Not many people hit the refund button on Sonar Shock, the indie immersive sim that’s rated Very Positive on Steam. But those that do tend to complain they couldn’t get the hang of the controls. You can understand why. Try to strafe left to dodge an attack from a blubber monster, and you’ll instead rotate on the spot. Attempt to turn the camera with a flick of the mouse, and you’ll discover that your view remains fixed in place – the cursor moving across the screen as if searching for an icon on your desktop.
“The controls are actually one of the biggest points that make people bounce off the game,” developer Raphael Bossniak admits.
And yet they’re also a unique selling point. Where last year’s extraordinary System Shock remake embraced the interface and keyboard conventions of modern gaming, Sonar Shock leans into the experimentation of pre-Quake control schemes – long before WASD and mouselook became standardised for the sake of ease and sanity.
“I always thought the control scheme of the first System Shock, even though very antiquated, is kind of interesting,” Bossniak says. “I liked the clunkiness of it because it led to a lot of tension in the gameplay.”
Tension and, frankly, panic. Waking up on a Soviet submarine is just the beginning of your disorientation in Sonar Shock. Minutes later, you’re wrestling with tank controls – slowly twisting in terror to face an enemy you’re sure is right behind you, then trying to jab a knife at the precise point on the screen taken up by a zombie sailor’s head. Even at melee range, precision aim is a necessity.
“I can’t really think of any other game that centres the mouse as much as the first System Shock,” Bossniak says. “I think that’s lost today.” That said, even System Shock had hotkeys which made its array of menus, maps and tools instantly accessible. “I didn’t want to do that with Sonar Shock,” Bossniak says. “Mainly because I wanted people to have to interact with the interface.”
Empty a clip into a haunted diver in Sonar Shock, and you’ll have to reach over to the corner of the screen and drag more ammo into your gun. Maybe you’ll need to rechamber the weapon too – yanking desperately at the image of your Labura M38 in order to get it ready for firing again. God forbid you need to heal in a hurry – your left hand dancing out of danger, while your right hunts for the inventory page and spams the ‘use’ key on six or seven Wodkas.
It’s the same alluring absurdity as patting your head while rubbing your stomach. You might not initially like the sound of your brain being pulled apart by horses, but ask yourself: when was the last time a game made you feel something new?
“I don’t think a big game developer or even a medium indie developer would have done it this way,” Bossniak says. “Because it’s a friction point that you have to relearn a little bit of FPS controls to play the game. Mostly my position as an indie developer, who does it more or less like a hobby, allowed me to take this risk.”
Bossniak is a student at the University of Vienna, where his studies focus on countries like Russia, Poland and the Czech Republic. He’s beginning his career as a journalist, taking internships and freelance gigs to report on international events – mainly in the Caucasus, Eastern Europe and the Middle East. “I don’t really have a tech background,” he says. “The art skills, programming and engine work I picked up on the side.”
Thanks to Enter the Gungeon, Bossniak developed a pixel art habit during the pandemic. A couple of years later, he was experimenting with several small game projects in the open source Godot. “Modern day engines are all pretty easy to use, even for newcomers,” he says. “At some point I had the idea that I wanted a game of mine on Steam, which then became the goal.”
A ‘90s-style shooter made sense – a 3D format which Bossniak could fill with flat pixel art. “The first things I did were sprites for enemies and non-player characters,” he says. “I think I did one month of only art before I actually started programming.” Before long, his Eastern European Studies began to filter into the game too. “My mother used to be a translator, as well as a Russian teacher, so I’ve always had experience with Eastern Bloc media during my childhood.”
Bossniak has mixed feelings about the place of the region and its history in videogames. He’s both fond and critical of the Command & Conquer: Red Alert games, with their Soviet-trained squids and psi-corps. “Obviously there it’s meant for comedic effect,” he says. “But even more serious depictions of the Soviet Union, like the Call of Duty game World at War, are very cartoonish.” He takes issue less with the silliness and more with the common conflation of the USSR with Russia.
“Those are meant to be the ghosts of wives who have been killed by their husbands”
“It was a multi-ethnic state, and I think that’s seldom depicted,” Bossniak says. “I wanted the Sonar Shock setting to be steeped in these outlandish, cartoonish depictions of that time period. But I wanted to have a more realistic and more grounded edge as well, of what different peoples and perspectives used to be in that country.”
That’s evident from character creation in Sonar Shock. You might choose a background as a poet, who devoured literature while growing up on a Ukrainian state farm – granting a bonus to strength and extra XP when reading books. Once aboard the sub, you’ll rub up against side characters from Armenia, Georgia and Lithuania. “You can only cram so much into a first-person shooter game,” Bossniak says. “But that was one thing I wanted to do.”
Maybe you’ll also bump into Holmes and Watson, left over from a murder mystery concept Bossniak toyed with, related to the Austrian Civil War. “The other inspiration for that was that there used to be, in the Soviet Union, very much beloved and famous adaptations of Sherlock Holmes stories with Soviet actors.”
Then there are the folkloric enemies – including the rusalka, a weeping entity best treated with the same caution as Left 4 Dead’s witch. “Those are meant to be the ghosts of wives who have been killed by their husbands and hound the present,” Bossniak says. “It’s a typical Russian mythological character.”
Beyond the survivors and monsters who populate its corridors, Sonar Shock’s submarine literally pulls from Eastern European architecture. Named the S1-Utopia, the vessel is a grand folly implanted with old churches and public parks that don’t belong anywhere near the ocean. It’s a goofy idea that ensures the sub is never short on visual variety. “I didn’t want to fall into the trap of a lot of retro shooters,” Bossniak says. “They are oftentimes very samey looking with a lot of grey, metallic corridors.”
Take the third floor off the elevator and, somehow, you’ll find yourself stepping from a Roman temple into dank woodland – an apparent recreational space gone wrong. “It was always important for me while designing the levels that I know what a room is supposed to do,” Bossniak says. “Is it an office for somebody, or an engine room, or a storage room? What’s the purpose of it?”
A pointer detached from your view gives Sonar Shock the feel of a point-and-click adventure
Exploring each space is a tactile pleasure, thanks to Bossniak’s commitment to secreting ammo packs under desks and hidden doors behind bookcases – the latter activated by finding and pulling the right spine. In these moments, having a pointer detached from your view gives Sonar Shock the feel of a point-and-click adventure, in which you’re truly rummaging around the space rather than simply directing your camera.
Many players have been captivated as a result. Bossniak expected to make three or four thousand bucks from his hobby game. But a viral tweet, and the consequent Steam wishlists, saw the platform’s algorithms carry it further than he dared hope. “For me, Sonar Shock is an outstanding success,” he says. “I don’t want to say exactly, but it’s sold decently well. It definitely overshot my expectations and the critical response has been pretty good as well.”
There have been complaints too – not only about the controls, but an imperfect English translation and a bug that leads to framerate drops even on high end computers. “I tried a lot to fix that,” Bossniak says. “But I think it’s a problem with the engine.” The volume of feedback was daunting in the beginning. “When your game gets bigger than you expect, you have to handle a lot more responses,” Bossniak says. “Sadly, feedback is oftentimes not phrased very nicely. It was a surprising mental load for me suddenly.”
Two weeks after launch, Bossniak started an internship at a big Austrian newspaper – returning home each night to fix bugs. But gradually, Sonar Shock has required less and less attention. As we speak, the developer is working on a New Game Plus mode. “It’s not a lot of hard work to do right now.”
Many developers dream of establishing a foothold in the indie immersive sim scene the way Bossniak has. But a taste of success hasn’t altered his view of where games fit into his life. If he makes another one, it’s likely to be much smaller than Sonar Shock, which took a year and a half to build alongside his studies. “I’m still very invested in foreign journalism,” he says. “Because for me it’s very rewarding. Developing games is also very rewarding. But I think, still, that’s actually the thing I prefer.”