#ARCTIC. #SIBERIA. THIS IS TAIMYR. The game, called Yakut, will become a tundra life simulator, the developers say.
Students from the Russian technological university (RTU MIREA), Novosibirsk state technical university (NSTU) and Samara national research university (SNRU) are working on the creation of Yakut. According to the Arctic development portal GoArctic, players will have to engage in reindeer herding and survive in the tundra difficult conditions, relying on the animals’ help. The development was noted at the all-Russian competition for the search and development of talents in the gaming industry Start the Game, where promising projects are awarded grants for subsequent development. The simulator has no analogues yet, in addition, it falls into the state agenda aimed at popularizing the national traditions of the Russian Federation peoples.
“The development team’s goal is to create an educational and informational project, a simulator, to be exact; to display cultural features – in this case, Yakutia, to show the importance of reindeer for the traditional economy of the indigenous peoples of the North. According to the Yakut project head Vlad Panshin, the motto of the educational game was the phrase: “Life in the tundra puts everything in its place. Here you quickly understand what is important and what is secondary, what is right and what is not. Without reindeer, there will be no man”, the portal reports.
In the current version, the game process is still simple: the player must feed the reindeer and himself, collect resources such as moss and make sure that the hero-character does not get hypothermia and die of hunger. Interaction with the reindeer can be different – from care and affection to sending them to slaughter for meat. Currently, there are three types of reindeer in the game, each with its own habits. In the future, the developers plan to show not only the life/everyday life of one character, but also the social environment: how people gathered in settlements, what they did, what cultural heritage they created.
Earlier, we wrote that a new subsection – In the Languages of Indigenous Peoples – was opened on the portal of the region’s Agency for the Development of Northern Territories and Support of Indigenous Minorities, where articles in the Nganasan and Evenki languages are posted.
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Text: Maria Sokolova, Photo: Denis Kozhevnikov
