Den’ Vyborov

Den’ Vyborov (The Election Day) is a traditional 2D point-and-click adventure game based on the satirical Russian film and stage play by ‘Quartet I’. Players follow Stepan, a new character who finds a love letter in a bottle on the Volga river. He boards the propaganda boat ‘Sergey Abramov’ to find the letter’s author, navigating a story filled with political satire, corrupt electorates, and a gubernatorial campaign. The game features the original film actors providing voices, includes live-action video clips from the movie, and blends item collection, dialogue, and mini-games to progress the comedic narrative.

Den’ Vyborov: A Lost Bottle on the Volga

In the annals of video game history, there exist titles that are not merely products of their time, but fascinating cultural artifacts—ambitious attempts to bridge mediums that, for one reason or another, fail to stick the landing. Den’ Vyborov (The Election Day), a 2007 point-and-click adventure from Russian developer Saturn Plus, is one such artifact. It stands as a poignant, if flawed, testament to the challenges of adapting beloved satirical source material into the interactive realm, a game whose very existence is more intriguing than its execution. This is the story of a game that sailed on the Volga with grand ambitions, only to find itself lost in the political currents it sought to navigate.

Development History & Context

The Studio and The Vision

Developed by Saturn Plus and published by Buka Entertainment, Den’ Vyborov was born from a specific and tumultuous era in the Russian game development scene. Saturn Plus was not a neophyte studio; by 2007, they were known as seasoned, if not always celebrated, laborers in the genre of the “Russian quest”—a colloquial term for the graphic adventure games that remained peculiarly popular in the post-Soviet market long after their commercial peak in the West.

The vision was audacious: to adapt the “critically acclaimed satirical Russian motion picture of the same name,” which itself was based on the long-running Moscow stage play performed by the legendary “Quartet I” theater troupe. The film and play were renowned for their “sparkling humor and irony,” offering a sharp, farcical critique of Russian political machinations and electoral absurdity. The game’s creators aimed to transplant this beloved intellectual property into an interactive format, hoping to leverage its recognizable brand and satirical edge.

Technological Constraints and The Gaming Landscape

Released in October 2007, the game arrived at a curious technological crossroads. The golden age of the CD-ROM-based point-and-click adventure was a decade past. In the West, studios like LucasArts and Sierra had largely abandoned the genre, while in Russia, it persisted as a niche but reliable market. The game was built on a traditional 2D engine, utilizing pre-rendered static backgrounds—a technically safe choice, but one that already felt dated alongside contemporary 3D adventures and the rising dominance of first-person shooters and action RPGs.

The development was clearly a substantial undertaking, crediting a massive 113 people. The credits reveal a structured, almost industrial approach to game creation: a hierarchy of project leaders, screenwriters, animators, and a dedicated administrative team. This suggests a project backed by a significant budget for the regional market, but one perhaps burdened by its own bureaucratic weight. Furthermore, the game was infamously shackled with StarForce DRM, a notoriously aggressive copy-protection system known to cause instability and even damage users’ systems—a decision that would later contribute to its reputation as a problematic release.

Narrative & Thematic Deep Dive

The Plot: A Love Story Adrift in a Political Circus

The game introduces a new protagonist, Stepan Matrosov, a simple village boy from the Volga region. The core narrative hook is charmingly romantic: Stepan finds a love letter in a bottle floating down the Volga river, tossed from the passing propaganda boat “Sergey Abramov.” Smitten, he boards the vessel to find the authoress of this letter and “conquer her love feelings.”

However, this personal quest is immediately complicated by the boat’s primary function: it is a floating campaign headquarters for a candidate running for governor. The player soon discovers that the electorate in the ports visited is “either corrupt or influenced by a current corrupt governor.” The original candidate is forced out of the race after an “armed assault on the ship,” and the story bizarrely pivots, making Stepan the new, unlikely candidate.

This is where the adaptation’s “looseness” becomes its greatest weakness. As critic Alexey Miloslavsky from games.mail.ru noted, “From the original work remained only approximately similar decorations, and all the main characters of the play in a caricatured image.” The brilliant, specific satire of the source material is largely abandoned. Instead of a tight narrative about the radio staff’s cynical campaign, the game’s plot devolves into a chaotic series of events. The third act, as described by Absolute Games, descends into utter absurdity: “Gangster group showdowns, mad scientists, drugs, cyborgs—what is there not? There is no ‘Election Day’ though, but those are trifles.”

Characters and Dialogue: A Chasm Between Stage and Screen

The game’s most significant selling point was the participation of the original “Quartet I” actors—Alexander Demidov, Kamil Larin, Leonid Baratz, and Rostislav Khait—who provided voices for their iconic characters. This was a genuine coup, a promise of authenticity. Yet, the critical consensus is that this promise was broken. The new protagonist, Stepan, was voiced by Alexander Fisenko, who critics described as “infinitely far from theater and cinema.” The original cast’s performances reportedly felt “completely faceless and lethargic,” their iconic sparkle dimmed by what was likely a rushed or under-directed recording process.

The dialogue and script, penned by Alexey Nikanorov and Anastasia Kuvaldina, fail to capture the “witty humor” of the original. The interactions often serve purely functional purposes: Stepan talks to characters mostly to “gain more items or information.” Many objects in the environment can be examined, but only a few can be collected, with the rest merely triggering often-flat commentary from Stepan, a missed opportunity for deeper characterization or humor.

Themes: Satire Diluted

The core theme of political satire is present but heavily diluted. The game pays lip service to corruption and electoral farce, but it lacks the biting intelligence and focus of its source material. The romantic subplot feels grafted on, a simplistic driver for a narrative that loses its way. The thematic potential of a simple man navigating a corrupt political system is squandered in favor of a disjointed plot that embraces nonsense over pointed commentary.

Gameplay Mechanics & Systems

The Core Loop: A Traditional, Flawed Adventure

Den’ Vyborov is, by its own description, a “traditional two-dimensional point-and-click adventure game.” The gameplay loop is classic for the genre: Stepan wanders between static screens, collecting items, using them on environmental puzzles or other characters, and engaging in dialogue trees to advance the story.

The interface is spartan. A single cursor blinks when hovering over an interactive spot, a functional but uninspired system that lacks the contextual verb wheels or personality of its Western contemporaries. This simplicity contributes to a feeling of mechanical bareness.

Puzzles and Mini-Games

The puzzles appear to follow the often-criticized “adventure game logic” of the era, where solutions can feel obscure or nonsensical rather than intuitive. The game also incorporates three action mini-games that must be completed to progress. The nature of these mini-games is not detailed in the sources, but their inclusion in a traditional adventure often signals a jarring break in pacing and tone, a fact likely reflected in the game’s poor reception.

Progression and Flaws

The overall impression from the critiques is that the gameplay is a slog. The puzzles are not clever enough to be satisfying, the dialogue is not witty enough to carry the scenes, and the injection of unrelated mini-games and a bizarre plot twist into gangster and sci-fi territory suggests a fundamental lack of design focus. It is the work of a team going through the motions of adventure game creation without understanding the narrative cohesion and clever design that makes the genre work at its best.

World-Building, Art & Sound

Visual Direction: Static and Dated

The art was handled by Svyatoslav Kondaurov (backgrounds, interface) and a team of animators led by Natalya Kuznetsova. The game utilizes 2D pre-rendered backgrounds, a technique that can be beautiful but here is described as merely functional. The character animation is criticized outright; Absolute Games mentioned “torn frames instead of the promised ‘high-quality animation’.”

The character designs by Alexey Motavin are described as “caricatured,” a sensible approach for a comedy. However, the criticism that they and the environments only “approximately” resemble the source material suggests a failure to capture the distinct visual identity of the film. The inclusion of “several short live-action video sequences from the movie” feels less like a seamless integration and more like a stark, jarring reminder of the superior material the player could be enjoying.

Sound Design: A Squandered Opportunity

The soundscape is a particular point of failure. While the original Quartet I actors are present, their performances are wasted. The score and sound effects by Oleg Sevostyanov are described as a “bitten-from-all-sides soundtrack,” implying a cheap or poorly implemented audio experience. The sound, much like the animation, fails to elevate the experience and instead contributes to the overall feeling of a low-budget, rushed product.

Reception & Legacy

Critical Panning at Launch

Den’ Vyborov was met with overwhelmingly negative reviews upon release. It holds a dismal 48% average score on MobyGames based on three contemporary Russian critiques:
* games.mail.ru (55%): Lamented the loss of the original’s humor and the poor voice acting for the new character.
* IGROMANIA (55%): Called it a “typical ‘Russian quest'” that failed to develop the film’s timely theme.
* Absolute Games (34%): Delivered a scathing review, mocking the absurd plot deviation and the low-quality animation, concluding that the developers were following a stale formula (“the ideals of the party”) without innovation.

Commercial Obscurity and Lasting Legacy

There is no indication the game was a commercial success. It was released only in Russia and has since faded into complete obscurity in the wider gaming world. Its legacy is twofold:
1. As a Cautionary Tale: It serves as a prime example of the perils of licensed game development, particularly when adapting nuanced, dialogue-driven satire. It highlights the cultural and design gap that can exist between a talented source material and a game studio unable to capture its essence.
2. As an Abandonware Artifact: The game is now preserved on sites like MyAbandonware, a curious relic noted more for its infamous StarForce DRM and the need for community-made patches to run on modern systems than for its gameplay merits. It is a footnote, a piece of regional gaming history that illustrates the specific tastes and production challenges of the 2000s Russian game market.

Conclusion

Den’ Vyborov is not a good game. By any critical measure of design, narrative cohesion, or technical execution, it is a failure. Its animation is poor, its puzzles are uninspired, its dialogue is flat, and it utterly squanders the potential of its brilliant source material and the participation of the original cast.

Yet, as a historical subject, it is utterly fascinating. It is a perfect storm of misguided ambition, technological missteps, and creative failure. It represents a studio’s honest attempt to create a prestigious licensed product that instead became a symbol of the era’s stagnant adventure game trends. It is a game that tried to sail on the coattails of a political satire but forgot to bring the satire, opting instead for a love story and cyborgs.

Its definitive place in video game history is secured not on a pedestal of quality, but in the archive as a poignant case study. Den’ Vyborov is a reminder that a famous name and a large team are not enough; a game must have a soul, a coherent vision, and a respect for the interactive medium it inhabits. This particular bottle, fished from the Volga, contained not a heartfelt love letter, but a missive of missed opportunities.