Broken network · Broken rules · Broken Moskvitch
Most heroes enter another world through a portal, a spell, or a tragic death. Sasha Petrova entered another world because she drank too much.
A twenty-one-year-old mechanic-otaku from a Soviet village drank her way into an interdimensional rift. Moonshine made with anomalous water is a treacherous thing: one glass and you fix an engine blindfolded, two and you philosophize about the four-stroke cycle, three and you wake up in an infinite white void with a hangover and a rusty slot machine.
Now she's stuck in a broken network of parallel worlds that no one planned, no one controls, and no one can fix — though one girl with a wrench and a bottle of that very moonshine is trying her best.
Fix what shouldn't work. Drink what shouldn't exist. Die — and pull the lever to find out where you'll end up next.
About the project
Nexus is a connection point between worlds, spawned by the Paradox Machine. During a secret Soviet experiment, the device malfunctioned: instead of a unified directed effect, it tore the fabric of reality, scattering unstable nodes — rifts between dimensions — across the USSR. Every node is a door, but they're all broken.
Sasha, a girl from a village sitting right on one of these nodes, gets pulled into the network. The only way home is through all the nodes. Sounds simple. In practice — not so much.
The Heroine
Father — Arkady "Arkadyich" Petrov — the first and only alco-mechanic in the oblast: a man capable of fixing any engine, but exclusively while intoxicated. Sober, he confused a screwdriver with a crowbar and once accidentally bolted a faucet to a stool. After the third shot — he could rebuild a KamAZ blindfolded, one-handed, whistling the anthem.
Lyudmila Vasilyevna — accountant of the "Dawn" collective farm, the only person in the village whose books balanced. The family budget never balanced, but Lyudmila blamed that on the anomalous zone.
Arkadyich, returning from a garage meeting on a homemade cultivator, crashed into the only pole in a kilometer-wide empty field. The pole was fine. The cultivator was fine. Arkadyich broke a leg and a finger — on different limbs. He insists the pole "appeared suddenly," though it's been there since 1974. He spent three months in a cast in the garage, teaching little Sasha the basics of mechanics.
Lyudmila Vasilyevna was catapulted from a tractor cabin after the driver braked hard for a chicken. The chicken, for the record, didn't even turn around. She landed in a haystack, escaping with a fright and the loss of one galosh. The galosh was never found — rumor has it it's still orbiting Earth. But they did find a box of manga. Her mother brought it home saying "at least the kid will read books."
Arkadyich and Lyudmila simultaneously but independently got into accidents on the same day. He crashed the Moskvitch into a Lenin monument (Lenin stood firm, the Moskvitch — not so much). She fell off her bicycle into a ditch, swerving around her husband's Moskvitch sticking out of the pedestal. The nurses were taking bets. Meanwhile, Sasha survived on instant noodles three times a day, finished all 1,540 episodes of One Piece, and learned to brew moonshine.
What happened to Sasha between seventeen and twenty-one is a question even she can't answer. When asked, she replies: "Don't remember. There was a lot of anime and not much water." Neighbors claim they saw her at three weddings, two funerals, and one fair — at the fair she fixed a ride while it was running (riders didn't notice), and at the funeral she resurrected the hearse (the deceased reportedly nodded approvingly, but that's unconfirmed).
By twenty-one, Sasha looks like someone who could simultaneously fix your refrigerator and explain the entire One Piece plot in forty minutes without pausing for breath.
| Ability | Type | Description |
|---|---|---|
| 🔧 Alco-Mechanic | Passive | Repair and assembly from whatever's lying around. The crazier — the higher the chance. Works better after a potion. |
| 📺 Otaku | Passive | Meta-knowledge of tropes: hints, archetype recognition, fourth wall breaking. NPCs find it annoying. |
| 🍶 Moonshine Spirit | Active | Brewing potions from anything. Once brewed an invisibility potion from potato peels and a nail. The nail turned invisible. |
During another garage gathering (moonshine, toasts to the harvest, toasts to the engine, toasts for the engine to actually start), Sasha drinks her way — literally — into another world. The catalyst was moonshine made with anomalous water from the well at the edge of the village. Water from this well makes the kettle boil before you turn it on and makes the neighbor's cat meow in reverse. What it does to moonshine — best not to imagine.
The last thing Sasha remembers — her father raised his glass and said: "To not getting carried away!" — after which the world blinked like a burnt-out lightbulb, and Sasha woke up on a concrete floor in an infinite white void with a heavy head and a persistent smell of gasoline.
The One-Armed Bandit of Fate
When Sasha "dies," it's not game over. She doesn't respawn at a bonfire. Doesn't appear at a stove. Doesn't appear at the lovingly placed developer checkpoints. No. The screen goes dark, and she comes to in the Garage of the Universe — an infinitely white space between worlds that smells of gasoline and ozone, where a neon lamp hums somewhere, and on the concrete floor stands a single object: a rusty Soviet slot machine.
It looks like it was assembled in the same garage as Sasha's cultivator. Rusted in spots, wrapped in electrical tape in others, with a faded inscription on the side: "Ministry of Entertainment and Unforeseen Relocations." But it works. It always works.
Sasha pulls the lever. The drums spin. A combination drops — and she's thrown into the next world.
Three drums: world · modifier · entry bonus/penalty
Tokens from worlds let you lock a drum or re-spin. Tokens are scarce.
| Worlds | 4–6 main + secret (on jackpot) |
| Order | Randomized by the machine on each death |
| World goal | Main objective. Complete it — you can leave or stay and dig deeper |
| Game goal | Pass through all nodes and return to Kulakov. Preferably with both boots. |
| Finale | When all main worlds are completed |
The Paradox Machine
The story takes place in an alternate USSR that never collapsed. The Paradox Machine, launched during a secret experiment, didn't work as planned. Instead of a "ultimate transition to universal equality," it created a network of anomalous zones — places where reality behaves as if it read the instructions backwards.
The village of Kulakov in Marovskaya Oblast sits on one such anomaly. The locals have long gotten used to it: milk sours before it's milked, the radio picks up stations from parallel worlds (on Tuesdays — jazz from a dimension where the saxophone is the national instrument), and lost items turn up in places where they definitely weren't lost. Postman Grigorych once found his glasses inside a sealed jar of pickles. He doesn't ask questions.
Each world in the network is a byproduct of the Machine's work. These aren't full-fledged universes but shards of possibility — fragments of what "could have been." Sasha isn't guided by a mentor, a voice from above, or a ghostly sage with wise speeches. She's on her own — with a wrench and a bad headache.
Worlds
Slavic fantasy · blacksmithing
Mountain forges, awakened machines, spirits offended by improper tempering. Enemies — a cross between a steam engine and a bear.
Soviet cyberpunk
Neon glows red, corporations are ministries. To buy a cyber-arm, you need Form 27-B in triplicate.
Anime tropes · beach episode
"The laziest episode of the season." Easy fights, complex diplomacy. Sasha hates this world. Sasha doesn't want to leave.
Horror · abandoned Soviet lab
Dark corridors, flickering lights. Connection to the prologue. Sasha isn't joking for once. That's a bad sign.
Home village, but "wrong" · final world
All NPCs know Sasha. The pole is in the wrong place. The galosh is where it should be. The Lenin monument — is smiling.
Tonality
The Paradox Machine, the nature of anomalies, the cost of progress, the question — can you fix what was broken on purpose.
Sasha saw this plot twist in season three of One Piece. Bureaucracy as a boss fight. A chicken that started a chain of catastrophes.
Relationships with parents she didn't appreciate. Nostalgia for a home that might only exist in her head. The question "do I even want to go back?".
Dialogues offer multiple options. The mechanic says one thing, the otaku says another, and drunk Sasha says a third. All three lead to consequences.
a tactical isometric RPG about a girl from a Soviet village stuck in a broken network of parallel worlds. Turn-based combat. Nonlinear story. Every death is a pull of the slot machine lever.
Soviet aesthetics × anime × dark humor