02-15-2023, 12:24 PM
Vasily Zotov is a Russian independent game developer. He also happens to have schizophrenia. It's not of the kind that serves for much humor on the internet.
A dated interview with him.
Gamers do not respond well to people like Zotov. Maybe Phil Fish was right about them. Who knows?
Zotov's works are remarkably coherent, all things considered. He designed his games by himself, made (I assume) most of the assets himself, and the result is functional. The aesthetic is unique and continuous throughout his work. I've noticed these people imitating him recently but making it about epic weed smoking and surreal urbanism and energy drink jokes - an Adult Swim show, basically. I can see a bit of Nuclear Titbit in their style as well.
Here are a few of his titles on archive org. He also made a mobile game for iOS called Through the Blades of the Pinandalozy. I haven't been able to find it yet.
https://archive.org/details/SpaceSpy
https://archive.org/details/RefugeeTheSecondHearing
https://archive.org/details/AskLeslieMoonves
https://archive.org/details/QuiteSoulless
Zotov's games are mainly autobiographical. He relays his experience of the world. If you have ever read Schreber's Memoirs, or other accounts of schizophrenia, you'll see that he has expressed his inner life in the form of an adventure game with incredible precision. There are a number of graphical glitches, and every puzzle and task is explained beforehand, removing the challenge, but none of this is game-breaking per se. I don't know any other game developers with severe mental illnesses that are this good. In the interview above, he claims that his first ambition was literary. I suppose his games could be considered Visual Novels.
Zotov tried to emigrate to the US recently. He dramatized this in a game later on. He shares details on his website about the events surrounding this, though it's hard to tell what he is talking about. He starts with the U.S. Government torturing and killing two prisoners not far from Santa Ana, California, close to where I assume he was trying to move. Zotov claims he and his attorney were accosted by a plain-clothed representative of the Department of Homeland Security. At this point one begins to doubt him, but he links a real document from his attorney describing the event. Later parts of this narrative are clearly produced by his illness. He has been seemingly inactive for a time. The last update on his Twitter account is from 2019.
I hope he's alright. I think he's an extremely talented man. I don't want to call him an "outsider artist", or a "naive artist", as that puts forth a repressive worldview. He's just an artist, in particular a game designer. He calls his characters "puppets". How much is Zotov inspired by the art of puppetry? It would be interesting to ask him. A regular schizophrenic conception is that they and others are automatons, vessels emptied of agency. Schreber's "fleeting-improvised-men" come to mind. Quite Soulless seems to be his most well-known game.
A dated interview with him.
Gamers do not respond well to people like Zotov. Maybe Phil Fish was right about them. Who knows?
Zotov's works are remarkably coherent, all things considered. He designed his games by himself, made (I assume) most of the assets himself, and the result is functional. The aesthetic is unique and continuous throughout his work. I've noticed these people imitating him recently but making it about epic weed smoking and surreal urbanism and energy drink jokes - an Adult Swim show, basically. I can see a bit of Nuclear Titbit in their style as well.
Here are a few of his titles on archive org. He also made a mobile game for iOS called Through the Blades of the Pinandalozy. I haven't been able to find it yet.
https://archive.org/details/SpaceSpy
https://archive.org/details/RefugeeTheSecondHearing
https://archive.org/details/AskLeslieMoonves
https://archive.org/details/QuiteSoulless
Zotov's games are mainly autobiographical. He relays his experience of the world. If you have ever read Schreber's Memoirs, or other accounts of schizophrenia, you'll see that he has expressed his inner life in the form of an adventure game with incredible precision. There are a number of graphical glitches, and every puzzle and task is explained beforehand, removing the challenge, but none of this is game-breaking per se. I don't know any other game developers with severe mental illnesses that are this good. In the interview above, he claims that his first ambition was literary. I suppose his games could be considered Visual Novels.
Zotov tried to emigrate to the US recently. He dramatized this in a game later on. He shares details on his website about the events surrounding this, though it's hard to tell what he is talking about. He starts with the U.S. Government torturing and killing two prisoners not far from Santa Ana, California, close to where I assume he was trying to move. Zotov claims he and his attorney were accosted by a plain-clothed representative of the Department of Homeland Security. At this point one begins to doubt him, but he links a real document from his attorney describing the event. Later parts of this narrative are clearly produced by his illness. He has been seemingly inactive for a time. The last update on his Twitter account is from 2019.
I hope he's alright. I think he's an extremely talented man. I don't want to call him an "outsider artist", or a "naive artist", as that puts forth a repressive worldview. He's just an artist, in particular a game designer. He calls his characters "puppets". How much is Zotov inspired by the art of puppetry? It would be interesting to ask him. A regular schizophrenic conception is that they and others are automatons, vessels emptied of agency. Schreber's "fleeting-improvised-men" come to mind. Quite Soulless seems to be his most well-known game.
