Chernobylite 2: Exclusion Zone - Interview

Prankster101 interviewed Development Director Wojtek Pazdur about Chernobylite 2: Exclusion Zone:

Chernobylite 2: Exclusion Zone – interview with Wojtek Pazdur (Development Director, The Farm 51)

With the Chernobyl nuclear disaster proving to be an incredibly fertile setting for a number of highly acclaimed games (like the S.T.A.L.K.E.R and Metro series) another game which draws inspiration from the Chernobyl exclusion zone is Chernobylite – a post-apocalyptic first person survival game that was developed by Polish game developer The Farm 51 and released in 2021 to generally favourable reviews.

Now 4 years later, The Farm 51 are readying its sequel for release and are looking to build upon what they’ve done previously. As part of this, I got to speak with Wojtek Pazdur (Development Director, The Farm 51) and was able to find out a little bit more about his upcoming game project, Chernobylite 2: Exclusion Zone, and also got to ask him about his background in game development. Enjoy!

Chernobylite 2 is the sequel to the original Chernobylite game. What’s the development history?

Well, the original Chernobylite is the project that we started work on in 2017 and it was right after the success of our virtual reality application called Chernobyl VR Project – a sort of serious application which was a virtual trip to Chernobyl. We went to the place, we 3D scanned many objects in the Chernobyl zone, and we recorded interviews with many people who were somehow touched by the catastrophe in Chernobyl. And then we made this interactive documentary about the Chernobyl catastrophe. But because it was quite successful, and it was presented in virtual reality, many people kept asking us, “why not make a game about it?” And then we decided, “yes, this is a great subject for making a game.” So we had to figure out what this game should be all about, besides the fact that it’s located in such a strange, mysterious and amazing place, like Chernobyl’s zone was for us. So we decided that we should make a mix of survival and RPG game, which was the first Chernobylite.

What are the main differences between the first game and the second game? How have you been able to build upon the first game in terms of its strengths whilst also trying to minimise its weaknesses and bringing those to the sequel?

Well, the first Chernobylite game was quite successful. We saw that our approach regarding the early access, regarding the Kickstarter campaign, allowed us to work together with our community and this led us to create something good. We were happy with the outcome and players were happy with the game. So we decided that we wanted to make another project which is similar to Chernobylite, but it doesn’t necessarily have to be a sequel. It was more like the same game, but much better because we had a very strict limitation with the first Chernobylite regarding the technology, the budget, and the amount of people involved in the project and so on.

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Thanks Couchpotato!