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Thee locale of horror games, i.e., the space in which the player moves, lives, and survives, is usually saturated with elements of gothic aesthetics such as decaying, ruined scenery, 'dark' music, and the ubiquity of monsters. Merging the gothic entourage with the elements of action-oriented games (e.g., shooters or adventures), the 'survival horror' games place the player character, who is usually vulnerable and under-armed, in the middle of this uncanny environment. Ever since the release of its originator, "Resident Evil" in 1996, the genre of the survival horror has been gradually expanding its aesthetic features, for instance,by incorporating 'ecogothic' elements for modelling the in-game landscapes or for the representation of ecological crises. If gothic is understood as centring around some profoundly historical motifs like the "return of the repressed" or revealing the "unburied past", ecogothic mediates cultural anxieties about the human relationship to the non-human world through uncanny apparitions of a monstrous nature. However, a clear boundary that separates the non-human world of nature from the human realm of history is often impossible to draw. Their interconnectedness is particularly evident in the case of the Chernobyl nuclear accident, where the environmental disaster is often regarded as a pivotal point in history - a dark metonym for the fate of the Soviet Union. Chernobyl has been the subject of historical documentaries, crime thrillers, and haunting photo installations - all focusing on both historical and ecological features of the nuclear catastrophe. Similarly, the gaming industry has been invoking the ghostly area of Chernobyl with striking regularity. This paper explores the representation of Soviet history and culture in the main instigator of this trend, the S.T.A.L.K.E.R. game series, which combines the elements of survival horror and ego-shooter against the backdrop of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster.
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