Bright Lights of Svetlov, interview with Vladimir Cholokyan

We recently reviewed on our online newspaper Bright Lights of Svetlov, an interesting walking simulator set in the Soviet Union and developed by a single person, Vladimir Cholokyan. Young Russian developer (and writer, since he published his first novel two years ago) residing in Penza, and with a great desire to carve out his own space in the market

The game debuted on PC two years ago, while it recently landed on consoles. A short but intense experience, which really impressed us. We therefore decided to contact the developer to ask him a few questions and get to know him better. Here is our chat with the developer, Vladimir Cholokyan. For friends who don’t speak English, here is the Italian version of Our interview. Enjoy the reading.

Introduce yourself to the italian public.

My name is Vladimir Cholokyan. I was born in Russia and still live here in a city named Penza, which is roughly about 700 km to the East from Moscow. I studied at the Faculty of Foreign Languages, but I’ve always wanted to make games. Probably, since I was 13 or so. The turning point for me was the release of the first S.T.A.L.K.E.R game – Shadow of Chernobyl. I realized then, that games can be set in familiar settings, in decorations you see every day, and that was fascinating. Before that all games I played and knew about were mostly developed in the US and set somewhere far from not only Russia, but Europe in general.

How the idea of Bright Lights of Svetlov was born?

Bright Lights of Svetlov was my second serious attempt to create an indie game. The first one was in between 2014 and 2016 and died out because of the lack of planning. I was very determined in my own sphere (I did everything, except for programming) and relied heavily on my friend, who volunteered to code. The game was quite light in terms of programming requirements, but still I didn’t get nearly enough help and just decided to stop. I sold some of the assets at the Unity Asset Store and that was basically my first money earned from game development. After that a few years had passed, I switched to Unreal Engine and was making some prototypes for practice purposes only.

In 2020 I started an unnamed project (the game folder is still called New_Project) set in a soviet block building. I liked the idea of creating a game based around one specific location, but in different time periods. At first, I wanted to make something with a greater time range (1920s – 1950s – 1980s – Future) and tell a story of one family throughout, but quickly managed my ambitions (four drastically different time periods were quite a lot to handle for one person). Then my friend reminded me about the real event this game is based on (I’m not naming it here) and something switched in my head, that was exactly what I needed. Perfect match.

A technical curiosity: how long did it take you to make the game? Knowing that its duration is more or less that of a film.

The game was in development for 1.5 years, but bear in mind that it was mostly a part-time activity. I worked a normal job and was spending free hours (evenings and nights, for the most part) learning the engine and creating assets. I knew beforehand that Steam has a 2-hour mark for any game to be refunded, but I had no intention to artificially increase the walkthrough duration. In fact, I am more inclined to play smaller games and get the complete experience, rather than spending 100 hours on grinding useless and repetitive open world stuff.

How did the public react? Are you satisfied with the feedback that the game is getting, even on the market?

I got to the release date without any expectations whatsoever. By browsing through Steam I knew that 99% of new games do not reach any level of visibility and remain hidden somewhere in deep cellars of the market with 0 – 10 reviews. But I did everything I could, sent keys to famous youtubers and bloggers, wrote some articles on various gamedev portals, and just waited for the result. I think, for a game so genre-specific and created by a solo-dev with no previous experience it is a significant result and rather positive. At least it gives me moral strength and desire to continue working on future titles.

The game seems to be inspired by very real situations and routines, are these things you’ve experienced yourself?

Well, not really. Of course, for every person who was born in former soviet countries everything shown in this game is extremely familiar and nostalgic. For some this is a positive reminder of their youth and childhood, for some a present day situation, and they don’t get why this game exists in the first place. Because they still live in apartments, not so different from what is shown here under the label “1980s”.

During our review we ventured the hypothesis that behind the game there is a real message of denunciation. Maybe avoiding spoilers, is it really like this? Tell us.

I tried to focus on personal stories here, but of course you can cast this on what happened to the Soviet Union. Because it is an integral part of that system, and this real event happened there, not anywhere else. The Soviet Union collapsed 30 years ago and there’s so many different articles, films, theories about the reasons and how bad it was that I decided to step aside a little bit and create a game that is more grounded. At the end of the day, this is just my take on reflecting times when I was not even born yet.

How is the situation in Russia today, for a game developer? Are there any problems or difficulties in promoting video games, even abroad? Give us an overview.

As for promotion, I don’t think there were any problems with that. The initial release was on the 15th of September, 2021 and most of the promotion was done back then. The only problem is that I can not receive revenue from Steam, because all of the main banks in Russia are under severe sanctions or have incredible transfer fees for dollar accounts (up to 50% of what you’ve earned). So I am now in the process of resolving this issue, which is not fun, that’s for sure.

What are your future projects? Is there any intervention planned on Bright Lights of Svetlov? Or do you already have an idea for a new videogame?

My next game is in development roughly from November 2021, not long after the Pc release of Svetlov. But it was quite a rough development cycle with several pauses. I wanted to create this game full-time at first, but eventually I switched to part-time, because I needed a job to make ends meet. (By the way, this is a gamedev-related job, so I work both fulltime and parttime in this sphere). The new game is quite far from being finished, I have my own internal deadlines, but don’t know if I can follow them all the time. This is a more ambitious title, not directly connected to the previous game. But still, it’s a project I create mostly by myself, so there’s nothing extraordinary like “My personal openworld RPG I dream of since childhood”. Still, I believe it can surprise a lot of players and be interesting not only for the fans of the genre, but attract new players.

Thanks for your time, Vladimir.

Thanks for your questions. And I want to thank everyone who played my game or is planning to play. It’s not long, so I think you need to try it. This is my YouTube Channel. If you want to stay updated on what I do and see the eventual announcement of my next game, feel free to subscribe.