Chernobylite

About Chernobylite

Chernobylite was made by The Farm 51 and came out on PC in July 2021. It reached PlayStation 4 and Xbox One in September 2021, PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X|S in April 2022, and Nintendo Switch in December 2024. It is now sold as the Complete Edition, on Steam, GOG, the PlayStation Store, the Xbox Store and the Nintendo eShop. It holds a Metacritic score of 75 on PC, and the Zone was built from 3D scans of the real exclusion zone.

You play Igor, a physicist and former employee of the Chernobyl power plant, returning to Pripyat to investigate the disappearance of his fiancée thirty years before. A military contractor, NAR, now holds the Zone, and the green crystal called Chernobylite draws Shadows, hostile creatures from somewhere else. The abandoned funfair, flooded river docks, overgrown forests and the plant itself under its arch are rendered in close detail, and the game moves between them and stranger places of glowing crystal, floating rock and twisted trees.

Each day you plan operations from a base you build, then go out to one of the Zone's areas and come back to sleep. At the base you set up workbenches, grow beds and a lab, craft gadgets, traps and weapons, and assign tasks and food to companions whose comfort and trust you have to keep. In the Zone the weather changes, radiation rises, patrols move, and creatures come through portals. You can hide in foliage and take enemies down quietly, or fight in the open with a revolver, shotgun or rifle.

When Igor dies, he wakes in a strange place where the story choices he has made are laid out in order, and some can be changed with Chernobylite. The story is non-linear, companions disagree with some of your decisions, and how well you prepare changes how things turn out.

Reviewers found it tense more than frightening: Rock Paper Shotgun called it hardly horror but a strong survival roguelite. It suits players who like slow, scavenging survival with a strong sense of place.

How to play Chernobylite

1. Buy the Complete Edition on Steam or GOG for Windows, or on the PlayStation, Xbox or Nintendo stores.
2. Build and upgrade your base, and plan each day's operations.
3. Send yourself and your companions into the Zone to scavenge and complete tasks.
4. Sneak past or fight soldiers, stalkers and creatures, and watch the radiation level.
5. Make choices about whom to trust; they change the story.

Tips

• Plan each day's resources carefully; supplies run down.
• Stealth saves ammunition: hide in foliage and use fireworks to draw soldiers away.
• Bodies cannot be hidden, so pick quiet takedowns where patrols will not find them.
• Keep your companions' comfort up with base upgrades.

Questions