What's up in a Kharkiv bomb shelter is a free-to-play adventure from Dahuanna, inspired by the developer’s own experiences during Russian’s invasion of Ukraine. This visual novel uses retro aesthetics, including chiptune music and pixel art graphics, to give players an idea of what it is like to live in a bomb shelter.

Even as it uses retro game elements, What's up in a Kharkiv bomb shelter captures does a great job of presenting the ugly realities of war while also humanizing citizens often reported as nothing more than statistics. It’s like a smaller version of This War of Mine.

Just another day in a bomb shelter

The title What's up in a Kharkiv bomb shelter simplifies the serious conditions encountered by civilians and refugees having to hide for their lives. Kharkiv, the second-largest city in Ukraine, became the site of heavy encounters between Russian and Ukrainian forces. This is immediately brought to the player’s attention as soon as the game starts, with heavy artillery raining everywhere.

In terms of gameplay, this is branded as a visual novel although it actually looks and plays like a JRPG. Even on an old-school pixel art screen, this game shows how small and cramped the titular location is. You can talk to a variety of characters. This is where it starts hitting hard. It feels like real people sharing their concerns, worries, and dreams with a stranger.

As mentioned, it uses pixel art visuals and chiptune music. Also, there is a quest mechanic in this game. Since you’re all civilian refugees, someone has to do a food run. Go out of the shelter and find food, but make sure you survive the attacks happening all around you. This game is extremely short, but it does give a lasting impression of what war does to ordinary people.

A retro-styled eye-opener

What's up in a Kharkiv bomb shelter is a short yet important piece of work. As a video game, it opts for a retro JRPG feel in order to get the player into a Ukrainian citizen’s shoes. What it lacks in visual detail, it makes up for with the snippets of human life captured in brief dialogues between your neighbors in the titular bomb shelter. Short, simple yet utterly profound.