Valerii Minenko, Founder at Twigames Talks Hollow Home – Interview Series

Award-winning game studio Twigames, based in Kyiv, Ukraine, has launched its latest passion project, Hollow Home, on Kickstarter—an isometric narrative-driven RPG that aims to offer a “meaningful and respectful experience that honors the resilience of those affected by conflict, fosters empathy, and preserves the memory of a city torn apart.” Inspired by real-world events Mariupol, the love letter to Disco Elysium and Planescape: Torment will be a “bold statement on the power of video games to tell difficult, necessary stories.”

“Hollow Home is more than just a commercial product for us. It’s a passion project with stunning art, an evocative soundtrack, and a rich, dramatic story. Instead, it’s a project meant to make you reflect on the world we live in and inspire you to think about how we can make it better,” Twigames’ Valerii Minenko stated in a press release. “We believe the story we want to tell is important and deserves to be heard. Kickstarter is the best place to find a community that shares our values and is willing to support meaningful, thought-provoking projects like ours.”

In an effort to learn more about the studio’s vision for Hollow Home, we decided to reach out to Twigames founder, Valerii Minenko.

Hollow Home is a lot more than just a game; it’s a window into a world that a lot of us don’t often see outside of the media. In your own words, what does it mean for you to be able to bring this vision to the world, and what is the message that you are hoping to convey?

Valerii: The story that we tell in our project is about the beginning of war. That was a very difficult time. Imagine like yesterday you lived in a peaceful European country and today you’re at war. You hear explosions and air alerts. Airplanes no longer fly. Your life changes completely in a single day. We were all deeply shocked. Such a huge change affects people a lot, and reveals many surprising qualities within them.

Our story includes a lot of our own reflections from those days. It is also our farewell to the big and beautiful city of Mariupol, which fought heroically but was sadly besieged, nearly destroyed, and occupied.

Our message is that peace is not something we are simply given – it is a privilege. And sometimes it must be protected. We also want to remind you that the war is still happening. It is still here, right next to you. And it must be stopped.

A narrative-driven RPG at heart, it seems Hollow Home will touch base on a lot of important themes and real-world struggles. Please could you tell us more about this story, as well as the protagonist, Maksym’s involvement in it?

Valerii: Maksym is the main character of our game. He is a 14-years old boy. It happened that his parents left him alone for a few days when the war surprisingly started. His city was quickly besieged and blocked, and now he needs to find a way to evacuate. He is not alone – his friends and neighbors are with him – and together they are trying to figure out what to do in this new reality.

You’ve mentioned in earlier talks that Hollow Home won’t feature any weapons or combat, but “survival, hard choices, and a haunting sense of what’s been lost.” On that note, let’s talk about the gameplay. How would you best describe it?

Valerii: The gameplay in Hollow Home is divided into in-game days, with each day tied to real-life dates and events. Each day, you receive a limited number of action points to spend on different activities. These points represent time, meaning you can’t complete every task, finish all quests, or do everything in the most ideal way within a single day. This limitation forces players to make difficult choices – sometimes between helping two other characters, or between helping others and looking after yourself.

At the end of each day, Maksym has to go to sleep, and during the night, the city changes. These changes are usually driven by war events – some locations may become inaccessible, while others, like shelters, might open.

As for your actions, you will need to explore the area, talk to other characters, complete quests, maintain items in the inventory. From this point our gameplay is quite similar to Disco Elysium one. There are also survival elements, as players must maintain Maksym’s level of resolve, which serves as an analogue for sanity.

We’re curious to hear more about how our actions will affect the story. Presumably, the choices we make will shape the universe in one way or another. Please could you elaborate on that?

Valerii: Players’ actions can’t change the story of the city of the game as it is connected to real events. But they can affect the fates of other characters. Our quests revolve around either Maksym’s survival or helping those around him to survive. At times, the player will have to decide whom to help, and those choices will shape the course of the story that follows.

The art style is something else that we would love to talk about. Disco Elysium, for instance, is one of several sources of inspiration for the design. Would you mind walking us through that initial drawing board phase?

Valerii: During the pre-production we discovered several possible visual styles and decided to go with the one you see now. It is an isometric 3d style view with many hand-painted textures. Our main references are the Disco Elysium, Long Dark and Arcane series. Here are a few of our early sketches for this project…

Credit: Twigames

Credit: Twigames

We understand that Hollow Home is due to launch on Kickstarter in due course. Please could you tell us more about your expectations for this campaign? What is the endgame here?

Valerii: This will be our first Kickstarter campaign so it is quite a new experience for us. The main expectation is to find a community that shares our values and is willing to support meaningful, thought-provoking projects like ours.

What are you hoping to accomplish over the next six months, if you don’t mind me asking? Is there a goal that you’re currently working towards outside of the Kickstarter campaign?

Valerii: Our game will have 3 chapters. Chapter 1 is already in the polishing stage, so our next big milestone is to complete it and go deeper into the development of Chapter 2. It would be great if we achieve that.

Is there a way for us to support Hollow Home? Are there any useful social channels, newsletters, or streams that might be able to aid our understanding of the game?

Valerii: Please, subscribe to our newsletter on the website: https://www.hollowhomegame.com/

You can follow us in X:
https://x.com/hollowhome
Facebook:
https://www.facebook.com/hollowhomegame

Finally, you can try our demo in Steam:

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2362070/Hollow_Home/

and wishlist it there too.

Would you like to add any final comments to this story before we tie things up on our end?

Valerii: Thanks for the opportunity to tell about our game. We appreciate it very much.

You’ve been an enormous inspiration — thank you. We look forward to seeing more of Hollow Home!

For more information on Hollow Home, be sure to follow the team on X. Alternatively, you can check on Kickstarter for more pre-launch announcements here.