The 1963 earthquake, a notorious disaster that struck Skopje, has flattened the city down to ashes, and international efforts have been made to rebuild it. Most notably, the involvement of japanese architect Kenzo Tange, and local architects Georgi Konstantinovski, Živko Popovski, Krsto Todorovski, and many others have helped to reshape the look of our capital. Brutalist structures have risen from the destroyed ones, concrete walls have redefined the cultural image of Skopje, and a new foundation has been set.

Emphasising the authenticity from these structures, we have set up the post-apocalyptic setting overrun by the corrupted. Our inspiration, in addition to the unique architecture, has been drawn by the newly risen cyberpunk, neon dark theme, yugoslav typography, regional history, and local trademarks.

Inspired by the Skopje brutalismus

The visual aesthetic and modularity has been adopted from these buildings, and others alike:

The Telecommunications HQ in the Macedonia Square

The Skopje State Hydrometeorological Institute

The Students’ dormitory buildings “Goce Delchev”

Images taken from: https://yomadic.com/communist-architecture-skopje-kenzo-tange/. Feel free to visit the site, and read some more about the architects and see more pictures.

Visual Aesthetics

The post-apocalyptic settling has been inspired.. Well, from games! Our shared interest in these scenarios have been an inspiration for us to create our own ideological devastated world as if it had struck our city back in the 30s. We have wondered how our daily lives would look if a game-like event has occurred, so we chose to make it. Each of us has a different personal source of inspiration, but if we had to drop it down to three images, those would be:

Diamond City, Fallout 4

Last Of Us, Concept Art

Metro: Last Light, Moskow

Yugoslavian Typography

A newly found interest of the team has been the study of retro typography. We found a whole bunch of unique store signs, street number plates, licence plates, and brand names, which we wanted to incorporate into the game to add some more authenticity and specific setting to the game. Thanks to a tumblr user, who had already begun collecting these signs, we managed to have a pretty good insight on creating our own in-game elements. You can browse through the collection here: https://typeofskopje.tumblr.com/.

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The project is supported by the Fund for Innovation and Technology Development