Zaychik tells the story of a young man exiled to the Russian hinterland, who must survive the reality of school life and the wickedness that surrounds him. The story is divided into five episodes, with the first four still manageable, while the fifth completely baffles. Why this happened and whether the game deserved the negativity—we explore in our review.
Back to the past
The game takes place in the aftermath of the collapse of the Soviet Union. Adults were desperately trying to survive, while young people were discovering a new world. The game carefully depicts the foreign films and cartoons, game consoles, and chemical-laden snacks that were becoming popular. Characters are dressed in accordance with the fashions of the time. Younger players can access an in-game dictionary that describes these elements.
The film centers on a young family who, due to financial hardship, are forced to move into their grandmother’s house they inherited. The story is told from the perspective of Anton, a bespectacled boy who is skilled at drawing. The most important person for Anton is his younger sister, Olya, who is confined to the house by her parents and forced to spend her days watching cartoons and playing video games.
The first episode reveals the nuances of the family’s life:
- Father and mother constantly quarrel, which is why children are afraid to hear the terrible word “R” (divorce);
- The holidays will soon be over, and it will be time for Anton to go to school, where it will be difficult for the boy to make friends with his compatriots;
- Anton is stuffed with pills and constantly sees something.
The game’s horror element is enhanced by the house’s location near a dense forest. At night, the forest becomes a source of nightmares, leading you to wonder: were the images depicted in the game fantasy or reality? Olya also complains of being haunted by an owl at night. It gets even scarier when a police officer arrives and reports a missing child.
The subsequent episodes tell the story in terms of realism and devilry.
Realism
Much of the game focuses on Anton’s visit to school, which he must reach through the forest. At school, Anton is bullied by a vile, overweight bully. The player is free to fight back or tolerate him. But his two accomplices—a sociopath named Roma and his hyena-laughing sycophant—always make their presence felt. You can form a so-called “friendship” with the bullies or turn against them, but most of them will continue to plague the player’s life until the very end.
Anton is free to pursue relationships with girls his age. He’s attracted to a girl named Polina, who plays music, dreams of leaving the city, and enjoys seeing dogs suffer. In the fifth episode, the game forces a love interest on him with a girl named Katya. What’s worse is that this love interest leads nowhere. Conversations with female characters reveal Anton to be a vile individual, as he contemplates how he wants to “drink Polina.” Boys his age typically have other interests, but apparently this precocious boy experienced puberty early.
Female characters have rare mini-games associated with them—you can play a parody of Duck Hunt with your sister, play guitar with Polina, or fry cutlets with Katya.
The tragedies unfolding are mundane. A maniac haunting a garage throughout the Taiga is blamed for the children’s disappearance. A hitman, sent by Anton’s father’s former colleagues, also makes his presence known. All these illogical events are attributed to Anton’s unhealthy mental state, which is plagued by hallucinations. The question lingers: “Are the pills he’s taking helping his sanity, or are they the source of his visions?”
Devilry
On his first trip to school, Anton encounters a girl wearing a realistic fox mask. Alice, the fox, claims to live in the forest and lures Anton with promises of an endless supply of sweets. A mongrel named Bug constantly hangs around Alice. Bug is essentially a background character needed to unlock some endings. But for some reason, her presence is given more prominence than some of the main characters.
As Anton progresses, he meets new children wearing animal masks, visible only to him and his sister. The animals pretend to be friendly and constantly invite him to play in the forest. The game’s paranormal element stems from the fact that these creatures are linked to disappearances.
It will be no secret that these suspicious characters were monsters obeying the Master of the Forest. The monsters crave human flesh, and by the time they “unmask,” they want Anton to procure meat for them. The player’s choices determine whether the protagonist will be able to maintain their humanity in this situation.
Episode Five
For over two years, loyal fans waited for the game’s finale. Prior to the release of Episode V, the game enjoyed positive reviews, but its exit from Early Access led to a surge in negative reviews. Players were furious that the 20 endings associated with Episode V didn’t resolve the plot, but rather deprived the events of the game of any meaning and raised thousands of new questions. To better understand the cause of this catastrophe, I’ll use the 1992 game Otogiriso as an example.
Otogiriso is a Japanese visual novel that tells the story of a young couple confronted with devilry. The game features branching paths that alter the events. The setting and characters remain the same, but the player’s actions unfold in different stories, each with a logical and consistent beginning, middle, and end.
In “Zaychik,” many actions and plot points have unsatisfactory outcomes. With one exception: friendships and feuds with the bullies end the same way. The pursuit of Polina’s or Katya’s love interests leads to the same outcome: Anton is forced to take or refuse his pills. This lack of choice is compensated for by the brutality of the scenes surrounding the refusal to take the pills.
The endings contradict each other and leave you in a dead end:
- The devilish endings reveal that the monsters don’t care about conventional weapons, and their power allowed them to bite off chunks of the Moon in the past. However, the Moon shown in the same plot branches isn’t actually bitten;
- In other endings, characters confirmed as monsters are disposed of with normal weapons;
- In more “realistic” endings, it turns out that the main culprit was the man on the tractor or the protagonist. However, the game aggressively hints that the devilry was happening in parallel. It’s just that the bloodthirsty monsters decided to sit quietly while the events unfolded.
I gave up on some of the endings because they required sacrificing either Bug or my sister. Luckily, there’s a video online showing all the endings. It shows that the remaining ones have an even higher level of insanity, which is an achievement in itself!
It’s depressing that the overwhelming majority of endings are bad and rely heavily on violent scenes. In the good one, Olya starts a family, but even that has a catch! I consider the one where they let you sacrifice Roma to be a good one—the only time I felt this good was in Telltale Games’ The Walking Dead, when the game finally let you shoot Kenny!
Diagnosis
“Bunny” suffers from a lack of clear narrative direction. The plot simultaneously tries to be serious and down-to-earth; to terrify with folkloric horrors; to pretend the events are hallucinations; to make the monsters seem galactic-scale and capable of devouring planets. Because the game tries to do everything, it succeeds in none of these things.
You can ignore the problems of the fifth episode and enjoy the sights and atmosphere of the recent past, as well as the voice acting. Zaychik deserves praise for not shying away from brutal scenes, but the game is marred by a terrible decision for a horror film: making all the characters unlikable – ESPECIALLY the protagonist. When the only character you care about is Olya’s fate, the fate of the others doesn’t evoke much emotion – and therefore, no interest.
The developers claim to have heard players’ complaints and are working to improve Episode 5. We wish them the best of luck, as this task will require a Herculean effort no less than the creation of the game itself!
