Polesia, winter 1943–44 to summer 1944. The front is moving west, and everyone in the region is counting on the same thing: hold out until spring. You are Mikhas, the feldsher from Swamps. Alena is beside you, and the child, and Rezo. Liberation will come. But war doesn't let go of those who lived through it on the day it moves on.
Part one asked which side to choose. Part two asked whether you can stay human inside the side you chose. Part three asks who counts you as one of their own now.
Your decisions from part two carry over as an inheritance code: where you lived through the blockade, what became of Olshany, who paid with their life, where you stand with Alena and Rezo. No code? The game asks a few short questions and rebuilds your past — or start from the canon in one tap.
Your inheritance decides where you spend the winter, and each winter has its own hunger:
healer at partisan headquarters, with no medicine.
your own home under the Germans, with no safety.
a family camp of refugees deep in the forest, with no food.
a stranger's corner and a stranger's name — a path of your own to the very end.
Scorched earth, the great sweep, the dust of liberation — and the roads meet where the war ends.
Everything leaves a mark — every decision has its price. That is where Swamps began: in part one the price was choosing a side; in part two, what you were willing to give up to stay human. In part three the war moves on, but the price stays with those who paid it. There are no right answers here — only yours.
Unflinching realism in the tradition of Vasil Bykaŭ and Ales Adamovich: a small man, impossible decisions, and a price not always paid by the one who chose.
The whole story of the present and every ending are free.
Between the chapters of war, the game holds another life — Bygone, four chapters of Mikhas before the war: a boy holding the lamp over his feldsher father's table, his mother and everything she had time to teach him, young Alena on Kupala Night, the last peaceful summer of 1941, when everyone is still alive. Without them, the story is complete and reaches any ending. With them, it sounds different: you see where Mikhas finds what keeps him standing through the hardest winter — and exactly what he is losing. The Author's Edition is a one-time purchase: four Bygone chapters and no ads. If Swamps has come to mean something to you, this is the fullest way to play it — and a way to support the author.
In memory of those whom liberation found alive.
Updates
"Swamps" is out on the App Store and Google Play; Part Two is now on the App Store too — Google Play comes a bit later. Subscribe and we’ll write about Android and translations, plus game news. No spam.
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