Escape from Tarkov

A survival game with elements of a first-person stealth shooter and RPG, set in a post-Soviet visual style. The action takes place in the fictional city of Tarkov. Players venture into different parts 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 carry it to an extraction point.

It’s no easy task, as Tarkov is a deadly place to live: there are no rules, and everyone is out for themselves. A bullet can come flying from anywhere at any moment, while enemies of varying levels and threats such as radioactive contamination only make things worse. The game has been in closed beta testing since 2017.

Escape from Tarkov is set in the alternate-reality universe of “Russia 2028,” created by the developers for Contract Wars. Tarkov itself is located in the south of the Karelian Isthmus, in the fictional Norvinsk Region, a former free economic zone of 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 broke out, leading to the region’s isolation by UN peacekeepers and the Russian Federation’s army.

While politicians argue, TerraGroup hires the USEC private military company to protect its laboratories and personnel, provide armed support for its illegal experiments, keep its secrets securely hidden, and thwart attempts to investigate the company’s activities. In response, the authorities of the Norvinsk Region hire BEAR, a private military company with close ties to Russian Federation government agencies, 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 distinct theme for each. The “Factory” map consists entirely of production facilities, workshops, and repair shops, with several levels of verticality. The “Woods” map, by contrast, has only a couple of buildings and is buried deep in the forest, challenging players to survive in the open.

In 2020, practically nothing was known about the story of Escape from Tarkov, apart from the developers’ promise to add a full-fledged story in the future. The events will begin at the height of the war between two PMC groups. Civilians are fleeing, chaos is all around, so the writers have plenty of room to work with. For now, players make do with traders’ quests that are loosely tied 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. The character stays in the Hideout, which also serves as the game menu, and heads out from there on raids.

You can’t enter a raid with a “naked” character. First, you need to choose all your gear: a weapon and enough ammo for it, grenades, medkits and painkillers, food and water. Inventory space is limited by volume and weight, so you need to find a balance, but your inventory expands over time. Anything you’re missing can be bought from traders or other players.

The game has dozens of skills, 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. Each faction will eventually get unique skills, making the gameplay more varied.

The Hideout is the character’s base, where they heal their wounds, recover, and store all the loot found on difficult raids. It can also be upgraded. Players start 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 resource storage area, a workbench for crafting items, and a shooting range for testing them in combat.

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