TheRetroArcade
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Posts: 1,980
Joined: Feb 2026
Joined: Feb 2026
He's got a point.
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A lot of my favourite games ever made fall under the expansive rubric of "eurojank." Stalker, the first Witcher, Mount & Blade—the list goes on. But maybe it's a little unfair to confine the jank phenomenon exclusively to Europe. After all, what is 2004 RPG Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines, which is still getting fan patches 22 years later, if not a prime cut of jank?
So says Andrii Verpakhovskyi, designer on the original Stalker games, in a recent interview in Edge magazine. "Some of my favourite games back in the day were Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines and Arcanum, both built by Troika Games, which was the core team [from the] Fallout games before them.
"Those games were janky as hell, but they had this same soul that was in games described as Eurojank, which is why I think it’s unfair to kind of geofence the genre." The man has a point!
Eurojank is, as a pseudo-genre category, refers to a bunch of systems-heavy and ambitious games that tend to originate in Central and Eastern Europe. They often do things that no other game you've ever played even tries, but—owing to a lack of resources—they're also often crammed to bursting with weird and hilarious bugs.
Back when Verpakhovskyi and co were working on those original Stalkers, they didn't really think of themselves as making a particularly regional sort of game. "We had absolutely no notion that what we were doing we were doing differently from people building games outside of the post-USSR space. We never even drew any kind of lines between Japanese games of Nintendo fame or Sega Genesis, and the games that came out of the US, Canada, the UK and western Europe."
They were just devs making games and experimenting along the way. "We were all newcomers to the industry and people were not even specifically trained in engineering or arts." Which perhaps explains some of Stalker's myriad quirks better than the place it came from.
And while you and I might use jank as a loving term, to describe those games with lofty systemic ambitions that end up butting against the limits of a developer's budget or technological capacity, it can sometimes be an insult used by those who lack vision. "I feel like Steam especially now has smothered creativity with how rigidly titles need to fit into a specific orthodoxy," Greg Pryjmachuk, founder of Minskworks and dev behind Jalopy, to...Read more: Full article on www.pcgamer.com
What do you think about this?
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Keep up to date with the most important stories and the best deals, as picked by the PC Gamer team.
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Every Friday
GamesRadar+
Your weekly update on everything you could ever want to know about the games you already love, games we know you're going to love in the near future, and tales from the communities that surround them.
Every Thursday
GTA 6 O'clock
Our special GTA 6 newsletter, with breaking news, insider info, and rumor analysis from the award-winning GTA 6 O'clock experts.
Every Friday
Knowledge
From the creators of Edge: A weekly videogame industry newsletter with analysis from expert writers, guidance from professionals, and insight into what's on the horizon.
Every Thursday
The Setup
Hardware nerds unite, sign up to our free tech newsletter for a weekly digest of the hottest new tech, the latest gadgets on the test bench, and much more.
Every Wednesday
Switch 2 Spotlight
Sign up to our new Switch 2 newsletter, where we bring you the latest talking points on Nintendo's new console each week, bring you up to date on the news, and recommend what games to play.
Every Saturday
The Watchlist
Subscribe for a weekly digest of the movie and TV news that matters, direct to your inbox. From first-look trailers, interviews, reviews and explainers, we've got you covered.
Once a month
SFX
Get sneak previews, exclusive competitions and details of special events each month!
A lot of my favourite games ever made fall under the expansive rubric of "eurojank." Stalker, the first Witcher, Mount & Blade—the list goes on. But maybe it's a little unfair to confine the jank phenomenon exclusively to Europe. After all, what is 2004 RPG Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines, which is still getting fan patches 22 years later, if not a prime cut of jank?
So says Andrii Verpakhovskyi, designer on the original Stalker games, in a recent interview in Edge magazine. "Some of my favourite games back in the day were Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines and Arcanum, both built by Troika Games, which was the core team [from the] Fallout games before them.
"Those games were janky as hell, but they had this same soul that was in games described as Eurojank, which is why I think it’s unfair to kind of geofence the genre." The man has a point!
Eurojank is, as a pseudo-genre category, refers to a bunch of systems-heavy and ambitious games that tend to originate in Central and Eastern Europe. They often do things that no other game you've ever played even tries, but—owing to a lack of resources—they're also often crammed to bursting with weird and hilarious bugs.
Back when Verpakhovskyi and co were working on those original Stalkers, they didn't really think of themselves as making a particularly regional sort of game. "We had absolutely no notion that what we were doing we were doing differently from people building games outside of the post-USSR space. We never even drew any kind of lines between Japanese games of Nintendo fame or Sega Genesis, and the games that came out of the US, Canada, the UK and western Europe."
They were just devs making games and experimenting along the way. "We were all newcomers to the industry and people were not even specifically trained in engineering or arts." Which perhaps explains some of Stalker's myriad quirks better than the place it came from.
And while you and I might use jank as a loving term, to describe those games with lofty systemic ambitions that end up butting against the limits of a developer's budget or technological capacity, it can sometimes be an insult used by those who lack vision. "I feel like Steam especially now has smothered creativity with how rigidly titles need to fit into a specific orthodoxy," Greg Pryjmachuk, founder of Minskworks and dev behind Jalopy, to...Read more: Full article on www.pcgamer.com
What do you think about this?