Management, moral choices, and daily life in early-2000s Russia. An intimate story set in a time of transition
Lenin Street Geek Shop is a Y2K narrative simulator with a strong management focus, developed by perelesoq, an independent studio based in Moscow.
Starting today, January 20, the game steps into the spotlight with a new trailer and the opening of Steam playtest sign-ups, offering a first hands-on look at a project scheduled to launch on PC in 2026.
The game takes place in the early 2000s, in a post-Soviet Russia still searching for balance. This specific historical moment marks the sudden arrival of capitalism and the new forms of everyday survival that came with it.
The shop on Lenin Street—starting with its name—becomes an urban microcosm: a space shaped by exchange, compromise, and informal relationships. A place where the Soviet past still lingers, while the future already feels cynical, pragmatic, and hungry for cash.
The nostalgic tone that emerges does not aim for comfort. It avoids idealizing the past and instead frames it as a transitional territory, unstable and often hostile.
Kirill and the weight of premature choices
Kirill, the protagonist, leaves school to help his mother keep a small neighborhood shop afloat. This decision carries nothing heroic about it, yet everything about necessity.
Kirill does not truly choose; he reacts. That reaction defines the entire experience.
Gameplay revolves around shop management—restocking shelves, expanding the business, offering services—but the real question lies in how players approach these tasks. Burned DVDs with anime and movies, pirated MP3 compilations, menthol cigarettes, not-so-legal PC games: goods that reflect an era when the line between legal and illegal often felt thin, if not irrelevant.
Every customer interaction opens up a narrative possibility. Haggling, taking advantage, offering help, or turning away. Consequences rarely appear right away, but they accumulate over time. Friendships crack, first loves grow more complicated than expected, and relationships strain under the weight of seemingly minor economic decisions.
The street beyond the shop
Lenin Street Geek Shop does not confine itself to the shop’s interior. Stepping outside means engaging with the neighborhood, the street, and a daily routine built on small rituals and distractions: smoking a cigarette, playing pogs, getting lost in retro-flavored PC mini-games.
Outside also waits a cast of ambiguous characters, “easy” jobs that pay well, and moral questions with no clean answers. The game refrains from judgment and instead observes. It places responsibility in the player’s hands, asking what kind of person Kirill will become.
An aesthetic consistent with its context
On a visual level, Lenin Street Geek Shop shapes its identity through a hybrid language that blends pixel art with PS1-style influences, opting for a deliberately rough and imperfect presentation. This aesthetic connects directly with the narrative context: muted colors, cramped interiors, and spaces that convey a sense of precarity and compressed everyday life.
The visual style supports the story without overwhelming it, evoking the atmosphere of a specific era rather than an idealized image of the past. The result grounds the player in a recognizable and believable time frame, where each detail helps define the tone of the narrative and the weight of its choices.
Who’s behind it: perelesoq
Behind Lenin Street Geek Shop stands perelesoq, an independent studio based in Moscow. The team formed in 2019 with the goal of creating strongly narrative-driven games that balance a distinct artistic direction with sustained thematic focus. From the outset, the studio has centered its work on intimate stories tied to precise historical and social contexts, steering clear of neutral or universalized approaches.
In 2023, perelesoq released Torn Away, an adventure set during World War II that tells the conflict through the eyes of a child. The game earned international recognition and a strong critical response, standing out for its ability to address a complex historical period without simplification or rhetoric. Even then, the studio favored a small-scale perspective, placing individual experience above spectacle.
Despite the economic challenges the studio has openly acknowledged, perelesoq has continued along the same path, committed to telling personal stories rooted in context and often marked by emotional discomfort. Lenin Street Geek Shop follows this trajectory with a project that appears more grounded in everyday life, yet remains equally dense, shifting the focus from grand History to a more ordinary dimension shaped by forced growth, early responsibility, and inevitable compromise.
In this sense, the game represents thematic continuity rather than a break. The setting changes, the perspective shifts, but the core interest remains the same: characters who must confront a world larger than themselves.
Trailer and playtest
The new trailer and the opening of Steam playtest sign-ups mark a key moment for the project, allowing players to engage directly with its world and take part in its development.
The release targets 2026, but Lenin Street Geek Shop already shows a clear identity: a story of everyday survival, deeply tied to its historical and geographical context.
And today more than ever, that coherence makes it a title worth watching.
If you wanto to know more:
Lenin Street Geek Shop on Steam
