Alternate history 1950s Soviet Kyiv shooter You Are Empty: Absolute Edition

28 Oct 2026 at 11:22 am UTC
By Liam Squires-Hand

ZOOM Platform have revived another retro game here, with You Are Empty: Absolute Edition getting released with its alternate history 1950s Soviet Kyiv. Nice to see more retro games being given a new life for gamers old and new. ZOOM Platform have done some nice work for other games too.

From their announcement:

"In an alternate history 1950s Soviet Kyiv, most of the city's population has mysteriously vanished, and uncontrollable, horrific monsters roam its abandoned streets.

Fate has brought you face to face with the ominous emptiness of a dead city that watches its only visitor with unwavering attention. Face bizarre enemies born from propaganda, science, and madness as you uncover the truth behind the catastrophe, and try to make things right.

Just in time for the 20th anniversary, You Are Empty has been revitalized for modern systems, with fixes, new features, and QoL additions, including all the official localizations. Our team carefully went through the entire game whilst faithfully preserving the intent of the original release."

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General Improvements:

• Achievements.
• Controller support for modern and legacy controllers with 3 presets to choose from, thanks to SDL.
• Fixed countless rendering bugs and crashes that were present in the original release.
• Improved loading times by ~800%.

Engine Upgrades:

• Full support for all modern resolutions, and updated the game code to support every widescreen resolution.
  • The game HUD, menus, weapons, and videos are no longer stretched, and adapt to any resolution.
• Adjustable player FOV.
• An optional FPS limiter setting.
• Up to 8x MSAA and 16x Anisotropic Filtering.
• Consistent frametimes.
• Fixed camera jittering.
• Improved Windowed mode.
• The rendering for Nvidia, AMD, and Intel GPU's are now on par with each other.
• Removed need for externally installed prerequisites and deprecated Windows APIs.

Quality of Life Options:

• Togglable HUD via hotkey.
• Automatically fade out the HUD when not shooting.

• Reduced camera bobbing.
• Increase the minimum throw distance for Molotovs to prevent them from exploding at your feet when tapping fire.

Note: This was added due to criticism of the original release's walk speed being too slow.

• Sprinting.

You Are Empty was not originally designed with sprinting in mind. There might be some instances where pacing is off while this option is enabled.

Platform: ⚛ Proton / Wine (Windows)Release Date: 📅 27th October 2026Devs:ZOOM Platform MediaOfficial links:SteamZOOM Platform Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com. Tags: Proton, Action, FPS, New Release, Retro, Steam | Apps: You Are Empty: Absolute Edition 8 Likes Some you may have missed, popular articles from the last month:Highlights from the Triple-I Initiative Showcase - October 2026 EditionPimax to improve Linux VR support, announces Crystal Pro headset and their own Steam MachineNVIDIA security bulletin for Sept 30 notes many GPU issuesCyberpunk 2077 Edgerunners update brings improved modding, better HDR, new content and more All posts need to follow our rules. Please hit the Report Flag icon on any post that breaks the rules or contains illegal / harmful content. Readers can also email us for any issues or concerns.