Changeover: Decisions

I have a soft spot for games that probably shouldn't exist, ones made by a small team with a big idea and a shoestring budget, released quietly into the Steam void where almost nobody will find them. Changeover: Decisions is exactly that kind of game. KHB-Soft, a developer out of Russia better known for the rhythm arcade Intralism, shipped this in May 2018 as a narrative action-adventure hybrid, and it has been sitting under the radar ever since with a modest pile of mixed reviews and barely any English-language coverage to explain what it actually is. What it is, in practice, is a side-scrolling adventure with platformer bones layered over a branching story. You play a nameless amnesiac who wakes up in a decayed, Soviet-tinged ruin, cold wind threading through cracked walls, ancient machinery rotting in place. The atmosphere, lo-fi as it is, has a specific texture to it. There is a loneliness to the setting that a bigger studio would have smoothed over with polish. Here the roughness is part of the feeling. Your choices branch the narrative in real directions, not in the hollow multiple-choice way where every path loops back to the same corridor. The game seems genuinely interested in the question of who this person is and whether survival is worth knowing the answer. The combat system is where the ambition runs into its budget. It is described as unique, and it is certainly not conventional, but players in the community have noted that controls can feel resistant, with at least one Steam discussion thread asking for controller support and another puzzling through basic movement like climbing ladders without a guide. That friction is real. If you come in expecting smooth action, you will bounce off quickly. If you approach it the way you would approach a rough handmade zine, something that rewards patience and forgives its own clumsiness, there is a small, strange experience underneath. The game carries Steam tags for Difficult and Visual Novel alongside Action, Adventure, and Platformer, which tells you something honest about its split personality. It is not quite any one of those things cleanly. Completionists chasing achievements will find genuine challenge, with the Steam community noting that mapping every enemy across all cave branches may be the hardest thing in it. The nonlinear plot means a single run will not show you everything, and the replay hook is real if the first run earns your goodwill. This is not a game I can recommend without caveats. The localization is uneven, the controls have friction that is not always intentional design, and the review count is small enough that its 63% positive score on Steam should be read cautiously. But I keep thinking about that setting, the communist-era ruins, the biting cold, a man who cannot remember why the mind chose to forget. For the right kind of player, that is enough of a reason to look.

Kai · Scout Team

Indie & narrative

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