Your family鈥檚 past has already made the choice for you.
On August 13, 1992, Nastya arrives in the remote village of Peski, where she once spent her summers with her grandmother. After a failed business venture and mounting debts, she hopes to find money or valuables in the now-abandoned house鈥攕omething that could help her start over.
The last bus departs, the house turns out to be empty, and all that remains of her grandmother鈥檚 former life are old photographs, a strange ring delivered in a parcel, and a children鈥檚 storybook with pages torn out.
As darkness falls, the familiar village begins to change. Lights appear in abandoned houses, silhouettes emerge on the roads, and eerie voices drift from the locked basement.
To escape Peski, Nastya must discover what happened there many years ago鈥攁nd why the past has been waiting for her all this time.
Return to the village of your childhood
Explore Peski, a small Russian village whose outward tranquillity conceals a long-buried tragedy.
Survive the horrors of your grandmother鈥檚 house, neighbouring yards, abandoned gardens, the cemetery, underground passages, forest trails, a sunflower field, and dark labyrinths. Familiar places will gradually distort, revealing new paths, dangers, and fragments of the past.
The objects left behind preserve Nastya鈥檚 childhood memories. An old bicycle, family photographs, a piggy bank, toys, and other belongings from her childhood will help you better understand her relationship with her grandmother鈥攁nd why she stayed away for so long.
Explore, observe, and find a way forward
Search rooms, find keys and tools, collect story-related items, and interact with the environment.
To progress, you will need to:
respect local superstitions;
hide from possessed villagers or fight them;
unlock doors and discover hidden passages;
search for the missing pages of an old fairy tale to remember how it ended;
solve puzzles connected to the village and its former inhabitants鈥攁nd much more.
Some answers are hidden in plain sight. Others will reveal themselves only to those who carefully examine their surroundings and notice how they change.
Hide from those who have come looking for you
Most threats cannot be defeated through direct confrontation.
Listen for footsteps behind the walls and choose the right moment to leave your hiding place. Hide beneath beds and tables, sneak past your pursuers, and try not to give yourself away when the enemy is dangerously close.
You will face relentless chases, deadly traps, and creatures born from the village鈥檚 fears, curses, and Nastya鈥檚 memories.
To survive these encounters, you will need to rely on cunning, the items you find, and the environment itself. A single mistake could be Nastya鈥檚 last.
Collect the pages of a forgotten fairy tale
When Nastya was a child, her grandmother used to read her a story about a girl who travelled to a distant fairy-tale kingdom to visit her godmother, a powerful sorceress.
Now the pages of that book are scattered throughout the village.
At first, it seems to be nothing more than an old fairy tale. Yet its events begin to mirror what is happening around you with increasing accuracy, revealing the fates of the villagers and providing clues to the path ahead.
The more pages you find, the harder it becomes to tell where the children鈥檚 story ends鈥攁nd the true past of Peski begins.
Watch the familiar world turn into a nightmare
Your journey begins on a sunny August day among old houses, vegetable gardens, and fields of sunflowers. As night approaches, the village grows increasingly dark and hostile.
The everyday aesthetic of the early 1990s intertwines with rural superstitions, pagan symbols, and surreal body horror.
Buried secrets are still waiting beneath the ground.
Who was the woman Nastya remembers as cold and indifferent? Why did the villagers bring her their valuables? Who sent Nastya the ring after her death?
Through memories, environmental clues, pages of the fairy tale, and encounters with the inhabitants of Peski, you will piece together the events that led to the village鈥檚 destruction.
Multiple Endings
At the heart of the story lies a choice between the desire for wealth and the chance to leave the past behind.
Nastya鈥檚 decisions will shape the final events and lead to different endings. Yet no choice will allow her to completely forget what happened in Peski.
Sometimes evil sleeps deep beneath the ground. Sometimes it waits within a person.
