Visual style: Similar graphics and atmosphere to early STALKER games, with Eastern European/Soviet influenced design
Description: I’m trying to find this game I heard about from a South American gaming YouTuber a few years back. The title sounded like it had Slavic origins, maybe something like Zoroborg or Sorbourg.
The entire game takes place inside a huge residential building that you never escape from. Two groups control different areas - security forces and maintenance crews. Both work for some mysterious higher authority that might not even exist. There’s this toxic gas spreading through the building that kills people or transforms them into creatures. The maintenance team tries to contain the gas while the security forces keep order.
Regular residents live throughout the building in constant terror of both the monsters and the oppressive guards. You play as someone just trying to stay alive in this nightmare.
The YouTuber mentioned it was popular in Eastern European gaming communities but relatively unknown elsewhere. The NPCs looked similar to STALKER characters.
That description rings a bell but I can’t place the exact title. Sounds like one of those underground Eastern European games that never got proper localization. The apartment complex setting with competing factions is pretty unique for that era.
Damn, this is bugging me now too. The whole apartment complex premise with gas and factions sounds really specific. I’ve played tons of obscure Eastern European horror games from that era and nothing’s clicking. Could it have been called something totally different in English? Sometimes those indie horror titles got weird translations. Or maybe it was one of those games that only existed on Russian forums and never made it to mainstream download sites.
This sounds like it could be Pathologic, but that’s more of a survival game than an FPS. The Eastern European setting and oppressive atmosphere match though. Another possibility is some obscure mod for STALKER that turned it into an apartment building scenario. Those kinds of total conversion mods were pretty common back then and would explain why it stayed within Eastern European gaming circles.