Deliveries reach the village of Herota once a week. Within a couple of days, the shelves are empty. And even if someone is entitled to a product, that doesn’t mean they’ll actually get it.
Selsoviet is a game about a village store in the Soviet backcountry in 1976, and we’ve worked hard to make its range of goods accurately reflect the realities of that time and place. Below, we explain how we put it together: what you could find on the shelves in Herota, and what never made it there at all.
What Herota Actually Has
Grains, pasta, tea, salt, sugar, canned goods, cigarettes, and vodka. That’s nearly the entire range the village receives with its weekly deliveries. And even this modest selection comes in strictly limited quantities.
Then there’s bread: Liza, the shopkeeper, bakes it right in the store. But more on that in one of our upcoming articles.
What It Doesn’t Have
Meat, butter, fresh fruit and vegetables, sweets, toiletries. The Soviet Union produced all of these — just not for Herota. In the 1960s and ’70s, the state labeled thousands of villages as being “without prospects”: there were no plans to invest in them, and they were supplied with whatever was left over. Herota is one of them. Its residents get whatever someone “up top” decided was enough.
And Even That Minimum Isn’t for Everyone
Many goods are sold only with ration coupons. But even the right coupon guarantees nothing: stock invariably runs out before the line reaches its last customer.
The entire game is built around this constant scarcity. There’s always less of what people need than they actually need, and we wanted that to feel real. Every week, the player decides anew who gets something from the delivery — and who walks away empty-handed.
What’s on the Shelves
🧼 72% laundry soap. Officially meant for washing clothes, but far more often used for personal hygiene.
🍬 Sugar. A rare source of simple happiness. Stirred into tea or nibbled alongside it.
🔥 Matches. A valuable resource. To make them last longer, many people snap them in half — and the most skillful manage to split a single match into four.
🍞 Bread. Baked right in the store using Herota’s “special” recipe.
🍚 Rice. Keeps for ages and hardly ever spoils. Not that this makes it taste any better.
🥫 Canned meat. According to the label, at least. As for what’s really inside — better not to ask.
🍶 “Path to Communism” vodka. The first thing to fly off the shelves — but at least it’s always delivered like clockwork.
🚬 “Dream” cigarettes. Nearly everything else can vanish from the shelves, yet somehow there are always cigarettes left.
🥣 Yeast. Officially for baking. In practice, residents find plenty of other uses for it.
🍝 Pasta. You can still turn it into something resembling a proper meal.
🌾 Buckwheat. A dietary staple for many families — especially when there’s nothing else to eat.
🍵 Tea. Indian, Georgian, or of entirely unknown origin. Every pack is a little lottery.
🧂 Salt. Herota’s unsung hero. Without it, the local cooking would be utterly bland. With it, it’s merely depressing.
All the models are based on real products that could be found all over the Soviet Union in the ’70s. We’ve tried to recreate their look as faithfully as possible.
P.S.
Selsoviet is still in development. So you don’t miss the release, add it to your Steam wishlist — at this stage, it’s the best way to support us, and you’ll be the first to know when the game comes out.