The survival shooter “Road to Vostok” has released a new demo. While resembling the old public demo, it is now referred to as Public Demo 1 Version 3 by the developer.

This post-apocalyptic shooter, still in development, unfolds in an abandoned border zone between Finland and Russia. As the protagonist, your objective is to reach the city of Vostok by traversing multiple open maps.

Saving is restricted to secure shelters dispersed across the world. Once you enter Vostok, the difficulty level rises significantly: If your character dies while exploring the city, you forfeit the entire character, and reloading a previous save becomes impossible.

Given the game’s vision necessitates advanced 3D rendering and a robust physics engine, the choice of the underlying game engine holds great importance.

The significant change is that “Road to Vostok” has transitioned from Unity to the Godot game engine.

The solo developer, Antti, shared in a video update, “About three months ago, I… decided to switch to another game engine.” The Road to Vostok project is now entirely ported, requiring a total of 615 hours of development time.

Antti believes that these hours were well-spent, stating, “With this amount of work, I got myself a platform that minimizes the risks that I was worried about, which has a lot of potential for the future, and above all is fun to work with.”

The switch from the Unity engine to the Godot engine is peculiar given the nature of Epic’s Unreal Engine as a “free” alternative. However it’s an understandable one given the recent history regarding how Unity Software completely killed their whole reputation in pursuit of monetizing successful live service mobile games made with the Unity engine with their retarded and anti-consumer install based runtime fee.

For small games that gain immense traction for whatever reason such as producing a game becomes another “flavor of the month” these small developers would ultimately have to pay Unity as their download and revenue quotas would exceed the allowed thresholds, this runtime fee clearly favors games that feature microtransactions as their main source of revenue collection however emerging games built on Unity made by small teams leveraging low-level Unity licenses were just as susceptible to being extorted.

They eventually backtracked after doubling down, so now the cancer only takes hold for developers leveraging the Unity engine LTS 2024 and beyond however the damage has already been done, developers both solo, big and or small at this point in time should no longer consider the Unity engine a viable alternative, Unity’s self implosion has been a massive marketing agent for Epic Games and the immensely compact yet surprisingly capable Godot engine.

Road to Vostok, is part of a growing trend of small developers shifting away from the Unity platform to the likes of Godot or Unreal Engine. He shared a detailed post a few months ago, discussing the intricacies of his decision-making process and why he ultimately opted for Godot.

Road to Vostok garnered significant attention following its impressive debut earlier this year, attracting over 400,000 players during its initial public test, which for a small indie title being developed by a singular individual is a massive goddamn feat in and of itself.

The game delves into the desolate landscapes of a post-apocalyptic world, exploring the concerns reminiscent of doomsday preppers. Beyond merely possessing a well-crafted, customized firearm, the focus is on whether players can effectively carry and utilize the necessary ammunition and supplies.

In an interview with PC Gamer back in June 2023, Antti, the developer, emphasized the need for innovation in the survival genre, expressing a desire to reintroduce passion and creativity. He acknowledged the genre’s history of vaporware projects and unfulfilled promises, aiming to break that trend with Road to Vostok. For more insights into Antti’s vision and his commitment to the project.

Road to Vostok bears a striking resemblance to the Stalker series, featuring a post-apocalyptic backdrop, Road to Vostok can be viewed on its official website, and the current public demo, now powered by Godot, is available for download on Steam.