Bavovna Included!

Bavovna Included! is a satirical indie shoot ’em up game with pixel graphics that humorously addresses the Russo-Ukrainian War. Set in Ukraine, it combines casual shooter gameplay with a manifesto-style approach, incorporating memes and Easter eggs to critique the conflict involving Russian troops.

Bavovna Included!: A Pixelated Manifesto of Resistance and Satire in the Shoot-‘Em-Up Genre

Introduction: More Than Just a Game

In the vast digital catacombs of Steam’s early access section, where countless derivative titles vie for attention, Bavovna Included! emerges not merely as a game but as a raw, unfiltered cultural artifact. Released by the Ukrainian indie collective Ironbellys Crew in November 2022, it is a satirical shoot-’em-up (SHMUP) that weaponizes pixel art and gameplay to confront the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine head-on. Its title, a deliberate phonetic play on the Ukrainian expletive “bavovna” (a crude term for nonsense or baloney), signals its intent: to reduce the vaunted rhetoric of Russian military might to the level of a frustrating, arcade-style obstacle course. This review posits that Bavovna Included! is a critical case study in the burgeoning genre of “protest games”—works where sophisticated mechanics are secondary to the potency of their message and the context of their creation. It is a flawed, uneven, yet profoundly significant piece of interactive rhetoric, born from the crucible of national survival and designed explicitly to inform, incite, and inspire through the universal language of gaming satire.

Development History & Context: Forged in the Shadows of War

The Studio and Vision: Ironbellys Crew is not a traditional studio but an ad-hoc collective, as evidenced by their MobyGames credits and self-described status as “just beginners in game development.” There are no famous industry veterans here; instead, the team is composed of Ukrainian creators responding to an existential crisis. Their stated vision, as laid out in the game’s Steam store manifesto, is twofold: to vividly illustrate for an international audience the “real ‘greatness and might’ of the russian army” through absurdist gameplay, and to directly contribute to the war effort by donating 30% of profits to verified Ukrainian volunteer foundations like “Return alive” and the “Serhiy Prytula Foundation” (later noted as “LNJ FUND”).

Technological Constraints & Aesthetic Choice: The choice of pixel graphics and a fixed/flip-screen visual style is not merely an aesthetic nod to retro SHMUPs like Gundam or R-Type. It is a pragmatic and symbolic decision. The minimalist, hand-drawn pixel art allows for rapid development with limited resources while evoking a timeless, arcade feel. This visual language strips away hyper-realism, focusing the player’s attention on the archetypal, almost cartoonish representation of the conflict: simple, blocky “Russian” soldiers (often referred to in community memes as “orcs”) against Ukrainian HIMARS launchers and defenders. The technical specs (requiring only a Pentium 4 and 1GB RAM) ensure maximum accessibility, a crucial factor for a game meant to be easily downloaded and played worldwide as an act of digital solidarity.

Gaming Landscape at Release: Launched into early access on November 19, 2022, the game entered a market saturated with complex, AAA war shooters. Its positioning was antithetical: a cheap, casual, funny game about an ongoing, horrific war. This juxtaposition was its core marketing hook. It leveraged the accessible “casual” and “arcade” tags on Steam to attract players who might avoid a serious historical simulator, only to confront them with its stark political reality. The tag “Wargame” here is ironic; this is not about simulation but about allegory.

Narrative & Thematic Deep Dive: The Plot is the Politics

Bavovna Included! presents a unique narrative challenge: it has no traditional plot in the literary sense. The “story” is the war itself, as documented in the store’s harrowing historical timeline. The characters are archetypes: the Player as the Ukrainian Defender (implicitly a HIMARS system or soldier), the bosses as grotesque personifications of Russian military failure and barbarity.

Thematic Core: Satire as a Weapon. The game’s primary narrative device is sustained, unrelenting satire. The developers state their purpose is to highlight the enemy’s “greatness and might” by depicting it as a horde of incompetent, easily dispatched foes. This aligns with a long tradition of using humor to undermine authoritarian propaganda, from Private Eye magazine to The Daily Show. The pixelated “bavovna” (nonsense) is the Russian army’s performance. Bosses likely represent real-world symbols of the invasion—the Moskva cruiser, the Kerch Bridge, Kadyrov’s forces (as seen in community screenshots with “🖕КАДИРОВ – НЕВДАГА!🖕”)—reduced to laughable, destructible entities.

Dialogue and Text: All narrative delivery is textual, via the store manifesto and likely in-game introductions. The tone is earnest, furious, and mournful, grounding the satire in real tragedy: “Tens of thousands of people have already died, including children, pregnant women, and the elderly. In the city of Mariupol alone… the number of victims… is more than 20,000 people!” This creates a dissonant but powerful effect: the gameplay is silly and arcadey, but the frame is brutally serious. The game does not let you forget what you are satirizing.

Underlying Themes:
1. The Banality of Evil in Pixel Form: By making the invaders generic, easily-killed sprites, the game comments on the dehumanizing machinery of the Russian army and the shocking ineptitude revealed by the invasion.
2. Indie Dev as Resistance: The very existence of the game, built by amateurs in a warzone, is a thematic statement about Ukrainian resilience and technological creativity under fire.
3. The Commodification of Solidarity: The transparent donation model (30% profit) forces a transactional relationship on the player. Your purchase is explicitly not just for entertainment but for political contribution and symbolic support. This complicates the “game” as a pure product.

Gameplay Mechanics & Systems: A Rough but Functional SHMUP

Based on MobyGames’ classification (Action > Shooter, Fixed/flip-screen, Direct control) and Steam tags (Shoot ‘Em Up, Roguelike, Arcade), we can reconstruct the core loop.

Core Gameplay Loop: The player controls a unit (likely a HIMARS or singular Ukrainian soldier) in a fixed-screen arena. Enemies (Russian troops, vehicles) spawn in waves (“hordes”) from the edges of the screen. The objective is to destroy all waves and a boss. The control is “direct,” implying a keyboard or mouse/gamepad setup where movement and aim are unified (like Smash TV or Geometry Wars), not the 8-way tank controls of classic SHMUPs.

Progression & Upgrades: The Steam description explicitly states: “Do not forget about upgrades, they will help you win!” This suggests a lightweight progression system. Between waves or levels, players can spend points/currency to enhance firepower, rate of fire, health, or special abilities. The tag “Roguelike” implies these upgrades are probably semi-permanent for a single run but reset upon game over, encouraging multiple attempts—a common structure for casual, arcade-style games.

Innovative or Flawed Systems:
* Innovation: The primary innovation is contextual, not mechanical. Using the SHMUP format—a genre predicated on overwhelming barrages of enemy fire—to metaphorically represent the indiscriminate rocket barrages on Ukrainian cities is a potent, if grim, conceptual link.
* Flaws: As an early access title from novice developers, significant flaws are expected and acknowledged. The store page admits “The game may contain bugs.” The “casual” and “minimalist” tags suggest shallower mechanics than hardcore SHMUP fans might expect. The “fixed/flip-screen” visual style, while retro, may limit the scope and dynamism of levels compared to scrolling shooters. The reliance on English and Ukrainian languages (plus others) suggests localization might be incomplete or uneven.

UI & Accessibility: The UI is likely Spartan: a score counter, health bar, possibly an upgrade menu. The extremely low system requirements and inclusion of Steam Cloud and Family Sharing point to a focus on broad, frictionless accessibility—crucial for a game meant to be a easily shareable piece of political media.

World-Building, Art & Sound: The Aesthetic of Defiance

Setting & Atmosphere: The “locations” are presumably real Ukrainian places or generic sectors (frontlines, cities under shelling). The atmosphere is conveyed not through detailed environmental storytelling but through the juxtaposition of cheerful, bouncy arcade music (inferred from the “funny” and “atmospheric” tags) against the pixelated destruction of military hardware. The community screenshots are revelatory: one shows a hand-drawn, almost childish pixel art sign for “Makiivka” (a Russian-occupied city), another a crude “Kerch Bridge redesign.” This is world-building via meme and graffiti. The setting is Ukraine at war, simplified into a playable map of resistance.

Visual Direction: The pixel graphics are “hand-drawn,” giving them a slightly rough, organic feel compared to crisp, digital pixel art. This aesthetic choice humanizes the project, emphasizing its grassroots, handmade nature. The enemies are likely blocky and cartoonish, evoking not terror but ridicule. The visual style is a direct descendant of games like Hotline Miami or Enter the Gungeon, using exaggerated, retro visuals to disarm and then surprise with violence and political charge.

Sound Design: There is no specific mention of sound in the sources, but the tags “Full Audio” and “Atmospheric” suggest a deliberate soundtrack and effects. Given the “Funny” tag, the sound effects are likely comical (boings, silly explosions) for enemy defeats, matching the satirical tone. However, the developers’ solemn manifesto implies moments of somber, patriotic, or tense Ukrainian music may underscore the experience, creating that critical dissonance between form and content. The 29 Steam achievements, with names like “Musical Pause Achievement,” hint at quirky, sound-related challenges that further the game’s irreverent personality.

Reception & Legacy: A Silence in the Press, a Roar in the Community

Critical Reception: There is a startling absence of professional critic reviews. Metacritic lists none, and MobyGames has no approved critic reviews, only a placeholder. This is the game’s most telling critical fact. It exists almost entirely outside the traditional games press ecosystem. Its “reviews” are on Steam, from its target audience.

Commercial & User Reception: On Steam, it holds a perfect 100/100 Player Score from 11 reviews at the time of data collection (Steambase), all positive. The small sample size is typical for a niche indie title, but the unanimity is striking. User tags (“Political,” “Historical,” “War”) indicate players understand and engage with its primary purpose. The active Steam community is vibrant, not with gameplay tips, but with memes and artwork. The most-upvoted discussions are about a “Meme Guide” DLC and users sharing pixel-art screenshots with Ukrainian slogans (“УКРАЇНА-МАТИ,” “ТАК!”) and mockeries of Russian symbols (“МОСКОВІЯ – ЖАРТ!”). The game has successfully become a canvas for communal political expression. Its function has organically expanded from playing to sharing and creating ideological content.

Evolution & Updates: The patch notes from the Steam events show consistent, if slow, development. From the initial early access launch (Nov 2022) to “Massive Update! Bavovna 2.0!” (Jun 2023) and updates as recent as 2025, the developer has persisted. This ongoing support, despite describing themselves as beginners, demonstrates a commitment that transcends a one-off protest cash-in.

Influence & Industry Impact: Bavovna Included! has not influenced mainstream game design. Its legacy is not in mechanics but in model. It represents a potent, low-barrier-to-entry template for activist game development: a simple, accessible game built on a free or cheap engine, with a transparent charitable component, distributed via mainstream platforms like Steam, and designed to be easily clip-able for social media. It sits in a lineage with games like Pizzeria Simulator (Anti-Fascist) or the numerous Palestinian solidarity jams, but its specificity (an ongoing war, named charities, direct satire of a specific enemy) makes it a landmark case of immediate, direct-purpose gaming.

Conclusion: A Flawed Artifact of Unignorable Importance

Bavovna Included! is not a good game by conventional metrics. Its mechanics are rudimentary, its content sparse by AAA standards, and its production values those of a passionate amateur project. It is, by its own admission, a “manifesto.” As a piece of game design, it is a 6/10—competent at its simple arcade premise but unpolished. As a cultural document, it is a 10/10.

Its genius lies in its strategic simplicity and absolute clarity of purpose. It understands that for its intended audience—foreign gamers curious about the war—a complex strategy sim is a barrier, while a 5-minute SHMUP where you blow up pixelated “orcs” with a HIMARS is an accessible, memorable, and shareable entry point. The donation model ensures that engagement has tangible value. The community’s embrace, turning it into a meme-generator, proves it succeeded in creating not just a game but a symbolic space for pro-Ukrainian sentiment within a global gaming platform.

Historically, Bavovna Included! will not be remembered for advancing the SHMUP genre. It will be remembered as a primary source artifact from the digital front of the Russo-Ukrainian War. It is proof that in the 21st century, game development can be an act of immediate civil defense, information warfare, and humanitarian fundraising. It is a pixelated, noisy, sometimes buggy, and deeply Ukrainian “fuck you” rendered in 16-bit. For that reason alone, it is essential, and its place in the history of games is secured—not in the canon of artistic mastery, but in the annals of interactive protest, where its message, delivered via a hail of virtual pixels and memes, rings deafeningly clear.

Final Verdict: B- (as a game) / A+ (as a historical artifact and protest tool). Play it not for balance or depth, but to understand a moment, to support a cause directly, and to witness the raw, unfiltered voice of a developer nation fighting for its existence, one meme-filled wave at a time.