Yandex launched a project to mark Arkady Strugatsky’s anniversary
By ForGeeks
Yandex has prepared a large-scale project for Arkady Strugatsky’s anniversary: an online game with Alice, new editions of books, articles about the writers’ legacy and a selection of places related to their work.
Online game in the worlds of Strugatsky
The game can be started directly from Yandex’s home page. The user becomes a character of one of Strugatsky’s worlds – for example, he finds himself on a planet plane or in the middle of a street where baboons are ruling.
Tasks are generated by Alice’s neural network. Each successive challenge is based on the player’s decisions. You can respond with text, code, or even your cat – he doesn’t speak yet, but he can scratch and drop pots. There are ten steps to complete the mission.
The game’s ending is an entire AI story. The video for it is created by YandexART, the voiceover is added by SpeechKit technology. The story can be downloaded or published on the project’s website.
New editions of books
Yandex Books have launched the “Station: the Future” project. Ten artists, including Rostan Tavasiev and Alexandra Gart, designed new covers for ten popular Strugatsky works. Exclusive forewords were written by sci-fi researchers and contemporary writers.
The rest of the books received covers created in the same style with the help of YandexART. In the service, the works are now available not only in text and audio format, but also sorted by individual books, which simplifies the search.
“The Strugatsky Century” on Kinopoisk
Kinopoisk prepared a special project about the writers’ legacy. It includes:
- Rating of Strugatsky adaptations by film critic Lidia Maslova,
- Reflections of researcher Nikolai Tryabin on “prophecies” of sci-fi writers,
- text by writer Shamil Idiatullin on Arkady Nathanovich’s life,
- Material by Andrei Duvanov about Strugatsky’s influence on the game industry,
- Konstantin Shavlovsky’s memories of filmmaking,
- information about future film adaptations.
An interview with Yandex employees about how the brothers’ work influenced their lives will be released on August 30. Many of them compared the company to NIICHAVO from the story “Monday Begins on Saturday.”
