’s game,” Dmitry Shevchenko, Militsioner’s game designer and the head of studio operations, explains, and promises that all of this tutorialising will be naturally eased into the final game. He says the team “spent months trying to understand what we really needed” for the tutorial, adding that they all admire the masterclass way Nintendo “introduce complex mechanics so effortlessly” in modern The Legend Of Zelda titles.
Image credit:TallBoys
If all this sounds a bit like planning an execution as Agent 47, it’s not far from the truth, as that’s exactly the feeling TallBoys were aiming for. Semenets says that theHitmangames were one of the biggest inspirations for Militsioner, also citing theDishonoredseries. “They play like immersive sims: there’s an open map which allows the player to explore different ways and approaches to reach their goal. We tried to model escaping in Militsioner as if it was elimination in Hitman games,” he tells me.
After spending more than two hours trying to please this Leviathan-sized Russian cop while trying new ways to escape his regime, I felt Stockholm syndrome was beginning to take hold. I wanted freedom, sure, but every time Militsioner caught me and interrogated me about the weirdos I met in the village (without spoiling too much, Zelda fans will be delighted with a nod to one of Majora’s Mask’s strangest characters), I couldn’t help but feel like his stoic facade was starting to loosen up. Him being the titular character, it only makes sense that players get to know their captor’s whole deal.
“For the narrative of Militsioner to work, you will be playing as different characters,” Semenets explains. “It wouldn’t work if you escape and snap right back into it. Not only will this change the approach of him catching you as a criminal, but the dynamic between him and the player.” While TallBoys didn’t say how many different escape scenarios we’re talking about for the final game, they were happy to share what overarching story lies behind this Kafkaesque Groundhog Day.
“The story idea is that Militsioner is pushing the ground downward so the town is getting flooded. He’s flooding himself, but he wants to retain his power,” Semenets says before Nikita K., the game’s composer and animator, takes over: “Our game is basically about choosing between escaping or not. Every citizen should answer this question [of] why he chooses to escape or not. Militsioner will explain why he doesn’t escape, why he sits on the ground and creates this deep pit that slowly gets flooded. That’s the moral dilemma we try to explore more in our game.” Deep, yes, but at the same time, very Dostoevsky-esque.
Image credit:TallBoys
Only a few studios have as much first-hand experience in escaping as TallBoys. After all, in their lastdeveloper vlogthey revealed that part of the team had to flee their homes in Russia, due to numerous repressive policies targeting any “anti-military stance [that] can result in lengthy prison terms.”
When asked where the team’s fascination with fleeing comes from - a motif evident in both of the studio’s previous games - Shevchenko likened every TallBoys project to a therapeutic memento. “With Where the Clouds End, for example, we wanted to express our tiredness, being burnt out. Where with Pandemic Express, we explored some form of escaping and trying to find something new,” he says. “In Militsioner we’re trying to describe a real situation.”
Image credit:TallBoys
For a studio that has been forced to flee its home and scale down its Brobdingnagian vision stuck in a development hamster wheel, I was expecting more regretful, world-weary sighs. But in fact, all three TallBoys' members radiate the energy of a game dev on the brink of a breakthrough. Does that mean the finish line is on the horizon?
“We do have a deadline actually,” Shevchenko promises. “At the beginning, we felt like we were relaxed in our development - there were deadlines but they were really soft. It was as if we were making this game for fun.” Naturally, Shevchenko and Semenets are playing coy about Militsioner’s release date, only hinting that it might take about 10 hours to beat, based on players' experience with similar games.
After spending the better part of the demo toying around with Militsioner’s world, testing how reactive this Orwellian toybox is, it’s not difficult to see why TallBoys are not in a rush to make any big announcements. You can play it like a shameless criminal, smashing the ticket booth’s window with a brick, snatching the ticket and making a run for it, before (verbally) flipping off the giant. Or you can play along, interacting with its wacky characters and collecting hints about Militsioner’s delicate sleeping patterns.
With the addition of a few more missions, some new dialogue lines to compliment the policeman’s uniform, and Militsioner’s tweaked morality system - which is currently fairly rudimentary - TallBoys might have something big enough to compete with the immersive sim giants.
