Escape from Tarkov

A survival game with first-person stealth-shooter and RPG elements, set in a post-Soviet visual style in the fictional city of Tarkov. Players venture into different districts of the city in search of valuable items, doing everything they can to survive — finding loot is only half the battle; you also have to get it to an extraction point.

The task is no easy one, since Tarkov is a deadly environment: there are no rules, and everyone is on their own. At any moment, a bullet can come flying from anywhere, while bots of varying difficulty and threats such as radioactive contamination only add fuel to the fire. The game has been in closed beta testing since 2017.

Escape from Tarkov is set in an alternate reality within the “Russia 2028” universe, created by the developers for Contract Wars. Tarkov itself is located in the south of the Karelian Isthmus, in the fictional Norvinsk Region, formerly a free economic zone between the Russian Federation and the EU.

The city developed steadily until the international corporation TerraGroup was exposed for conducting illegal research and experiments. A political crisis erupted, leading to the region’s isolation by UN peacekeepers and the Russian Federation’s army.

While politicians argue, TerraGroup hired the USEC PMC to protect its laboratories and personnel, provide armed security for its illegal experiments, keep its secrets concealed, and thwart attempts to investigate the company’s activities. In response, the authorities of the Norvinsk Region hired the BEAR PMC, which has close ties to the Russian Federation’s government, to prove TerraGroup’s criminal activity.

The game has no open world; instead, it features large, unique maps with a high degree of freedom of movement and a clearly defined theme. “Factory” consists entirely of production facilities, workshops, and repair shops, including several levels of verticality. The “Woods” map, by contrast, has only a couple of buildings and is engulfed by dense forest, challenging players to survive in the open.

In 2020, virtually nothing was known about Escape from Tarkov’s story, apart from the developers’ promise to add a full-fledged story in the future. The events begin at the height of the war between two private military companies. Civilians are fleeing, and chaos reigns all around, giving the writers plenty of room to work with. For now, players have to make do with quests from traders that are loosely connected to the story.

The main mechanics of Escape from Tarkov are:

The game begins with choosing a side in the conflict (USEC or BEAR), after which you create a character and customize their appearance. Your character is always in the Hideout, which serves as a disguised game menu, and heads out from there on raids.

You can’t go on a raid with a “naked” character; first, you need to choose all your gear: weapons and a sufficient supply of ammunition, grenades, first-aid kits and painkillers, food and water. Inventory capacity is limited by both volume and weight, so you have to find a balance in everything, but your inventory expands over time. Anything you’re missing can be bought from traders or other players.

There are dozens of skills in the game, divided into categories: physical, mental, combat, practical, and others. Skills level up passively — the more you use a weapon, the better you shoot; the more you survive, the easier raids become. In the future, each faction will receive unique skills, making gameplay more varied.

The Hideout is the character’s base, where they heal their wounds, recover, and store all the loot gathered on difficult raids. It can also be upgraded. Players start out in a cluttered, damp basement, but by spending resources found in the game, they can turn it into a comfortable, self-sufficient underground home, with a storage area for resources, a workbench for crafting items, and a shooting range for testing them in combat.

As of 2020, Escape from Tarkov offered two main modes: