BORIS THE ROCKET 🚀

I spent a solid stretch with Boris the Rocket bracing for the next incoming missile and frantically checking my radar before realizing that the game's core loop is less a simulation and more a first-person memory test with existential consequences. You play as a moustached conscript, arrested by the KGB and given the charming alternative of death or a posting at a Siberian anti-ballistic missile battery. The premise is absurd in exactly the right way, and the dark comedy running underneath the whole thing keeps the tone from collapsing under its own repetition. Mechanically, each in-game day starts with incoming rockets. You sprint to the radar to identify the threat, use the binoculars to read the enemy missile type, then load your own anti-ballistic missile, configure it correctly (red rockets need a heat-signature detector toggle flipped; green ones do not), and fire. Miss a step, get the configuration wrong, and your interceptor fails while your arsenal shrinks. Between waves you have to venture outside into the Siberian cold to mine resources, brew vodka, manage Boris's physical stats through an upgrade system, and complete investigation objectives scattered across the wasteland. Planning your outdoor runs before enemy missiles appear is where the actual strategy lives. Upgrading Boris's muscle and brain attributes genuinely changes how many tasks you can realistically chain together in a single day, and that light RPG layer gives the otherwise rigid loop a sense of meaningful progression. Where the game divides opinion is precisely on that loop's tolerance for repetition. Steam user sentiment sits strongly positive, but external critics have noted that the in-game manual can feel incomplete and that some late-game rules require outside research to decode. That criticism is fair. The onboarding drops you into a procedure-heavy system without enough scaffolding, and re-entering the game after a break means re-memorizing a non-trivial chain of actions before rockets start arriving. If your session gets interrupted, expect a rough re-entry. The lack of any calm window, where you can catch your breath and plan without a ticking clock, is a genuine design gap. There is also a bear. The bear is not interested in your excuses. Comparisons to Papers, Please are common in community discussions, and they are earned in spirit if not in execution. Both games weaponize mundane process as a source of stress. Boris the Rocket leans harder into physical comedy and Cold War absurdism, which makes it more approachable in short bursts but less emotionally resonant over a long run. The base-building side, which lets you expand the bunker and unlock amenities over the course of the campaign, adds more texture than the early hours suggest. Getting to a fully operational facility does feel earned. This one is squarely for players who enjoy process-oriented games, Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes being the closest mechanical sibling, and who can tolerate a difficulty curve that does not apologize for itself. If you hate multitasking under a timer, the experience will feel cruel rather than challenging. But if committing operational checklists to memory and shaving seconds off your missile response time sounds like a Saturday well spent, Boris the Rocket has more depth than its indie budget implies.

Diego · Scout Team

Strategy & simulation

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