Planet Alcatraz

If you are intimately familiar with Fallout 1&2, then first of all: collect the dust that's falling from your old head.

Secondly: close your eyes and imagine: it's the year 2006, and developers from Russia, led by Dmitry "Goblin" Puchkov (who, according to my research, can very much be called a forefather and one of the key figures of the early Russian internet), decided to release their own Fallout with blackjack and hookers (though, you won't find the former in the game, but there's plenty of the latter). The game is based on his book, which can be roughly translated to "Dungeon Cleaners".

The funny thing is, the peak popularity of Fallout 1 (1997) and Fallout 2 (2002) had already passed by then, and the first official version of Fallout 1 wouldn't be released in Russia until 2008.

The game is available on Steam and, unlike the second one, has an English translation. Depending on the language you play in, your perception of the game will probably change. Later in the text, I will make some remarks that will show you the differences between the versions.

So, what did I take away for myself after 30 hours of gameplay?

Story:

In a future where the Russian Empire is waging a space war, the worst criminals in the galaxy are shipped off to a remote prison planet called "Sailor's Silence" (the real name of a real Russian prison) - or as we know it, Planet Alcatraz.

You're not some random convict, though. You're Cadet "Boar", part of an elite four-man Imperial saboteur squad named “Ghoul”, sent undercover to find out if the inmates are building a spaceship to escape. Your pod crashes, you get separated from your team, and you wake up surrounded by guys with meat cleavers. So begins your "lovely" vacation.

The story itself: find your squad, complete the mission - is pretty straightforward. It is also full of satire and dark humor. This planet is a brutal, divided crapsack world run by prison gangs split along racial lines: Whites, Blacks, Yellows (not the name I chose), plus factions like the Aryans, the Police, and the Cannibals. You'll meet weird characters with even weirder names like Goat, Iceman, Blacky, and Father Wendigo, and get tangled in power struggles.

There are no essentially good people on this planet. Just different shades of evil and/or broken. That includes our protagonist – Boar, who is a proper piece of human scum. You may think that this is a role-playing game, and it depends on the player what kind of man Boar is, right? Well, mostly yes, but let me tell you this.

There was a quest where we needed to help a poor dude whose girlfriend was brought to this planet againts her will and forced to work as a prostitute (after undergoing female genital mutilation - a procedure performed on her, and generally, it's performed on every woman before arriving on this planet). We kill all the pimps and guards and free her, after which Boar HIMSELF rapes her, then urinates on the floor, declares: “It was a brothel, now it's a public toilet,” and only then lets her go…. Yup, that's our guy.

So, here's the big, giant asterisk: the English version of this story is a mess. A huge amount of the original Russian dialogue - which was written in prison slang - was either badly translated or straight-up censored. Whole questlines are missing, racial tensions are glossed over, and the dialogue often reads like it was run through Google Translate a few times. It won't win any awards for coherence, but the gritty, unique setting it “hints” at is a solid foundation for the chaos you're about to experience.

But after comparing one version to the other, I clearly see that the original vision simply wouldn’t fly with the publisher. The original is homophobic, racist, and misogynistic, that's the harsh reality of the prison planet. I mean, come on, the default Russian in-game name for the dark-skinned part of the planet's population is “negro” (both versions of the n-word were dropped a couple of times, too), for Asians it's “chinaman,” and 90% of the female population in the game is simply called “prostitute.”

So you can see why English version is sanitized.

They removed racial epithets (like "black/Chinese" before the words "slave" or "person"), all the references to prostitution (and, by extension, the realities of prison gangs).

The Aryan Fortress, Slavic/Asian/Black settlements became "The Legion", "Taipan", "Ungan", brothels became "bars," prostitutes - "locals."

However politically incorrect the Russian-language version may be, English version lost all original charm and initial vision, lost its sharp teeth and striking social commentary.

Gameplay:

Planet Alcatraz is a classic isometric RPG through and through: stats, skills, quests, and lots of fighting. It often gets compared to the original Fallout games, but with a real-time-with-pause combat system more like Baldur's Gate. You can freeze the action with the spacebar, line up shots or swings, then unpause and watch the chaos.

Combat is easy to understand but brutally unforgiving. Don't think you can just waltz in. In the first hours, you're fighting with sticks and fists against cleaver-wielding maniacs, and you will die. Timing, positioning, and using cover are key, since crits can and will knock characters down or knock weapons out of their hands. It's easy to get staggered to death. Oh, and grenades. You will learn to fear enemy grenades above all else. The upside is a ridiculous arsenal: from shovels and brooms to shotguns, sniper rifles, and eventually hi-tech energy weapons.

It is not an open-world game. Just like in Fallout, you have an overworld map with a series of settlements and encounters, although there are no random ones.

On these maps, you’ll be doing quests for cash, ranging from your average fetch quests, "kill X beasts" and “steal the X” to such riveting tasks as “Have sex with all the prostitutes in the region as Boar” (and later as every other member of our squad).

Aslo, you will probably spend a shocking amount of time playing inventory Tetris with all the loot. 

The skill system is nothing new; you’ve seen it before. Invest in HP to live longer, focus on melee first to survive the first couple of hours, and grab the "Nerd" perk for more skill points upon level up. But some design choices are...weird to say the least. Despite being a member of an elite squad, there are some things "Boar" has to be taught. And it’s done through trainers who will ask for ridiculous amounts of money. You can also heal while the combat is paused, which makes the game significantly easier (as long as you’re stacked up on the food/medicine).

Since we're on the topic of gameplay, there were a couple of irritating moment I had to deal with:

First of all, what you need to know is that the game has a manual. Why does it matter, you may ask? Let me tell you.

After playing the game for 20+ hours, I’ve encountered a quest that required me to kill a bunch of “zombies”. Surprise-surprise, you can't just pump them full of lead or slash and bash them with your melee weapons, it’s not even a guaranteed kill if you use explosives. What you need to do is to…aim and shoot them in the head. Turns out, you can aim at different bodyparts…with a numpad…which I don’t have on my laptop. And you CAN’T change in-game controls in options, so I had to resort to changing the freaking config file.

On top of that, the game is excruciatingly slow. Your every action is so freaking slow, it’s almost painful. 

And don’t forget the bugs, oh God.

First of all, upon exiting the game, it does not close. You have to either kill the process in the Task Manager each time you’re done playing or download a dll file that fixes that problem.

There were a few game-crashing instances, so some side-quests are impossible to finish. And there’s nothing you can do to fix this. There are workarounds, but no fixes.

Graphics:

It’s a Russian “indie” title from 2006, what do you expect?

The world itself isn't bad. The isometric view shows off a variety of locations: slums, deserts, jungles, settlements, industrial zones - that have their own distinct look and feel. You get a sense of this being a large, lived-in (well, prison-ified) planet.

Character models, on the other hand...ooh boy. Think of the customization options of "a Mister Potato Head with predefined slots". For every other in-game human model, there are basically two body types (one male, one female) with different heads slapped on top and skin color changed. Everyone looks like a Neanderthal or a variation on a bimbo. Animations are clunky and stuttery, and movement can feel janky and slow. There’s gore and blood. It’s not pretty, but hey, at least it runs.

Funny thing is, that English version’s last patch is 1.06 (compared to 1.05 in the Russian version), which brought improved lightning, cutscene lip-sync, and overall better graphics seen in the second game.

Audio:

Let's not dance around the issue: the English voice acting is…bad, I mean so hilariously, jaw-droppingly bad that it becomes a feature, not a bug. I’ve seen someone describing the protagonist as sounding like "a Non-English speaking Australian attempting to speak like Duke Nukem". Many characters seem to be voiced by the same person with minimal editing. It's a B-movie (or even C) experience through and through.

Russian voice acting is professionally done, but not without its own quirks. I mean, Boar sounds like he has developmental issues. Uttering phrases like: “The soldier needs his head to think, and he needs his brains to comprehend” or “Yeah, I am principled, but I’m not a fool”. The HELL are you even talking about, Boar??

The music is surprisingly nice, there’s unique music for different areas and situations that range from comforting jungle tunes and oriental music to menacing battle tracks. The sound design does its job with gunshots, monster snarls, and ambient noise. But you'll mostly remember the voices.

Thoughts:

I’m not going to pretend that this is some kind of a masterpiece or a hidden gem. It is not as polished or instantly iconic as Fallout, Planet Alcatraz, but it is still a uniquely memorable experience, even in 2026. Yes, it's deeply, deeply flawed.

Yes, it has a hearty serving of Slavjank: terrible translation, wonky mechanics, and bizarre design choices. But it has a raw, unfiltered soul and a creatively gritty world that many fans consider a hidden gem if you can look past the roughness.

If you have a high tolerance for jank, a sick, unhinged sense of humor, racism, homophobia, and want to feel that specific old-school, Euro-RPG charm, you might just fall in love with it. Just know what you're getting into: it's a prison planet, and you have to earn your fun and depending on a version you’re playing, you experience will be different.