Sitting on a mattress in an art gallery turned bunker in Kharkiv, with Russian munitions “howling and thumping” overhead, Dariia Selishcheva began making a video game. Jauntily titled What’s Up in a Kharkiv Bomb Shelter, it was an attempt at self-distraction that evolved into a work of journalistic “autofiction”. It offers a brief, vivid portrait of life under bombardment in the early months of Russia’s unprovoked invasion of Ukraine, based closely on conversations with Selishcheva’s neighbours in the shelter and correspondence with friends hiding elsewhere.
“My goal was to provide an opportunity for ordinary people’s voices to be heard, to capture a fragment of life in a shelter,” Selishcheva says. “I wanted everyone to know about their lives and thoughts.” Created using lo-fi Bitsy Color software, the game simply consists of walking around talking to fellow survivors, against a soundtrack of explosions, listless guitar and hushed voices.
