Explore Chornobyl: Interactive Game Experience

86 The Zone is an interactive, branching-path game set within the haunting landscape of the Chornobyl Exclusion Zone. Drawing from original media captured during a 2021 study abroad experience in Ukraine, the game invites players to navigate seven key locations—including Pripyat, Reactor #4, and the abandoned village of Zalissia—while confronting the ethics of exploration, the politics of memory, and the lingering aftermath of nuclear disaster.


🎧 Best experienced with headphones.

->Play the Game<-

 Academic Context

This project was created in Dr. Kiki Benzon’s CTCS 505 course at USC’s School of Cinematic Arts. It draws on fieldwork, interactive theory, and influences such as Andrei Tarkovsky’s Stalker and Ian Bogost’s procedural rhetoric to explore ethical voyeurism, Cold War aesthetics, and narrative agency.

Gallery

The Vladimir Ilyich Lenin Nuclear Power Plant, prominently featuring Reactor #4, serves as a historical monument within the Chornobyl Exclusion Zone, surrounded by key locations from the game.
A weathered statue of Lenin at the Chernobyl #2 entry, surrounded by remnants of Soviet symbolism and decaying structures.
A playful game over screen featuring a Grim Reaper character, reminding players of their fate in the interactive adventure.

->Play the Game<-