'I'll Buy It, But I Won't Play It': How Hollow Home Turns 600 Pages of War Testimony Into a Video Game

Handmade Development, No AI

Twigames has explicitly stated that all assets are "original and made by hand, without AI" . The studio, founded in 2015, comprises about 20 developers based in Kyiv . Development began when the team evacuated to a Carpathian village after the 2022 invasion . CEO and co-founder Valeriy Minenko has said of the project: "Code, models, hand-drawn textures — everything here is handmade" .

Grounded in Over 600 Pages of Witness Accounts

The narrative is built on over 600 pages of real witness accounts from survivors of the Mariupol siege . The team worked with a journalist to collate this material, documenting daily changes — weather patterns, when electricity failed, when ATMs stopped working — and reading actual diaries from residents . While the characters are fictional, the situations, atmosphere, and moral dilemmas are drawn directly from these documented experiences .

No On-Screen Violence

Hollow Home deliberately excludes combat. The Steam page describes it as a game with "no weapons, no battles and no easy answers" . The developers have compared its choice-driven, dialogue-heavy approach to Disco Elysium . Ivan Titov, Twigames' PR representative, explained: "We're not doing a fun game. It's a way for us to remind people about [the invasion], to get more attention to it" .

Emotional Response from Ukrainian Players

A significant reaction from Ukrainian players has been the statement: "I'll buy it, but I won't play it." The subject matter is too raw. One Steam community post reads: "It is interesting, full of details and shows exactly what I would like to run away from and not think about. But I will buy this game when it comes out" . The developers note this is a common refrain: "We hear from Ukrainians, 'I can't play it.' Sometimes they say, 'I'll buy it, but I won't play it'" .

Awards and Industry Recognition

Before its full release, Hollow Home has won multiple awards on the indie circuit :

• Indie Cup Ukraine 2023 — Most Promising Game and Critics' Choice
• Games Gathering 2024 — Best Conference Game and Game Star
• Nordic Game 2024 — Pitch Battle winner
• Also nominated for the Game Development World Championship 2023

Its free Steam demo holds a 97% "Very Positive" rating based on user reviews .

How It Fits Into the Broader Ukrainian Games Landscape

Hollow Home is a notable entry in a growing wave of Ukrainian games that process the war through interactive storytelling. It draws the most direct comparison to This War of Mine (11 Bit Studios, Poland — also about civilian survival under siege) . But it stands apart as one of the first major Ukrainian-made titles to dramatize the current war from a Ukrainian civilian perspective inside an occupied city . Other Ukrainian-developed war-related games include S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Heart of Chornobyl (GSC Game World) and Sherlock Holmes: The Awakened (Frogwares). Unlike these, Hollow Home is not a shooter or an allegory — it is a direct, realistic, civilian-centered dramatization of the siege of Mariupol, told without combat or spectacle, rooted in hundreds of survivor testimonies.