Valka: The Salt Road

The chumaks were Ukraine's salt carriers: ox-drawn wagon trains that crossed the wild steppe from the Crimean salt lakes to the cities of the north. Lead one of them, 1,130 km from Kerch to Kyiv, with the icon of the Pokrova from the Zaporozhian Sich riding at its head. By day the caravan rolls through a side-view pixel-art landscape that changes as the kilometres pass. By night it circles its wagons around the fire, and the creatures of Ukrainian folklore come out of the dark for the icon. ONE DAY, ONE NIGHT • Travel: mend broken wagons, speed up the road, decide what to do about what you meet on it. • The stop: a village, a town, an inn, a Tatar aul, a salt lake or the Sich itself. Take merchants' contracts, buy wagons, oxen, food, holy water and traps, hire the people standing around. • Dusk: the omen tells you which side the creatures will come from. Drag your guards to their posts and set traps in front of the rings. • The night: hold your thumb left or right and the otaman walks there, swinging his bulava. Survive until dawn and the kills pay in gold. PROTECT THE ICON The Pokrova shelters the Cossacks while they shelter her: your guards are knocked out, never killed, and holy water gets them back up. But if a creature carries the icon out of the camp, the caravan is lost and the journey starts again from Kerch. WAGONS ARE TOWERS Four wagons make a ring of defence, up to four rings. Musketeers and archers shoot from the wagon decks; swordsmen and spearmen hold the line at the wheels. Seven kinds of guard, from cheap chumaks with clubs to the kharakternyk, the Cossack mystic who reads the night ahead. FIFTY NIGHTS, TEN BOSSES Poterchata, upyrs, vovkulakas, chorts, witches, rusalkas from the river, lisovyks from the forest, and a boss from Ukrainian legend every fifth night, up to the witches of Bald Mountain above Kyiv. EIGHT LANDSCAPES ON THE REAL ROAD The Kerch peninsula, the pink salt lakes of Sivash, the Taurian steppe, the Great Meadow of the Dnipro, the rapids, the northern steppe, the forest-steppe and the Kyiv hills. • Made for phones: played with one thumb, in short sessions. • Ukrainian, English and Polish. • The first ten nights are free; the rest of the road to Kyiv opens with one purchase. No ads. Made in Ukraine by Loca Deserta.