KZBlog

Kazakhstan has its first video game! Astana Racer is a racing game set in Astana and apparently features a variety of cars from the Mitsubishi Lancer to a BMW. You can race all over the city from the Left Bank to the old center of town. The game is for sale at Meloman stores and can be played in Kazakh or Russian.

It will be interesting to see if the game is competitive on its own, or only sells from a sense of patriotism. I for one would buy it just to encourage Kazakhstan’s computer industry. And I’d love to hear from people who are into “Need for Speed” or other racing games, is there anything innovative in Astana Racer? Does it bring something new to the genre?

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Another bit of fun: The game site has a link to a paid article from Cactus [RU], an advertising magazine, from this summer where people were asked what they might expect from a Kazakhstan-designed racing game. My favorite answers are:

• “The idea sounds great. It would be interesting, although what can we expect from our programmers?”
• “I love the idea. But this game will be great if it will be possible to speed without limits, or tickets from the police and overall to be able to break the rules. Me, I would love to drive a car in the square in front of Kazmunaigaz.”
• “With regard to the music, I am against using Kazakh music. I don’t want to speed listening to the Kazakh song, Kyzdaray.”

Although some of us who drive in Astana aren’t sure why driving at top speeds with no regard for the rules or other drivers is at all something new. Drivers seem to do that all the time, without the use of a computer!

EDIT: Check out this forum entry before buying the game. I bought it and tried it out and my video driver keeps crashing and I’m not the only one. The creators
seem to be working on it, but for some people it seems to be buggy.

Other people are obviously running the program with no problems however.