Hello everyone! While v1.5 is undergoing additional testing, we continue introducing you to the team behind INSOMNIA: the Ark (part one can be found here, and part two — here). Part three will get you acquainted with a few more key members of Mono Studio who made important contributions to the worldbuilding of the game. It’s time to start!

When I was 12 I realized that games don’t pop up out of nowhere — there has to be someone to bring them to life. So I asked myself: why can’t I be one of those people? It took some time and eventually when I got a “little” older I was able to get a position in Skyriver Studios and became involved in the development of Order of Magic.

I switched to INSOMNIA in 2013, even before we had our first successful Kickstarter. I was responsible for implementing AI along with quest and dialogue systems. So whenever NPCs act weird during combat everyone on the team knows who to blame, haha. I have also worked on miscellaneous game mechanics, interfaces, tools for other devs and localization support.

The overall process of working on INSOMNIA was very inspirational on its own. It was really interesting to witness how the game has evolved over the years. Each team member invested so much time, energy and effort in this project. We became a real family while working on this game — we spent time together, created paintings, visited gigs, and helped each other in different ways.

Good games have been the other source of constant inspiration for me. I always play something and it’s very heartwarming whenever I see someone leaves comments for INSOMNIA saying that this game had an impact on their lives.

I play strategy games a lot, including HOMM 2-5 (2nd installation is my favorite one, not the 3rd!), StarCraft, WarCraft, and X-Com. I’ve got Switch last year which opened new Zelda and Super Mario Odyssey for me. Currently, I’m fiddling with Into the Breach, Binding of Isaac, Banner Saga, and Divinity 2: Original Sin.

I’ve become a part of the video game industry back in 2011 when I had a chance to work on a Tetris-like title. This was an interesting experience and I decided to pursue this direction of work further. This is when I found out about INSOMNIA, and still remember my first meeting with Anatoliy (lead developer of the game).

I was responsible for INSOMNIA’s sound design till 2017 and gave “voice” to quite a few things during this time: environment, guns, inventory, monsters, robots, some jazz tunes for radio broadcasts and background music for a few locations (Thyper Shelter, Reservation D-106, etc.). I was also involved in collaboration with other musicians and voice actors.

My main inspiration comes from one simple thing: the very thought of creating a world, even a virtual one, is astonishing. I’m an occasional gamer and, currently, I try to play all the classics I’ve missed for any reason including Deus Ex, Divinity, Invisible Inc, Soma, Mark Of the Ninja, Tomb Raider, Pathfinder, etc. My most recent interest is Overwatch which I usually play with my brother. I also have a special place in my heart for Bioshock, Baldur's Gate, Planescape Torment, Silent Hill, Tekken, and X-Com.

My gamedev era started back in 2013 when I met a fellow musician from the Montren project and we decided to try and do something together. Eventually, this evolved in a completed track and we’ve managed to put it into Coma: Mortuary, an indie game from our friends.

A year later I was browsing VK (a popular Russian social media website) looking for tracks by an old punk band called Insomnia and stumbled upon an ad regarding an RPG game with the same name looking for musicians. I’ve decided to take my chance and spent the following 3 days on composing the “Main Theme” track.

I wasn’t the only one who showed interest in this position, however, I was lucky enough and got the job. I was given the go ahead to do whatever I want in terms of creating music for the game and this is exactly how the “Hollow” and “Radiation” tracks came to life. Other tracks were more “guided” in certain ways and I had to consider the feedback and references from the rest of the team. Yeah, by the way, all the music I’ve recorded for INSOMNIA is in A minor, 432 Hz. Just sayin’.

I draw inspiration for all kinds of music. Also, I love to have long walks in parks which usually result in spontaneous field recordings. For example, at some point, I heard a howling dog and recorded the sound (you can actually hear it in the “Hollow” track from
INSOMNIA’s OST).

When it comes to gaming, I enjoyed playing This War of Mine and Mutant Year Zero: Road to Eden, and Stasis. I was playing Factorio heavily while working on INSOMNIA and continued with Skyrim and Pillars of Eternity. Back in the day, I enjoyed all Infinity engine powered games, Fallout 1-2, and HOMM III.

As always, stay tuned for our future biweekly updates regarding the lore, extra backstage information about INSOMNIA, and any progress with v1.5.

Hello everyone! Previously, we have covered some of the factions that you get to meet on Object 6, and today we are continuing our INSOMNIA: The Ark lore series with a fresh installment. Since the House of Bea Kera is one of the largest groups in Reservation D-106 and the entire sector D, it’s time to give some extra attention to their leader.


Being an eccentric and charismatic personality, Opherod had a big impact on the religious perception of ghetters, the descendants of illegal inhabitants of the space station. He was born in the Junkyard and had to live through many hardships with wit and resourcefulness as his only weapons.

After moving to Reservation, Opherod mostly engaged in petty criminal activities and worked on improving his own education. He also managed to become a family man: his wife gave birth to two boys — Darat and Kololei. At the age of six, Darat became a victim of a severe form of somnia which also granted him strange abilities. Due to the fears surrounding somnia, Opherod was forced to do everything possible to hide his condition and find a cure.



A few years later Opherod met Scuffler, a deformed psychonaut who was known as a talented chemist. He invented “wax” — a psychedelic crioma based drug that was able to increase the somnic level of the consumer. After his first experience with it, Opherod realized that this might be the way to study somnia closer and to bring Darat to normal life.

He started studying “Taboro” — a guidebook to somnia’s world written by a long time deceased nameless author who tried to describe his somnia fueled visions. This brought him to the idea of building an underground “wax” manufacturing facility. He started developing a syncretic religious concept and attracting followers that served as test subjects: this is how the House of Bea Kera was born.


The Forgotten Path concept (“Bea Kera" in the "vague" dialect) is based on the ghetter mythology, religious history, and Opherod’s personal psychedelic experience. It promised the way for a person to exit the reality and enter Timelessness — a space of all possible variations. Timelessness offered real freedom since there were no links to past, future or present.



According to the teachings of Bea Kera, somnia is a disease that has been sent upon the Nomah race as a punishment for their sins and thus can’t be avoided. However, the nature of somnia is more complicated than it is commonly believed: it is an unknowable tool of transformation and a way to achieve unity with the Source and enter the Timelessness.


It took Opherod only a few years to gather an army of followers who tried to “connect” to somnia using “wax” and other crioma based drugs. Thanks to their involvement, Opherod and Scuffler were able to develop a new medicine that was used on Darat in attempt to save him. However, it turned to be ineffective and Darat ended up in a coma.


Even though Opherod hasn’t succeeded in curing his son, he continued to do whatever he could to achieve this goal. Hundreds of lives were lost in the process, yet he was ready to sacrifice even more. This is when you, citizen KZ0012, join the picture. Will you fight Opherod’s thirst of power and spiritual ambitions and free Darat from his physical prison?

P.S. we’ve got a report from QA regarding v1.5 status and it seems that it will require additional work. The team is doing their best to address the issues that have cropped up. We will keep you informed in our future updates. Thank you for your patience!

P.P.S. one of our community members started working on INSOMNIA PNP, so if you are into things like that — join the club!

Hello everyone! We continue introducing you to people responsible for developing INSOMNIA: the Ark (you can find the first installment of “Meet the team” series by following this link). Part two will focus entirely on our 3D artists who brought all those amazing sketches and concept art to the actual game. Let’s meet them!

Before INSOMNIA I was mostly volunteering in smaller game projects and also performed occasional freelance work as 3D artist and CG-generalist. Basically, thanks to INSOMNIA I got the chance to grow my expertise in all directions.

I became a part of the development team back in 2013 and my main responsibilities included adding textures to surfaces, creating 3D modules (walls, doors, etc.), guns, characters, animals, vehicles. Also as a lead artist, I was responsible for teaching/managing less experienced team members and distributing tasks between them. I did other related things as well but they are kinda cryptic to be of any interest to the general public (you can read a brand new interview regarding this matter at 80lvlthough).

Typically, the best way for me to get inspired and to nail each given task is to browse as many visual references as possible. Currently, I’m a vivid Destiny fan and was also able to complete Subnautica along with RUINER (was really pleased with the visual aspect of this game). Sometimes I feel like playing some oldies like Quake III and Postal 2.

You can find more INSOMNIA related 3D-art from Anton over here

I started out with getting acquainted with Anatoliy (Mono Studio’s CEO) which happened back in the college days. He dreamed to build a game for quite some time and after a while, we actually started doing our first steps in this direction.

There was no studio or any kind of team back then. However, after some time Anatoliy was able to find two programmers and some funding — this is when things got more serious. At that point of time, I had no solid experience as a 3D artist which made me learn everything as we moved forward.

So I was quite lucky to get involved in a very big and ambitious project and my duties included constructing 3D modules for locations (just like Anton), environment objects, some of the statues/robots, and high tier armor sets. Basically, whenever you are looking at the screen while playing INSOMNIA, there should be always something I’ve created or was involved in.

To get a proper art-deco/retro-futuristic inspiration for the project I was watching related movies and animated series — Anatoliy had a huge collection of those at the time, and needless to say, he forced me to watch all of them haha.

These days I comfort myself with playing Destiny 2 and DMC 5. I’m really enjoying my time with Sekiro as well since it’s an outstanding game visually etc. When it comes to old games — I feel nostalgic about Space Rangers 2, Morrowind, DMC 3, Neverwinter Nights 2, Dragon Age and many many others.

You can find more INSOMNIA related 3D-art from Ilya over here

I was introduced to the gamedev industry just like many other members of Mono Studio — by working on INSOMNIA. However, I started my first 3D-art experiments more than 10 years ago and became a part of the team in 2014 in a very unusual way.

At that point in time, the studio’s lead 3D artist was looking forward to building an effective pipeline for all 3D related work. We had a certain amount of existing objects that had to be imported into the Unreal Engine 4 editor and I was asked to build a tool that would automate this process. After this task was completed I continued to develop similar tools to improve our workflow. Eventually, I ended up doing the more usual 3D artist stuff — modeling objects.

I did quite a few things inside the game including the vulture’s statue in Vulture’s Nest and all kinds of trash which usually serve as an important decorating element of almost any location of Object 6. When it comes to inspiration — our office itself serves as a great source of ideas: it’s filled with an unbelievable mix of sketches, huge paintings, antiques, swords, and shields. And, of course, I enjoy reading books, watching movies, listening to some quality music and playing games.

I prefer RPGs mostly and my latest gaming sessions were dedicated to Horizon: Zero Dawn and Kingdom Come: Deliverance. My top list of games also includes Warcraft 2, Fable: Lost chapters and Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning.

P.S. a few words regarding v1.5: as we have already mentioned in the comments to previous updates and in the Community Hub — this patch is undergoing testing at the moment and we expect QA to give us some news in the middle of next week. See you soon!

Hello everyone! Today we would like to tell you a little bit more about the people behind the INSOMNIA: the Ark. Have you ever wondered who was responsible for that specific piece of furniture or dialogue line (please, hide your tomatoes)? It’s time to find out!

Since there are quite a few insomniacs who made this game possible (other than our respective Kickstarter backers, of course), we will split this material into a few parts. Without further adieu, please welcome our first participants...

INSOMNIA is my first project and before that, I had only occasional experience in the video game industry as an artist and animator. My initial goal was just to create beautiful 3D scenes but I ended up being the CEO of the company.

However, when it comes to indie teams, combining several roles is quite common. I was no exception and served as an artist, art director, and level designer at different stages of development. I did the initial concept art for INSOMNIA but at some point, I realized that in order to meet my own levels of standard and expectations, I needed to recruit more experienced professionals. In addition to that, I’m responsible for the way the characters look and how they are built, certain UI aspects, AI tuning and loot distribution in the game.

Obviously, old-school RPGs like Fallout 1 and 2 were my initial source of inspiration. However, later we felt like we don’t want to make just a clone of these games. Instead, we should try to take a step forward within the genre. This made the overall development process somewhat harder but it gave us valuable experience in return.

When it comes to other games, I really enjoyed Total War, Mount and Blade and the RPG genre in general. Lately though, there isn’t much to it other than the second installment of Pillars of Eternity. I also dig games like This War of Mine, Limbo and Inside — they doesn’t require too much time and feel satisfying after just 3-4 hours of gameplay. I feel like this is a very effective way to design games and would like to move in this direction with my future projects.

My story started in 2010 when I first met Anatoliy Guyduk. That summer he introduced me to the “Icar Project” which later became what we know as INSOMNIA: The Ark. I’ve joined the team and started covering the technical side of things.

I was responsible for implementing all of the main quests and some of the sidequests as well. Which means I must be the most knowledgeable person when it comes to the story of the game. I really enjoy working on this title as the member of the team and I feel that this is the best source of inspiration for me.

I play INSOMNIA very often since we still need to improve quite a few things. Other than that I’m fond of 7,62 and games from Rockstar.

I clearly remember how I was invited to Mono Studio by one of my friends — she told me that they have recently started developing “a big game”. When I first visited them back in 2012 it didn’t take a long time to realize we are cut out to work together: I loved the atmosphere and aesthetics of the game and the studio itself. So many ambitious ideas were born there, and so many have never meant to see the light of the day (as we figured out later).

I’ve joined the team when INSOMNIA was still in the pre-production phase. It looked different and generally felt like a collection of emotional and chaotic concepts. It took a few years of episodic work (we took our time, so to speak) to create a core for the future game, and we were able to continue with a more active development ever since we were successfully funded on Kickstarter in 2014.

My responsibility was to help develop the setting and the story. After we were satisfied with the outlines of the INSOMNIA’s world I became more active with adding details to the lore, characters, dialogues, and narrative design. Generally, I ended up being involved in everything text related (localisations, etc.)

During my work on INSOMNIA, I was inspired by all kinds of things. You’ll never know which cultural element will give you some fresh ideas — it can be a 14th-century musician’s bio, a Korean art-house, Russian B-movies from the 90s or some random Facebook story.

Usually, though, this role is reserved to the sci-fi literature of 40s-80s, historical events, movies/TV-shows/animation with no specific genre or time period (sci-fi and good old classics are always a priority though), old-school comic books, as well as art of all shapes and forms. Also, I really admire the Japanese creative mindset — there’s always a big chance to find all kinds of madness being produced there (especially in the 70s).

These days I rarely invest my time in hardcore games, however, I really love Space Rangers, Paradox games, Cuphead, Ori and Blind Forest. Playing Kingdom Come sounds like a good idea but I can’t let myself to spend 100+ hours on a game these days.

Mostly, I play games with outstanding stories and atmosphere like Darkwood, Soma, Return of Obra Dinn, Cat Lady. I also dig story-driven FPS games like Bioshock or F.E.A.R (oh, I just realized I’ve spent at least 50 hours playing Into The Breach). Some time ago I had a crush on “weird” titles like Stanley Parable and Magic Circle. And there is certainly a list of games I can’t avoid playing no matter how much time it will take to complete them (Talos Principle, Portal and The Witness).

That’s all for now folks! We will get back to you next week hopefully with some additional info regarding v1.5 and the second installment of “Meet the team” focused on other team members who had a huge impact on INSOMNIA.

Stay tuned!

Hello everyone! Today, we will cover quite a few topics regarding the latest game-related activities including the current progress with patch v1.5 and a few other improvements coming with it.


As you may know, INSOMNIA is undergoing transition to the latest version of Unreal Engine 4 in order to improve overall performance and fix an array of issues that couldn't be addressed otherwise.

Thanks to your continuous support of INSOMNIA on Steam we were able to expand our QA staff and plan to hire additional devs to our studio so that we can speed up our progress.

Last Friday, March 15th, we have rolled out the latest iteration of the game and internal tests showed that there’s more fixing to be done and testing to carry out. As painful as a delay may be, we want to keep working further on the patch instead of simply releasing with several bugs that may cause issues for any fixes or content updates that we plan to add later down the line.



We are expecting to have our next QA session next Friday, March 29th, which should give us a better idea of when v1.5 is going to be released.


In addition to the list of bugs mentioned before, we’ve managed to address a few more issues reported by the community including:

• The lack of player indicator on the level map;
  
• Map icons from the previously visited level overlaying the map of the current level;
  
• The lack of durability parameter in gun descriptions.

We are also working on fixing Steam VR initialization upon game launch. Please keep in mind that this list is not final and is subject to change and expand. As always, we will keep you posted on our progress.

Until next time!

Hello everyone! Today we are giving you our 50th Steam update and we’d like to dedicate it to the press coverage INSOMNIA received since its release. Other than the usual media attention our game managed to participate in the self-cooling headset tests held by CNET. And of course it’s time to share a few more selected quotes:

“Insomnia: The Ark has been a long time coming. Developed by Russian developer Mono Studio over the course of nine years, it gained a significant following after a successful 2014 Kickstarter campaign. Now this retro sci-fi RPG is finally ready to play, and looks like an impressive combination of Fallout, Mass Effect, and Bioshock.” - Marshall Lemon @ VG24/7

“The art direction is mesmerizing. The dieselpunk Nomah civilization has a fascinating and beautiful aesthetic. It looks like a combination of Soviet propaganda and architecture with retro-futuristic elements. As said in the preview, the influence from the art direction of Fallout and BioShock is very clear, though it’s not just a barefaced imitation. It’s an original combination of elements and details, with a sleek space station visual design.” - Richard Costa @ Techraptor

We are also expecting an in-depth interview with 80 Level to be published for everyone to read in the nearest future. It covers quite a few peculiar technical details regarding the game.


Even though it’s been around 5 months since the game has been released, we are still seeing let’s plays and streams pop-up from all around the world. So if you haven’t tried INSOMNIA yourself yet, we recommend checking out one of the following videos in your native language:

English
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qj14jhGRNnI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7gfA_iQROz0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xgmTZq2t4XE
Polski
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PtdrsIEHq8w https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v-1TI2RO-cA
Deutsch
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c4JqC7Rw-Dg
Português
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aUk7cNIzBfg
Español
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qo_jKN8tEAk
Thanks to everyone for spreading the news! Until next time :)

P.S. we will have more news regarding v1.5 in our next update.

Hello everyone! Today, we will shed some light on the backstory of the main character who is generally known as citizen KZ0012 (but you can call him Elliot, if you so desire). One can make an assumption that these letters and numbers are random and meaningless. However, this is not the case when it comes to INSOMNIA’s world, which we have been developing for so many years. So what does KZ0012 mean?

Over four centuries had elapsed since Object 6 started on its journey. Its destination - the Evacuation Point - remaining a symbol of hopes and dreams. Thousands of people are lying in synthetic slumber in order to one day occupy their place in a well-oiled government machine.



Traditional reproduction and the institutions of family have long been abolished. The population numbers are kept in check by embryonic incubation and genetic engineering.

Citizen ID is a personal number which is given to each citizen of Urb on the day they are born. Each ID consists of letters and digits which stand for the generation indicator and index number respectively. The first artificial generation was born 97 years after Exodus and got an AA indicator:



You start your journey as citizen KZ0012 after an automatic awakening procedure is executed and your multi-year sleep session is brought to an end. KZ0012 was born in 382 (each second letter in a Citizen ID stands for one of the 26 years which are part of a certain generation) and was the 12th baby born in this particular year.



He experienced his first Big Sleep procedure in 399 when he was 17, spending 5 years in stasis. KZ0012 was 23 the second time he was hibernated, spending 2 more years in Limb before the terrorist attack shook the facility and many citizens were brought back to reality in the most shocking manner. Upon awakening, KZ0012 starts experiencing the symptoms of somnia in form of hallucinations and visions — his first taste of somnic space.

But that is a whole different story...

Hello everyone! Today, we’d like to share details about a few other improvements coming with the next patch. In addition to the list of bugs mentioned in our previous posts, we’ve managed to narrow down and address a few more issues reported by the community including:

• Localization settings no longer reset each time the game is launched. Basically one of the major goals we have is to refactor the way localization works behind the scenes, so that we can add more languages with ease in the future;
  
  
• The number of items with no icons and descriptions has been reduced. We did our best to eliminate all of the reported cases. However, there still might be some left (would really appreciate your feedback on this when the update is out):
  
  
  
  
• Fixed sound effects resembling running that can be heard while characters are walking;
  
• The door in Wild Grove is now operational after the fuse box is repaired by the player (this fix won’t take effect retroactively, however).

We are also looking forward to adding Steam Cloud support to INSOMNIA along with other highly requested features and fixes. We will keep you posted on our progress.

Until next time!

Hello everyone! As we’ve previously mentioned, this week we are bringing you additional info regarding the upcoming update to version 1.5. Since it’s not always possible to get the whole picture by simply looking at screenshots, we have prepared a short video demonstration:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FiuFGyhsLOg
Please keep in mind that fixing the various texture-related issues, removing localization-related bugs and optimization were our main priority. However, the visual upgrade came as an additional bonus due to the engine’s improved tool set and capabilities.

We are looking forward to fixing more bugs reported by our community in the v1.5 of INSOMNIA. As always, we will keep you posted regarding our progress.

Until next time!

Hello everyone! Today, we would like to give you a first look at the changes that v1.5 will introduce to INSOMNIA. One of the greatest things about the 4.21.2 version of the Unreal Engine 4 is DirectX 12 support which brings dramatic changes to the appearance of in-game locations (click on the thumbnails below for full resolution):



As you can see, the lighting effects have been improved drastically, making Object 6 look and feel more realistic and sinister than ever before. You can also expect DirectX 11 support, even though INSOMNIA worked only with DirectX 10 initially:



One other thing we are really happy with is the texture streaming feature that fixes the missing textures issue that some of you have experienced before:



As more tests of v1.5 are carried out, we will be able to give you additional details regarding performance optimization.

Stay tuned for next week’s update!