What's up in a Kharkiv bomb shelter

gamedeveloper.com:

What's up in a Kharkiv bomb shelter is a snapshot of life within a bomb shelter during the bombing of Ukraine, letting players hear the sounds of music interspersed with explosions as they talk to the other people within the shelter, hearing stories inspired by real people and friends who shared in this experience.

Game Developer spoke with Dahuanna, developer of this emotional experience, about what it was like to create a game while inside a bomb shelter, the design ideas that went into capturing the stories of the people inside the shelter with them, and what drew them to this act of creation while enduring the bombing of Ukraine.

Game Developer: What's up in a Kharkiv bomb shelter aims to document life in a bomb shelter during the attack on Ukraine. What drew you to capture this experience with a game?

Dahuanna: In the beginning, there was a sad story. A few days after the war started, my boyfriend found an anti-war game jam. It was hosted by some Siberian game developers. The very idea of such a game jam by the Russians aroused my respect, so I decided to support their initiative and I joined with my game. Unfortunately, not everyone has the opportunity to show their political position publicly, and those guys removed our games, but that didn't matter anymore.

I chose the idea of the game, and I was fascinated by it, and nothing could stop me. There is a mess all around. Wild situations are happening, and people are going through terrible things and behaving very unusually. The people I saw were only being represented in the media as victims, suffering and oppressed by [somebody], or as heroes bravely running after humanitarian aid under [somebody's] bullets. This or that -- or both -- is only a small part of