МАРШРУТ - The games

VAZ-2121 Niva, red

Bought in Bishkek from a retired engineer. Rust on the sills, heater stuck on high, has never once failed to start.

Scenery 01 Breaking her Нива in. Bishkek, Chuy Valley

ОБКАТКАBreaking her Нива in

I had owned the car for nine days when I took it out past the last bus stop to find out whether it would climb anything. It would. Back in the city it rains sideways, the trolleybus wires hum, and every intersection is wider than it needs to be, which is the only reason I survived learning to drive it.

Start The story

How it works

Time trial. Four gates on the way, each one buys you seconds; miss the clock and the run ends where it stands.

Arrows, WASD steer, throttle, brake

Space brake

V view

O sight

Esc pause

R restart

M sound

GAZ-66, the shishiga

Two and a half tons of army truck with the engine under your knees and a box body that was somebody's field laboratory. It floats over gravel that would shake the Niva to pieces, and it does not hurry.

Scenery 02 The long pull of Шишига. M41, Pamir Highway

ТЯГАThe long pull of Шишига

On the roof of the Shishiga, four thousand meters up, the sky goes a blue you do not get at sea level, and the road stops pretending to be a road. Gravel, meltwater across the track, rock coming off the left-hand wall, and livestock with absolute right of way. The truck does not hurry. Neither should you.

Start The story

How it works

Time trial. Four gates on the way, each one buys you seconds; miss the clock and the run ends where it stands.

Arrows, WASD steer, throttle, brake

Space brake

V view

O sight

Esc pause

R restart

M sound

Antonov An-2

The biplane takes off at the speed other aircraft taxi. Zaporizhzhia, borrowed headset, lower wing warm from the sun.

Scenery 03 Touch and go with Аннушка. High Caucasus, winter

КАСАНИЕTouch and go with Аннушка

A borrowed biplane, a valley field with three runways and a tower that still has a man in it, and eleven kilometers away a shelf cut into a mountain with room for exactly one strip. You climb the whole way or you do not arrive. The An-2 does not mind the cold. It minds the altitude.

Start The story

How it works

Time trial. Four gates on the way, each one buys you seconds; miss the clock and the run ends where it stands.

Arrows, WASD steer, throttle, brake

Space brake

V view

O sight

Esc pause

R restart

M sound

Buran 1K1

Eighty tonnes of glider with no engines and one approach. She flew the whole thing herself once, in 1988, and never flew again.

Scenery 04 Dead stick at Baikonur. November 15, 1988

СПУСКDead stick at Baikonur

The orbiter came home without a crew, through snow the launch rules said was too much, and no engines to argue with. One approach, one runway in forty kilometers of steppe, and a computer that put her three meters from the centerline. Your turn. The storm has not moved.

Start

How it works

Time trial with no engine. Four gates on the corridor, each one buys you seconds. Height is the only fuel you have, and there is no second approach.

Left, right bank into the turn

Up raise the nose, stretch the glide

Down lower the nose, trade height for speed

V cockpit or outside

O look level, down, up

Esc pause

R restart

M sound

Panel house, Balti

Five storeys of poured concrete with a hospital inside it. The front door is at one end, the cellar is under the other, and the bus stops outside at 5:40.

Balti, Moldova October 1998

ВЫПИСКАOne night with Иванов

From the novel Ivanov's Ghost. You wake in a bed that is not yours, in a hospital that stopped being one some years ago. The front door is locked and the porter wants papers you do not have. The papers are in the cellar. The bus leaves at 5:40 and it comes once.

12 rooms19 passagesone bus

Start The novel

How it works

Doctors see you: stay out of the cone, duck into an alcove, or steal a white coat and walk. The thing in the cellar does not see. It hears how far the building has undressed you, and no coat helps against that. Every room is a pre-rendered still, the way games looked in 1998, and you can drag to turn and tilt it; Elara herself is real 3D in front of it.

Arrows, WASD turn and walk

Shift move slowly

Ctrl crouch

Space, E use a door, take a thing

Drag turn and tilt the room

H hints on and off

Б-59, Project 641

Ninety meters of diesel boat built for the North Atlantic and sent to the tropics. The air conditioning gave out first, the batteries next; the crew held.

Scenery 06 Sargasso Sea. October 27, 1962

ВСПЛЫТИЕOne night aboard Б-59

Sixty degrees in the compartments, the air going bad, and a picket line upstairs dropping grenades that mean come up and say hello. There is a torpedo aboard that nobody must touch, and the whole night is about not touching it. Bring her up at the far end of the dark, slowly, with nothing fired.

Start

How it works

A stealth run on points. The engine order is your loudest decision: the layer hides you, the canyon shields you, the silt blinds you, and the kraken hears everything. Depth is bought back with battery or air, and the last twenty meters decide the night.

Left, right engine order down, up

Up, down planes: rise, dive

B blow ballast, loud

E echo sounder, loud

V control room or outside

O periscope, above 16 m

Esc pause

R restart

M sound