General News - Niche games from Eastern Europe

Gamasutra has an article on the phenomenon of 'hardcore realism' games from Eastern Europe and what drives it.

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Others stumbled into the hardcore survival subgenre more by accident. Alexander Dergay, CEO of Belarusian studio Aterdux Entertainment and one of the minds behind fantasy RPG Legends of Eisenwald fell into the industry after playing a game that changed his life” 

 “In 2007 I played a game called Discord Times. After I finished the game, I felt like something important had left my life and I tried to look up who the developers were," says Dergay. "And I found they were in my home city in Minsk, and then I just wanted to meet them and talk to them. To kind of add some more value to my worth, I decided to pretend to be an investor who was interested in making a sequel to that game.” 

Certainly an unconventional approach, but Dergay was welcomed by the team, even after they found out he wasn’t an investor in the traditional sense. Dergay threw all of his money into creating Legends of Eisenwald, eventually turning to Kickstarter when the team found themselves strapped for cash.

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Aterdux Entertainment's tactical RPG has a very deep combat system

“We kind of struggled in the beginning financially, but then as we went on to early access and then we released the game, it didn't become an instant bestseller that we had hoped, but I think it would have been much more financially successful if we were more experienced and were able to shorten our development time,” Dergay says.

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