Hello

It is Oleksandr from Starni Games, and our entire team is extremely excited to share with you the joyous moment in the middle of the third year of brutal war raging in our country. It is the third Independence Day of Ukraine celebrated after the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine, and that in itself is an achievement. We sincerely hope that in one year this occasion will be more peaceful and the war will be over on good terms for Ukraine.


When the war started back in February 2022, we spent the first few months adapting to the new reality:

• Looking for bomb shelters, making reserves of food and water supplies
  
• Living in the city with the enemy at its doorstep. (One advanced Russian group's APC was eliminated next to my colleagues' house in the middle of the city during the chaotic first few days.)
  
• One of our team was trapped in Bucha occupied by Russian forces and was hiding with his family in a garage basement for a week before evacuating to safety via road where some civilian cars were shot to bits later on the same day.
  
• Taking PC from office to home to be able to work. This seemingly simple action looked like a special ops operation - as public transport was unavailable and the whole city in curfew with barricades and checkpoints all across the city.
  
• Being forced to go to a bomb shelter 10 or more times a day - turning your whole day and night into the walk to and from a shelter (or sleeping on some mats inside).
  
• Catching some scum that wanted to exploit the situation or just was drunk and not in their right mind (in my house neighbors caught a guy trying to steal a bicycle). There were some photos of wanna-be looters tied to a tree with tape by the locals - to await the arrival of the police who had more urgent matters to attend to with the Russian troops just a few kilometers from the city. The guy we caught was saved from this fate by his mom coming over from nearby houses and “crying murder”. However, the next day we saw a photo of the very same guy tied to a tree, so his adventures did not stop at our place.
  
• Trying to make sense of the literal flood of information, misinformation, wild rumors, and made-up stories from all around. (That was one of the things that inspired us to be very cautious when working on Ukraine War Stories not to provide any unconfirmed information - and it paid off, as some of the claims we discarded as dubious and unconfirmed (even though they were made by some officials) were later debunked as false claims and there was a scandal. We avoided being mixed up in that and provided accurate accounts.)
  
• Going to the outskirts of the city 3 km from the Rissian positions to where my colleague lived to pick him up and invite him to live at my apartment for a while - as he lived in literally the outermost house in Kyiv - the closest to the frontline positions.
  
• Eagerly awaiting good news and sharing every new video or crucial report.

In April 2022 Russian troops were forced to retreat from the Kyiv region, and most people on the team who left the city have returned (around 50% of the team moved from Kyiv, while 50% remained in the city during the first month). Also, we more or less adapted to the situation and returned to remote work.

In June 2022 we returned to office work and moved to a bigger office in July 2022 as the price or rental dropped due to obvious reasons - half of the city left, and we planned to hire a few more people, with our old office already being overcrowded.

In July 2022 the buildings on the way to our office and the subway station we use were hit by Russian missiles, fortunately, none on the team was affected. The subway suffered only mild damage, so was quickly reopened. Overall, from July 2022 to October 2022 we worked more or less normally (the only issue was that public transport would not always work due to air alerts) We produced Ukraine War Stories from May to October 2022.

Later in October 2022, Russia started targeting the power grind much more. It resulted in regular power outages and scheduled power supply. We had to switch to remote work - as there was little sense in sitting in an office without power for 4-5 hours. It was hard due to different parts of the city having different “shifts” of when they had power, so different people would work at different times and to share/update the work we had to have power at the same time as the office (or partially overlap).

In December 2022 we finally managed to install a power generator in the office and returned to office work, switching between the central power and generator.

In May 2022 the power outages stopped and we could work normally without using our generator, until spring 2024, when Russians again started prioritizing power supply infrastructure and destroyed many of Ukraine’s power plants and other facilities.

From spring 2024 to now there have been scheduled power outages, but now we are better prepared - we improved our power infrastructure in the office - so it now switches to batteries seamlessly when the power is out and when batteries are at 50% - the generator starts automatically to recharge them (they are also recharged by normal power supply when it is back up). Also, if anyone works from home there was time to buy some large batteries for households to store some energy for when the power is out. Not enough to cook, but enough to recharge a laptop and some other stuff.

So, now we stopped caring about air alerts (maybe 3-6 months into the war), we heard enough explosions to treat them as “weather” if they are not really close. We adapted our work to be able to do our job efficiently despite power outages internet issues and other problems that might arise. We keep going, and Ukraine keeps going.

Today, the Independence Day of Ukraine feels so much more important than before the war - as now our country truly paid a horrible price for its independence and has truly become independent. (Despite what some say about the foreign help, it does not make Ukraine someone’s puppet - we just want to survive and come out stronger than ever - so that we can live peacefully after the war.)

As many of you have noticed - making games about World War II in the middle of an ongoing war is quite ironic. We also find a lot of similarities between the war in Ukraine and the Winter War or Continuation War we showed in Strategic Mind: Spirit of Liberty. I am even thinking of making a full Spirit of Liberty playthrough with my commentary - something I usually do only for the first few battles to leave the rest to various content creators, but since the game was released a year ago I might give it a go. Please, let me know if you would like to see a Lead Game Designer behind the game to play through it without save/loads and with commentary. Right now you can watch a fresh recording of me playing the very first battle - I played it last weekend:



We are also planning to communicate more actively on the Strategic Mind series games, as it's now back under our control as a publisher. Right now, we are celebrating Independence Day and participating in the Ukrainian Games Festival on Steam, so there are discounts for all games in the series

https://store.steampowered.com/bundle/16499/Strategic_Mind_Complete_Collection/


You could also check out Headquarters: World War II - our latest release (April 2024) mostly developed during and despite the war:

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1840800/Headquarters_World_War_II/

And, of course, visit the Ukrainian Games Festival on Steam to browse over 450 games created by Ukrainian devs and celebrate this wonderful day with us all:

VISIT FESTIVAL ON STEAM

Also, to celebrate this year's Independence Day we released the first Demo of our upcoming project - Robot’s Fate: Alice. You can play it for free, and share your thoughts on it with us:

https://store.steampowered.com/app/3091030/Robots_Fate_Alice/

Please, let me know if you want me to do a full playthrough of Strategic Mind: Spirit of Liberty. Or anything else really, that you want to share with the dev team - I am always happy to hear from you!

Support Ukraine!

With Best Regards from Kyiv
Oleksandr the the Starni Games team

Hello

Dev Q&A #3 has finally arrived on our YouTube channel:
Watch Q&A #3

In the video, you will see the summary of the year 2022 for the Starni Games team and answers to the questions you sent us via the google form.

I hope it answers your questions, and if you have more, we will have another Dev Q&A in the summer of 2023, so I will be happy to answer more questions. Also, feel free to ask us on Discord any time.

With Best Regards from Kyiv

Oleksandr

Hello

Glad to see everyone in the year 2023. The last few days were very eventful in Ukraine - I will tell you more in the next War in Ukraine despatch.

Just two days left to grab our games at the all-time highest discount.

Here are all our titles and discounts on them:

Strategic Mind: The Pacific - 45%
https://store.steampowered.com/app/991810/Strategic_Mind_The_Pacific/

Strategic Mind: Blitzkrieg - 45%https://store.steampowered.com/app/1200330/Strategic_Mind_Blitzkrieg/

Strategic Mind: Spectre of Communism - 40%
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1341170/Strategic_Mind_Spectre_of_Communism/

Strategic Mind: Fight for Freedom - 35%
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1381850/Strategic_Mind_Fight_for_Freedom/

Save up an additional 20% on top of the discounts above if you get Strategic Mind Complete Collection bundle:
https://store.steampowered.com/bundle/16499/Strategic_Mind_Complete_Collection/

Support us by adding Strategic Mind: Spirit of Liberty to your wishlist
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1474770/Strategic_Mind_Spirit_of_Liberty/

With Best Regards from Kyiv
Starni Games team

Hello guys!

It’s been a difficult year for everyone in Ukraine. So, our key achievements for this year are:

• Everyone on the team is alive and safe (to the extent you could be safe in a city that occasionally suffers missile strikes)
  
• The company survived - we continued our operations, managed to keep the team together, and returned to our Kyiv office

That is already good enough on its own, but we are happy to say we managed to do even more, despite all difficulties we also managed the following:

• We made good progress in the development of Headquarters: World War II and kept working on Strategic Mind: Spirit of Liberty
  
• We self-funded and self-published a fully free charity project about the war in Ukraine from civilains points of view - Ukraine War Stories
  
• Our team grew from 15 to 25 people. Now we are quite a large team (which we are still getting used to)
  
• Installed a power generator and heaters to make sure we have a power supply and internet connection even if the whole city or our district is out of power - ensured our office is autonomous. This allows us to look more confidently into 2023.
  
• Donated substantial amount of money to help Ukraine both as a company and as individuals

Starni Games team

Now let us look a bit closer at our team. Here is a Starni team introductory video made by Slitherine team for the Headquarters: World War II presentation.
We are very excited that despite the war our team has only grown stronger and is ready to deliver more and better content in 2023 than ever before.

Starni Games Q&A #3 - ask us

We remain very open to our community - so we would be more than happy to answer any and all of your questions. Please, send your questions through this form.

We will record a video answering all of your questions in early January.

Previous Dev Q&As:
Dev Q&A #1
Dev Q&A #2

Also, join our Discord server to talk with us and other players at any time.

Headquarters: World War II

Throughout the year our biggest project was Headquarters: World War II and we are making really good progress with it. You can see that yourself if you watch the recent presentation at the Slitherine Next event.
Also, if you like the project and want to help us with the final polish - sign up for the Beta test of the game here.

Strategic Mind: Spirit of Liberty

We keep working on the project, but we have to admit that we have some difficulties in organizing the VO as most of teh people we worked with are now unavailable for various war-related reasons and we do not have the budget to just order it somewhere, so we are looking to solve these problems while also working on the remaining levels and aspects of the game we could. We have concrete plans for release in 2023, but we cannot announce it yet, as some aspects of the development remain unresolved at this stage.

We will continue to make regular updates about our development progress, Here is one of the historical music tracks from the upcoming Strategic Mind: Spirit of Liberty for your listening pleasure.

To support us, please, add the Strategic Mind: Spirit of Liberty to your wishlist:
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1474770/Strategic_Mind_Spirit_of_Liberty/

Ukraine War Stories

We are really happy we managed to create a highly reviewed project (88% Positive reviews at the time of writing, which is a miracle in itself considering the sensitive nature of the project) about the war in Ukraine in the middle of the said war. It is a fully free charity project that our whole team is really proud of - so we invite you to have a look and spread the word:
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1985510/Ukraine_War_Stories/

Check out our recent report about Ukraine War Stories.

War in Ukraine
While the war in Ukraine continues, we managed to adapt and keep working even in these difficulty conditions. You can learn more about how that went by checking out our War in Ukraine Despatches on the community hub - there is the most recent one.

We hope that Ukraine’s territories will be liberated by UAF and the war will be over as soon as possible. With that in mind, we also should not be overly optimistic or careless and should be ready and resolved to work in wartime conditions as long as it is required.

Stand with Ukraine!

Extra details for newsletter subscribers
We want this report to be concise, so if you are looking for even more details and insides about the Starni Gamers team - make sure you subscribed to our newsletter (Subscribe button could be found in any of the Strategic Mind games, and if you already subscribed you do not have to do anything extra, just wait for the letter) to receive a letter with an extra addition to this report.

The letter will be sent out on 30th January.

Happy holidays!

Our team wishes you all happy holidays and looks forward to seeing you all in 2023. We hope you will spend a great time with your family and friends, while also refreshing your body and soul and getting ready for the new and exciting year 2023.

With Best Wishes from Kyiv
Oleksandr and the Strani Games team

Hello

We will soon hold end of the year Q&A, so if you have questions about any of our projects (Strategic Mind series, Headuarters: World War II, or Ukraine War Stories) or about our team – please send them to us through the form below:
https://forms.gle/sSXz2uxpzazifJZa9

We will also have more news and end of the year news updates for you in the coming days.

With Best Regards from Kyiv
Starni Games team

Hello!

We are happy to announce a week-long sale event covering all of the Strategic Mind titles. We will also share more information on the Strategic Mind: Spirit of Liberty development over this week. We hope this would be a great time to finish your Strategic Mind collection if it has missing titles, and learn more about the upcoming game covering brave Finnish troops holding their ground in the face of overwhelming foe.

Strategic Mind: The Pacific - 40%
https://store.steampowered.com/app/991810/Strategic_Mind_The_Pacific/

Strategic Mind: Blitzkrieg - 40%
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1200330/Strategic_Mind_Blitzkrieg/

Strategic Mind: Spectre of Communism - 35%
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1341170/Strategic_Mind_Spectre_of_Communism/

Strategic Mind: Fight for Freedom - 30%
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1381850/Strategic_Mind_Fight_for_Freedom/

Save up an additional 20% on top of the discounts above if you get Strategic Mind Complete Collection bundle:
https://store.steampowered.com/bundle/16499/Strategic_Mind_Complete_Collection/

Support us by adding Strategic Mind: Spirit of Liberty to your wishlist
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1474770/Strategic_Mind_Spirit_of_Liberty/

Stay tuned for more news about the Strategic Mind series.

With Best Regards from Kyiv
Oleksandr

Hello

We plan to record the next episode of our Dev Q&A soon. Feel free to ask any questions about the Starni Games team or any of our released or upcoming projects.
To do so, please fill in this form.

Looking forward to answering all of your questions

With best regards from Kyiv
Starni Games team

Hello guys!

I will start with a bit of company news. Last week we have moved to a new office, just across the street from the old one, where we had been located last 4 years. We are now hiring more people and having 15 people in a 49 sq m room was already not very comfortable. The new office is significantly larger and is overall a better facility. With our team growing to 20+ people that is just what we need.

It also does not have a significant impact on our budget, since after the war started rental and real estate prices in Kyiv dropped dramatically, sometimes as much as 50%. So we found a much better place for a similar cost. It probably would become more expensive in time, but it allows us to hire more people now and reinforce our efforts on all our projects.

Our team is growing now, and we hope that it will speed up our production time and allow us to ensure better quality. It would also enable us to work on larger and more complex projects in the future.

Now to other news.

Ukrainian Games Festival is now live!
24th July is an Independence Day of Ukrainer, and this year it got a dedicated Steam event. Check out over 200 games made by the devs from Ukraine - I bet you would be surprised. More details in our dedicated post here:
https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/1381850/view/3255560404150317279

Ukraine War Stories gets new languages (now 11 languages in the Demo)
We are really happy that several volunteer teams assembled and decided to help us add extra languages
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1985510/Ukraine_War_Stories/

Discounts on all our games end in 2 days
During the Ukrainian Games Festival, we have all our games with nice discounts - so it could be a good time to add something new to your collection.



Stay tuned for future despatches.

With best regards from Kyiv
Starni Games team

Hello

We are extremely excited to announce that all our games participate in Ukrainian Games Festival (August 22-28) - an event featuring over 200 games made by Ukrainian devs, that is timed to happen during the Independence Day of Ukraine (August 24).

All our released games are having nice discounts, while all future projects showcase their page and will hopefully gather some extra audience.


Please check out the event - there are loads of cool games:
https://store.steampowered.com/curator/38747278-Indie-Cup/sale/ukrainiangames2022

We have also gathered a quick overview of our participation in the event:



UPCOMING GAMES


Ukrainian War Stories
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1985510/Ukraine_War_Stories/

Headquarters: World War II
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1840800/Headquarters_World_War_II/

Strategic Mind: Spirit of Liberty
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1474770/Strategic_Mind_Spirit_of_Liberty/


RELEASED GAMES

Strategic Mind: Fight for Freedom
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1381850/Strategic_Mind_Fight_for_Freedom/

Strategic Mind: Spectre of Communism
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1341170/Strategic_Mind_Spectre_of_Communism/

Strategic Mind: Blitzkrieg
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1200330/Strategic_Mind_Blitzkrieg/

Strategic Mind: The Pacific
https://store.steampowered.com/app/991810/Strategic_Mind_The_Pacific/

Panzer Strategy
https://store.steampowered.com/app/769950/Panzer_Strategy/


FREE DEMOS

Ukraine War Stories Demo
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1985510/Ukraine_War_Stories/

Strategic Mind: Blitzkrieg Demo
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1200330/Strategic_Mind_Blitzkrieg/

Strategic Mind: Spectre of Communism Demo
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1341170/Strategic_Mind_Spectre_of_Communism/

Strategic Mind: Fight for Freedom Demo
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1381850/Strategic_Mind_Fight_for_Freedom/

Make sure you check out other Ukrainian games - we bet you would be pleasantly surprised!

Please, let us know in the comments which Ukranian game or games you like the best!

With best regards from Kyiv,
Starni Games team

Hello, guys!

Today, we reveal Säkkijärven polkka - the second historical track from the Strategic Mind: Spirit of Liberty soundtrack, recorded by Daraba studio. Säkkijärven polkka is a well-known Finnish folk tune that got new life and meaning during the dramatic events of World War II. It got the lyrics sometimes sung with the tune, which stated that while Säkkijärvi itself might have been lost (ceded to the Soviet Union in 1940), the Finns at least still had the polka.

Listen to the "Säkkijärven polkka" track on our YouTube channel:


During the Continuation War, the Finnish Army discovered that the retreating Soviets had scattered radio-controlled mines throughout the re-captured city of Viipuri. These mines were set off when a three-note chord was played on the frequency the radio was tuned to. In order to thwart the enemy's goal, Fins started transmitting the Säkkijärvi polka, so that the frequency of the triads used by the enemy was interfered with to the point that the mines were completely unusable.

The Polka surely bolstered the troops' morale during the hardships of the protracted war.

Thus, this boisterous folk tune became the war-time song and is highly regarded to this day.

If you want to get access to the whole Strategic Mind series soundtrack with all the high-quality recordings - feel free to check out our Franchise soundtrack on Steam:

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1358280/Strategic_Mind_Franchise_Soundtrack/
Have a good day!
Starni Games team