Ferry

The Making of Z.A.T.O.

Added 2025-11-22 15:00:34 +0000 UTC

I thought I’d have a lot to say, but in the end this whole thing turned out relatively short. This is how Z.A.T.O. came to be.

EARLY CONCEPT

The initial concept was inspired by Vladimir Sorokin’s short story-within-a-story, Murrain. It’s an extremely grim satire of the early USSR, which tells the tale of two inspectors coming to a village experiencing livestock death. Said livestock turns out to be humans.

“Rostovtsev Nikolai Lvovich, thirty-seven years old, the son of an unrepentant pest, grandson of an emigrant, great-grandson of a district doctor, yes, a doctor… Came in two years ago from the Maloyaroslavsk State Cattle Farm.”
“Relatives!” Kedrin smashed his fist against the door.
“His sister - Rostovtseva Irina Lvovna, used as living fertilizer in the planting of the Glory Park in Gorky city.”
<...>
“Onto the second one.”
Cage #2 was exactly the same as the first. The same rough, scratched up walls, the same low ceiling, shit-covered floor and cloudy barred up window. Human #2 laid in the middle of the floor with his blue arms and legs spread out. He was also hairy, thin and dirty, and his glassy eyes stared up at the ceiling. His mouth, concealed under the beard, was open and buzzing with springtime flies.
Kedrin took his time looking over the corpse from the entrance before calling out to Tishenko:
“Relatives!”
“Schwartzman Mikhail Iosifovich, the son of a second-grade defeatist, grandson of a left-wing SR member, great-grandson of a rich furrier. His brother - Boris Iosifovich - is in the sixteenth cage. They both came in six months ago from the Volokolamsk State Cattle Farm…”
V. Sorokin, Murrain // Translation by me

It’s not a story I can recommend to the faint of heart, since it does feature graphic violence and generally upsetting events. Although, I’m pretty sure there’s no easily available English translation for it anyways. In any case, the core idea left a big impression on me back when I first read it.

Original version of Asya. She was supposed to be a little older, somewhere between 17 and 22.

With that said, the initial version of Z.A.T.O. went more or less as follows. A girl that suffers from meryachenie (Siberian variant of piblokto) wakes up inside a car. She’s on the very border of the city that’s been cut off from the rest of the world by a blizzard. A note left by her parents tells her to leave the place as soon as the wind calms.

But time passes and the weather shows no signs of improvement. Hungry and desperate to learn what’s going on, the girl makes her way back to the city. It’s strangely empty. Her memory is spotty due to her condition, so she has to piece together what exactly happened over the course of the past couple of days.

Ending scene from the old version of the story.

As she explores the empty apartments, regains her memories and collects evidence, the girl learns that the majority of the town’s population got sent to a human processing plant as punishment for treason.

I had this idea around 2021-2022, but dropped it fairly quickly. It would probably work well as an RPGmaker horror game, but I could never wrap my head around that engine. Plus, I wasn’t sure how to make that story satisfying. So that edgy little concept got put away indefinitely.

STORY REVAMP

The dream

In April 2025, I had a dream about God punishing a woman by taking away all of her higher cognitive functions one by one until nothing but her bare soul remained - and then even that soul was gone.

So everything kicked off from there.

The code

A lot of people assume that the code motif was inspired by Serial Experiments Lain - I can’t blame them for that, really. But the truth is that the actual inspiration is a lot more obscure and stupid.

I used to be very active on imageboards back when I was in high school and university; 4chan’s /x/ a.k.a. Paranormal board was one of my go-tos at the time. So 10-ish years ago, there was this iceberg image going around listing /x/’s greatest conspiracies, forbidden knowledge and stuff like that. And at the very bottom laid something called the Despair Code.

Bottom of the iceberg.

I’ll spare you the intrigue, that was a meme. An inside joke everyone played along with, like it was this horrible terrible thing you’re better off not knowing, lest you go insane. The gist of it was that there exists a system that keeps masses of people in prolonged states of misery, which are maintained through subliminal thought patterns.

Now does this look familiar to you:

You cannot separate the eagle from what it does; the eagle simply is
>denial 2311444
>despair 3223412
>distortion 6233322

I did like this particular greentext a lot, and the whole idea of numerical values and universal patterns driving a person to madness has always seemed super cool to me - although it wasn’t exactly what the despair code entailed.

So I took that vague idea and changed it to suit my tastes a little better. You see, I’ve always thought that “the world is a simulation” concept was lame as hell; however, the world operating using a computer-like algorithm did sound compelling.

I smushed those notions together into the concept that very closely resembles what you see in Z.A.T.O., and implemented it into the sci-fi story I was messing around with at the time (again, that was back in high-school).

That old story didn’t go anywhere, obviously, but the core idea still stuck with me. And when I had that dream, something suddenly clicked - I realised how I could develop that theory from many years ago!

The article

Google suggested an article to me that seemed mildly interesting. It was about how unique our Sun is compared to other stars of its type. Something about it really touched me, so I began writing down my thoughts in a Google doc. I did it on a whim, but somehow the longer I went on, the more fun it became!

The article.

As you’ve already guessed, the result of that was Asya’s opening monologue. You see, when I was a good couple of paragraphs into my ramble, I thought, “Hey, doesn’t this kinda sound like something you’d read in a visual novel?”

I have to say, though: I’m not sure if that article had any scientific basis to it at all. I tried to look for other sources long after the fact, but couldn’t find any publications confirming it. So perhaps I’ve helped spread a bit of misinformation with Z.A.T.O., haha.

DEVELOPMENT

The script

I started writing the first draft mid-April and finished it sometime in May. Most of the concept sketches were also drawn during that timeframe.

First designs.

One of the funny things you’ll notice is that at first I clearly forgot the girls would have to wear Soviet school uniforms. And by the time I realised that, I was already deep into the script. So for example, Asya was grabbing the sleeve of Ira’s sweater instead of her dress in episode 1.

The polar night was another factor that I didn’t account for right away. I think I only realised my mistake by the end of episode 2, so, for example, the line “The sun is in the middle of its arc above the city.” had to be changed to “The world is as bright as a sunless day allows.” I made a lot of adjustments to the script like that.

In general, I tried to do as much research as possible, which included asking my parents for advice - they’d be just around the same age as the kids in Z.A.T.O. at the time. Well, in the end I still ended up with a bunch of inaccuracies… At least they’re not something people below the age of 50 should notice.

First redesign. Real USSR uniforms didn’t actually have that frilly part at the bottom of the dress, I just think it looks cuter that way.

I spent a lot of time polishing the script after that first draft. A lot of vital character interactions were added. I’ve also made most of the monologues more straightforward, cleared up a lot of explanations and added in more hints.

Some people seem to assume that the ending was rushed, or written the way it was because I was operating under some time constraint. That couldn’t be further from the truth - the final stretch was the one part I’ve always been certain about, and if I spent twice as much time developing the game, I’d write it the exact same way.

The visuals

My main stylistic inspiration came from older Leaf projects, namely Shizuku and Kizuato, while the sprites being laid over the background window was inspired by Tsui no Sora’s design.

Shizuku, Leaf // Tsui no Sora, KeroQ

The pixel brush I used to draw the characters was surprisingly difficult to work with. At that size, even the smallest deviation in the line will have a big effect, so making nuanced character expressions was very tough. Asya’s were especially tricky - her face being at an angle made it hard to get the emotions just right without messing up the proportions.

Background repaint and edit.

Conversely, the process for most of the backgrounds was pretty straightforward. The majority of them were stock images and archival photos, which were doctored in some way before being passed through a couple filters. I couldn’t always find fitting pictures, though, so a few shots were taken from videos and repainted.

The sound

Some people were confused as to why I didn’t just make my own OST, considering the fact I’m mostly known for music. Two reasons:

I’m not very good at slower atmospheric tracks.
I got majorly burnt out on music production.

Plus, there’s no shortage of great royalty-free music available today - I was certain I’d be able to find stuff that fit just right. I think it worked out quite well! Though having to double check if the tracks were AI or not was pretty annoying…

Coding

I’m not very technically savvy, so a few of the artistic choices regarding the game’s UI and staging were the result of my own limitations. Most of the “trippy” effects were just frame-by-frame animations, because I thought creating them in-engine was too hard. Perhaps, that was for the better...

In any case, my biggest achievements were turning off the rewind option in Ren’py and making a working CG gallery, so you can imagine the level of coding prowess involved.

(PRE)RELEASE

Nothing prepared me for how convoluted the process of uploading anything to Steam is. I figured out the game part - and thank god for that. However, I’m still struggling with uploading the freaking Art Pack to the platform! Even my gamedev friend couldn’t understand what the hell you’re supposed to do. I’m still poking the site's support about it.

That aside, the release went pretty smoothly, and I was very happy to see so many people enjoying the game! What really surprised me was that so many didn’t notice a lot of the clues I’ve scattered throughout the story, and I even made a bunch of things more obvious after the beta test…

Perhaps that’s just how it is when you’re the one creating puzzles. The hints seem really obvious when you already know all the solutions. Still, I try to keep up with the game discussion and I’m yet to see some of its riddles solved (which is kinda funny, considering two of the beta testers got one of them right after finishing the game).

Regardless, it’s fun to read all the different interpretations that people have come up with! I wanted to keep things ambiguous for a reason, and seeing readers draw their own conclusions is very rewarding.

PERSONAL NOTE

I’ve become a much more cynical person in the past couple of years. It’s hard to shake off the feeling that no matter how hard you try, the world at large will remain a very painful and cruel place. But you see, the apartment I’m living in right now looks out onto a park.

Whenever I come out to the balcony, I see foliage stretching out from the base of my building to the street very far away. Beyond that foliage, there’s a factory emitting trails of smoke. This is where the sun rises from. And then just to the side, there are rows of apartment blocks no different from my own. They burn bright orange when the sun sets - really, really bright. So do the trees, and so does the sky. The sky is very big here.

I’ve gotten into the habit of taking a bit of time out of my day to just stand on the balcony and look outside, and listen to the birds and to the voices of the people walking down below. There are many terrible things that are outside of my control, but amidst all that, I still have the luxury of seeing and appreciating something very beautiful. I realise that the moment I’m living in is fleeting and can never be recaptured, so the least I can do is enjoy it to the fullest.

A lot of people asked me if Asya was based on me. She really wasn’t - in many ways, I’m her polar opposite. But I do hope to share this love with her, because as unforgiving and unfair as the universe can be, it’s still an incredible place.