You've never heard of it, but a Russian studio made a fantasy take on original Fallout way back in 2001, and it honestly kind of rules

You’ve never heard of it, but a Russian studio made a fantasy take on original Fallout way back in 2001, and it honestly kind of rules | PC Gamer Skip to main content Open menu Close main menu PC Gamer THE GLOBAL AUTHORITY ON PC GAMES US Edition UK US Canada Australia Subscribe Sign in View Profile Sign out Search Search PC Gamer Games Hardware News Reviews Guides Video Forum More PC Gaming Show PC Gamer Clips Software Codes Coupons Movies & TV Magazine Newsletter Affiliate links Meet the team Community guidelines About PC Gamer PC Gamer Magazine SubscriptionWhy subscribe?Subscribe to the world’s #1 PC gaming magTry a single issue or save on a subscriptionIssues delivered straight to your door or device From$1Subscribe now Don’t miss these Puzzle Devs behind GoldenEye, Perfect Dark and TimeSplitters are done with big shooters after getting burned by Embracer, so their next game is a Balatro-like twist on Scrabble—and you can try the demo now Roguelike Two of Mewgenics’ most memorable areas were directly inspired by a brutal and brilliant tabletop RPG MMO Project: Gorgon has recaptured the old-school MMO magic I thought was dead and gone by letting me ask a pig about its mother so hard it dies Roguelike Steam Next Fest is full of Balatro-likes: here’s 7 demos I think you should try The Witcher Reigns The Witcher review: Pick a path RPG I applaud this gacha game for ditching anime characters for puppets, but it still can’t escape the pitfalls of a post-Genshin Impact world Action Ubisoft made another Avatar game the world has forgotten about, so I opened Pandora’s boxed copy and dropped into the jungle RPG ‘We lost things such as physics in games:’ The dev behind my most anticipated RPG thinks players are craving more interactive games, not just ‘moving around in a static 3D environment’ RPG The new game from Disco Elysium’s studio feels like the first Christmas after your parents’ divorce RPG The best RPGs on PC RPG Warhammer 40k: Dark Heresy might just have everything I want from a CRPG Games PC Gamer’s Game of the Year Awards 2025 RPG The dev behind my top upcoming RPG is a Hungarian chef who thought ‘if not now, then when?’ and learned coding from scratch to make his dream ‘eurojank’ masterpiece RPG I’m not waiting 5 years for everyone to realize The Outer Worlds 2 is another Obsidian classic—I’m giving it its flowers now Adventure Pathologic 3 review: One of the most compelling mystery adventures since Disco Elysium PopularNEW: PC Gamer Clips!Resident EvilArc RaidersBest PC gearGame Quizzes Games RPG You’ve never heard of it, but a Russian studio made a fantasy take on original Fallout way back in 2001, and it honestly kind of rules Features By Joshua Wolens published 28 February 2026 Keep your Baldur’s Gate 3s, I’m playing GoldenLand. Or Heath. Whatever it is, I’m playing it. When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission. Here’s how it works. (Image credit: Russobit-M) Copy link Facebook X Whatsapp Reddit Pinterest Flipboard Email Share this article 1 Join the conversation Follow us Add us as a preferred source on Google Newsletter PC Gamer Get the PC Gamer Newsletter Keep up to date with the most important stories and the best deals, as picked by the PC Gamer team. Contact me with news and offers from other Future brands Receive email from us on behalf of our trusted partners or sponsors By submitting your information you agree to the Terms & Conditions and Privacy Policy and are aged 16 or over. You are now subscribed Your newsletter sign-up was successful Want to add more newsletters? 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Pop back every weekend to find out what Jeremy, Josh and Rick have become obsessed with this time, whether it’s the canon height of Thief’s Garrett or that time someone in the Vatican pirated Football Manager.There’s something about the sprawling isometric RPG that caught on particularly hard in the former Soviet Union, back in the ’90s and early 2000s. Perhaps it’s an indescribable affinity of the narodnaya dusha—that the Forgotten Realms and Middle-earth speak to something ancestral in the popular spirit: recalling byliny and all the spooky monsters that haunt the white pines, just out of view.Perhaps it was that they ran pretty good on bad computers and were a decent way of learning English. Hard to say.Regardless, although I have known that the world east of the Elbe is way into its CRPGs for a long time, I’ve mostly associated the region’s dev scene with, well, GSC Game World and CD Projekt—strange, janky and ambitious games, but not mechanically crunchy isometric CRPGs. That is until a Bluesky post from Felipe Pepe—who wrote (well, edited) the book on CRPGs—came across my feed, all wistful about a series called Zlatogorye, or GoldenLand. I was immediately determined to play it. Related articles ‘We lost things such as physics in games:’ The dev behind my most anticipated RPG thinks players are craving more interactive games, not just ‘moving around in a static 3D environment’ The dev behind my top upcoming RPG is a Hungarian chef who thought ‘if not now, then when?’ and learned coding from scratch to make his dream ‘eurojank’ masterpiece Fallout designer Tim Cain reckons his subsequent 3 projects were buggy games ‘or, as people called them, flawed masterpieces’ because ‘we had a lot of feature ideas, we did not edi