Chernobylite is a survival-horror game about looking for your girlfriend in the Zone

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The Farm 51, the studio behind games like the promising online shooter World War 3 and the uneven Get Even, has finally turned the light on Chernobylite, a "science fiction survival-horror experience" it teased last year. In case the title isn't a dead giveaway, the game is set in the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone, 30 years after the events that led to its creation, and it bears more than a passing resemblance to that other Chernobyl-based shooter series, Stalker.

Like Stalker, Chernobylite promises to let players freely explore a "beautiful and horrifyingly accurate" recreation of the Zone, which is populated with stalkers (yes, that's what they're called) who you can work with but probably shouldn't trust. You'll do battle with strange, dangerous creatures (not mutants, though—these beasts come from an alternate reality), craft equipment and manage supplies, and pursue a strange, semi-supernatural story in the ruined remains of an overgrown, poorly-lit town.

Chernobylite's story has a more personal bent, however. You were a young physicist when the incident at Chernobyl stole your girlfriend from you. 30 years later, you remain haunted by the event, and so you do the reasonable thing and seek out the services of a good therapist. No, wait, that's not it—actually, you suit up and head to the Zone, where the decades you spent in a laboratory will surely prove useful as you try not to die.

I dig the premise, and I have reasonable hope that The Farm 51 will be able to pull it off. It's an experienced studio—prior to Get Even, it released Necrovision and Painkiller: Hell and Damnation—and while its games, with the possible exception of World War 3, are what you might call "offbeat," you want a little jank in your irradiated Soviet bizzaro-shooters or you're just not getting the full experience.

Speaking of World War 3, the studio said that Chernobylite will not impact the work on that game. "Since the beginning of both projects, work on Chernobylite was never interfering with the development of World War 3 and vice versa," a rep said. "Chernobylite is developed by the team that previously worked on Get Even. World War 3 was initiated much earlier than Chernobylite and is managed by entirely separate staff."

There's no indication of a release date at this point, but there is a website at chernobylgame.com, and it's also listed on Steam.

Andy has been gaming on PCs from the very beginning, starting as a youngster with text adventures and primitive action games on a cassette-based TRS80. From there he graduated to the glory days of Sierra Online adventures and Microprose sims, ran a local BBS, learned how to build PCs, and developed a longstanding love of RPGs, immersive sims, and shooters. He began writing videogame news in 2007 for The Escapist and somehow managed to avoid getting fired until 2014, when he joined the storied ranks of PC Gamer. He covers all aspects of the industry, from new game announcements and patch notes to legal disputes, Twitch beefs, esports, and Henry Cavill. Lots of Henry Cavill.