In March, Slavania, the debut game by FrostLeaf Games studio, published by Game Art Pioneers, was released on Steam. We talked with Vladimir Averyanov, the game designer of the project, about how the metroidvania was developed based on Russian fairy tales.

On April 11, the global strategy Revival: Recolonization was released on PC in full. App2Top talked with Sergey Ulankin, head of console and PC publishing at HeroCraft, about how development was going, how successful early access was, about working with VK Play, and much more.

There is little talk about games in the Telegram messenger. We decided to fix the situation by talking with Daria Novikova, product director at PlayDeck startup. The latter launched a gaming marketplace for Telegram. In a conversation with Daria, we touched on topics such as user engagement, earnings from leading projects, monetization and, of course, PlayDeck itself.

App2Top interviewed Roman Gordy, one of the co-founders of the service, discussing the impact of relocation on the gaming industry and the favored destinations among Russian developers.

Ahead of the imminent release of the Indika third-person action game from Odd Meter, now based in Kazakhstan, we spoke with studio head Dmitry Svetlov.

In early October, a crowdfunding campaign to raise money for the development of the game Vasilisa and Baba Yaga was successfully completed. The game developers from the St. Petersburg studio Baba Yaga Games received 960 thousand rubles from sponsors. App2Top talked to Asya Yurina, co-founder of the studio, about how the campaign was going.

In October, it became known that the basis of the new Russian open engine Nau Engine will be a solution from Gaijin Entertainment — Dagor Engine. App2Top talked with Andrey Karsakov, Head of Nau Engine development, about how it happened and what technologies the engine will support.

In February, the official comic book for the Shadow Fight franchise appeared on the bookshelves of the CIS. We talked with Nikita Korzhavin, Nekki‘s business development director, about how the comic was being worked on and what task it solves for the game franchise.

At the beginning of 2023, Terra Nil, an inversion construction simulator about ecology, will be released on Steam. We publish an interview with the producer of the project Ruan Rothmann (Ruan Rothmann).

About the situation in Green Grey, salaries of Russian developers and gray schemes for transferring money to the country — in an interview with Sergey Belyaev, co-founder of the Infusion Games studio.

Yesterday VK announced a change in the commission policy of the VK Play platform, whose store component is the Russian equivalent of Steam. Now developers can count on 95% of the sales of games hosted on the site. We talked in detail about the nuances of the initiative with Rodion Kotelnikov, CTO VK Play.

In mid-May, Playkot hosted the global launch of its new Spring Valley game. By June, its business metrics had reached excellent values: the percentage of those paying was 7.7%, and the retention of the first day for organics was 41%. We talked about the history of Spring Valley and the specifics of its development with the producers of the game — Evgeny Smirnov and Konstantin Popov.

In November 2020, Saber Interactive, a subsidiary of Embracer Group, acquired a 100% stake in the Italian studio 34BigThings. We contacted Valerio Di Donato, CEO of 34BigThings, to discuss the implications of the takeover for a studio that has always prided itself on its freedom and “strangeness.”

How many times has the number of “Allods Online” registrations increased in recent weeks, how things are going in the store with premium projects, why does he need browser games with advertising monetization – we talked about this and much more with Rodion Kotelnikov, the head of MY.GAMES Store.

Dying Light 2 Stay Human shows excellent sales at the start. However, Techland encountered a lot of problems during production. We talked with a senior studio producer about the difficulties of developing a sequel, the expansion of the company, the work of the narrative team and the impact of the pandemic on internal processes.

The other day on App2Top.ru there was a live broadcast with Anton Vinogradov, co—founder of the Samustai studio, which is engaged in porting indie titles to the console and publishing them. We talked in detail about the process of transferring games, optimization and the difficulties of working with different platforms. They also touched upon business processes, including revenue distribution, features of console marketing and sales.

App2Top.ru I conducted a live broadcast with Kirill Zolovkin, an indie developer and founder of the Heart Core studio. We discussed the problem of the shortage of personnel in the Russian game market, the nuances of development for PC and consoles, and also talked about the pros and cons of the GameMaker engine.

The other day App2Top.ru conducted a live broadcast with Alexey “Flazm“ Davydov, an indie developer and head of the studio of the same name. We talked in detail about the development of the Time Loader physical puzzle, the mechanics of the game and the difficulties encountered in the process. They also discussed working with publishers, the modern indie scene and budgets.

On October 20, a space western from Alawar was released on Steam. The novelty is called They Always Run. Its unique feature is a hand—drawn visual style. We talked about how it was created with the producer and lead artist of the game Stepan Komarov.