Asger Risom
Upcoming Ukrainian game Hollow Home uses interactive storytelling to portray life inside besieged Mariupol, reflecting how games are increasingly being used as a way to process trauma, preserve memory and document civilian experiences during war.
A new Ukrainian video game is using interactive storytelling to explore one of the darkest chapters of Russia’s invasion — not through combat, but through survival, memory and the emotional collapse of everyday life during war.
The upcoming title Hollow Home places players inside the siege of Mariupol through the perspective of a 14-year-old boy, reflecting a broader movement in Ukrainian art and gaming that is increasingly using culture as a way to process trauma, preserve memory and document life during wartime.
A war story without combat
According to Ukrainian outlet Village, narrative-driven game Hollow Home is scheduled for release on Steam later in 2026.
Developed by Ukrainian studio Twigames and supported internationally by German publisher Crunchy Leaf Games, the project follows Maksym, a teenager trying to survive the first weeks of Russia’s full-scale invasion in Mariupol.
Rather than focusing on firefights or military action, the game centers on civilian survival.
Players search for food and supplies, help other survivors and navigate moral decisions as the city slowly collapses around them.
The developers deliberately avoided traditional combat mechanics, instead building the experience around dialogue, psychological pressure and the emotional exhaustion of living through siege conditions.
Video games as testimony
The project reflects how video games are increasingly being used not simply as entertainment, but as a form of cultural testimony.
Like film, literature or painting, narrative games are becoming a medium through which societies process violence, grief and historical trauma.
In Hollow Home, the city itself becomes part of the storytelling.
The ruined streets of Mariupol are not presented as a battlefield to conquer, but as a place where ordinary life is gradually erased under war.
That focus on civilian experience has helped the project gain recognition inside the gaming industry, winning awards at Games Gathering 2024 and Indie Cup Ukraine.
Art during wartime
The game also arrives amid a wider wave of Ukrainian cultural projects exploring war, repression and national identity through art.
Another recent Ukrainian game, The Hollow, draws inspiration from Ivan Bahrianyi’s novel Tiger Trappers and explores Soviet repression through an alternate-history narrative set around a secret Gulag-era facility in Siberia.
Both projects reflect a broader trend emerging across Ukrainian literature, film, music and gaming since 2022: the use of art not only to document war, but to emotionally survive it.
That same theme appears in journalist Charlotte Higgins’ upcoming book Ukrainian Lessons, which examines how culture, creativity and daily life continue to function under invasion.
More than entertainment
The growing international attention around games like Hollow Home also highlights how interactive media is evolving as a storytelling tool.
Unlike traditional war games centered on combat, victory or military realism, projects like this attempt to place players inside the uncertainty, fear and moral strain experienced by civilians.
The result is less about action and more about empathy.
As war increasingly shapes modern Ukrainian culture, developers are turning to games not simply to recreate conflict, but to ask how people continue living through it.
Sources: Village, U24 Media
