Evenings
on a Farm near Dikanka
is a collection of short stories by Nikolai Gogol. In case you forgot,
Gogol was a Ukrainian-born Russian writer who lived in the first half
of the 19th century and is considered by many to be the father of
modern Russian literature. His Evenings
on a Farm near Dikanka are very popular in Russia and
served as a basis for operas by Tchaikovsky, Rimsky-Korsakov,
Mussorgsky, and others. And, in the early 21st century, as a basis for
an adventure game.

The game Evenings
on a Farm near Dikanka (hereafter referred to as Dikanka) is a retelling of the Christmas Eve story but includes
elements of several other short stories from the Dikanka collection. It is set in a
timeless ‘old Ukraine’, a world that is both mystical, magical, and
realistic. In some ways Gogol’s stories resemble Greek myths whose
protagonists are titans and gods and beings with all sorts of
supernatural powers, yet their behavior is entirely human. In Dikanka you will encounter witches,
undead (including a vampire), a rusalka, a leshi, a domovoi, and even
one denizen of Hell makes a personal appearance. Yet all characters,
including the magical ones, have human troubles and desires.

The hero of the
story is purely human. His name is Vakula and he’s the blacksmith in the
village of Dikanka. He is an extremely solidly built
fellow, very skilled smith and also painter of icons; he’s very
good-natured and helpful, perhaps not too bright but not stupid either,
and very much in love with Dikanka’s most beautiful girl, Oksana.

As everyone
knows, women are trouble – and Oksana is no exception. At a whim,
she gives Vakula an impossible task: she promises to marry him
as
soon as he brings her the same slippers (Cherevichki – also a name of
Tchaikovsky’s opera based on this story) that the empress is wearing.
Or at least, a rational person might think such task impossible. Not so
Vakula. He is undaunted by the fact that Dikanka is thousand miles far
from Saint Petersburg where the empress lives, or that a simple village
blacksmith doesn’t stand much chance of getting an audience with her.

Full
of optimism, Vakula sets out on his quest to get the slippers.
It is the middle of winter (Christmas Eve in fact) and all
roads are under
several feet of snow. No problem – after running a few seemingly random
errands for the villagers (I said Vakula was very helpful), Vakula
finds out that the quickest way to get to Saint Petersburg is flying
on the devil’s back. A devil is never too far, so finding one
is not an
issue. The fact that the devil wants Vakula’s soul in exchange is.
An old fashioned idealist that he is, Vakula refuses to give up
his
immortal soul so easily. That is actually rather fortunate, as
otherwise Dikanka would be
an extremely short game.

If you want to know whether and how Vakula
manages to get the slippers for his beloved and win Oksana’s heart
and hand in
marriage, read the
original story, watch the opera, or play the game. The latter might
admittedly be a bit of a problem because as of this writing, the game
only exists in Russian. When I had to take Russian lessons as a kid,
I never thought they’d do me any good – and although I would lie if
I said my Russian was any good, the ability to play Russian adventure
games is an unexpected windfall. Luckily for me, Dikanka is a game that even
children can play (Russian children at least), even though I wouldn’t
say it is aimed at children specifically.

From the visual and interface perspective, Dikanka is a classic adventure
game: 2D point and click, cartoon graphics, third person. Naturally,
since it was released in 2005, it’s high res graphics, smoothly
animated and anti-aliased, with full voice-overs and digitized music
track. The visuals are very clean, simple, and appealing, with crisp
outlines and saturated colors. My only gripe with the animation is
that in a few instances the authors took shortcuts, making things
happen ‘in
a snap’ instead of adding extra frames of animation.

The game world
is well designed; the village (where most of the action takes
place) has a central location with pathways branching off in
four directions. This hub-and-spokes design ensures that it never
takes too
long to get from one location to another. There are also no empty
screens thrown in just for show – in each location there’s at least
one important object or NPC.

On the audio side, Dikanka is
similarly clean and simple. The musical score, although not memorable,
fits the game well and adds to the atmosphere. Since I barely
understood the spoken Russian and much preferred reading the
optional subtitles (in Cyrillic) while playing Dikanka,
I’m not exactly well qualified to judge the voice acting quality.
Nevertheless, I would venture a guess that the voice acting was
quite good, except that with one or two minor characters it was
a little
too obvious that there were fewer voice actors than characters.
But that
is just a minor quibble.

The puzzles were 99% inventory based
and I found them surprisingly easy. Even with my poor Russian,
I was never left wondering what
to do next. There were plenty of hints in the game and all
puzzles were
logical, at least as soon as I finally realized what the correct
solution was. Hardcore puzzlers who prefer taking reams of
notes and spending hours upon hours trying to figure out bizarre
machinery
would
be disappointed with Dikanka.
On the other hand, players who don’t like being slowed down
by puzzles too much should enjoy it. This
leads to my biggest complaint about this game – it’s too short.
It took me only two evenings to finish the game, and that’s
when I only
just
understood the conversations.

I can safely say that I truly
enjoyed Dikanka,
more so than I expected. I had been only very lightly exposed
to Gogol’s works, but that didn’t cause me any problems;
the game’s
story is fully self-contained. Playing in a foreign language
that I’m not
very good at was an enjoyable challenge. Overall, Dikanka is a fresh and charming
game, simple yet well designed and executed. It gets a B+ and the grade would be higher if
the game was just a little longer.

Final Grade: B+
(find out more about our
grading system)

System Requirements: