Ukraine War Stories is a free visual novel that was released last month on Steam. The game supports a wide range of languages, including Japanese, and Japan actually boasts the highest number of players out of all countries where the game is available. We talked to the game’s developer, Starni Games, and asked about the reason behind Japan’s high player count.

Ukraine War Stories is a visual novel that is based on the ongoing Russian invasion of Ukraine. The stories in the game are not told from the point of view of soldiers but instead detail the extreme situations of civilians trapped in Russian-occupied territory. There are three different scenarios included in the game, each of which takes place in a different Ukrainian city: Hostomel, Bucha, and Mariupol. All three scenarios follow people trying to flee the battlefield together with their loved ones.

Every story is a dramatization of eyewitness accounts and real events recorded in the areas where they take place. Furthermore, the game includes a list of sources for all events that were used as a basis for the game.

Ukraine War Stories was able to make a splash in Japan, thanks in large part to the inclusion of a Japanese language option and the fact that the game is free. According to Twitter user @clamm0363, who assisted with the game’s Japanese translation effort, Japan had the highest player count out of all countries. We spoke to Starni Games COO Oleksandr Sienin to find out more.

── The game is trending quite a bit on Twitter in Japan, and one of the members who was involved in the JP translation work said that Japan has the largest population among the game’s playerbase. If that is true, what percentage of the world’s players does Japan account for?

Indeed there was a large influx of players from Japan due to very high activity on Twitter and after publications in gaming media. We did not expect that the game would become so viral in Japan. After 1 week of sale the percentage of Japanese players who downloaded and played the game was 30.7%.

Here are the top 10 countries by the number of players during the first week:

Japan 30.7%
China 14.7%
Ukraine 14.4%
United States 5.0%
Poland 4.7%
Taiwan 4.2%
Germany 3.5%
United Kingdom 1.8%
Republic of Korea 1.4%
Hong Kong 1.2%

──What do you think is the reason there are so many players in Japan?

First of all, the key thing is that the great volunteer team agreed to do the Japanese localization. They did a great job at that. Second, is that I think the visual novels genre is quite popular in Japan – but that alone cannot explain such positive feedback. However, the most important is that the players themselves reacted to our call to spread the information about the project and actively posted and shared information about it. That is why I think the Japanese community outreached US and China – the top two countries that usually have the most players.

──When did the volunteer Japanese translators gather? Was it around the time you released the demo version?

Yes, I think shortly after the Demo release. They asked us on our Discord channel if they could help us with the Japanese localization – and we happily agreed to their generous offer.

First thing they did was translation of the Demo materials – so that we could add Japanese to the Demo asap. Then, they proceeded with the rest of the translation to have it ready by the time full release comes. We are extremely grateful to the localization team.

── What is the current situation in Ukraine? Is your team staying safe?

The current situation is worrisome of course, Russia has been hitting civilian targets since the start of the war, but now their hits are more focused on power supply infrastructure, so they try to undermine electricity supply. The government has to limit the power supply until the damaged facilities are restored – and we have blackouts from time to time. Also, civilian people across the country are being killed and wounded almost every day…

For our team the situation is tolerable, we are more or less safe (even though there are some damaged apartment buildings we pass by as we go to our office from the nearest subway station).

The most annoying thing is the power outages that started recently. It is not critical but annoying. For example, during the game release I was working from home and team from the office to make sure that if one place is out of power, then the other location will press the “release” button. Also, today, I had a meeting online and the power went out 10 minutes before that, so I had to reschedule and take a taxi home (where the power supply was okay) to rejoin the call.

──Thank you for your time, and we wish you all the best.

As was touched on in the interview, information about Ukraine War Stories was shared by many on Twitter in Japan, and it was also covered by many gaming news sites. Word of the game likely spread among Japanese gamers due to how it not only shows the state of Ukraine through the eyes of the Ukrainian people but also includes a Japanese language option. It really shows how valuable the contributions of the volunteer translators proved to be.

Ukraine War Stories is currently available for free on Steam.

Written by. Marco Farinaccia based on the original Japanese article (original article’s publication date: 2022-11-04 17:13 JST)