Nowhere was restarted from scratch. Not much content yet, but a lot of technical work made to turn Unity into a usable engine. Couldn't make much progress recently because invasion of Ukraine f*cked up my life completely...
Our lives, me and my girlfriend. Last 5 month were hell.
We were in Kyiv when the invasion started, and on top of waking up almost every night to shots and explosions... We unfortunately have russian passports. Being a citizen of invading country makes you a potential enemy/suspect, making our lives in that situation even harder. Even just driving around the roads is a risk, checkpoints everywhere and nobody is happy to see a passport of occupant country. We got out, thanks to our amazing Ukrainian friend Igor and now in safety. What a journey that was! Through Lviv to Poland border, through Poland to Berlin and then to the south west of Germany to my friend Kenneth!
But we had to leave behind friends, habits and my life savings. A devastating blow. Even though we were always against russian regime and openly supported sovereignty of Ukraine, their culture and identity.., Our nationality mattered a lot more. And now the money i saved most of my career to buy us a house and fund this project - are now frozen indefinitely in PrivatBank24. All the pleads, all the evidence I gave them of me being on their side wasn't enough. They wouldn't allow me to use even small amounts of money to get food or medication in the middle of war. Cruel and unnecessary.
Thankfully I got people that helped us, including the company i work for - Ludeon (makers of RimWorld). I got a lot of moral support, some cash to help us flee the country and no pressure at all about returning to work. It was one of the few glimpses of light in this story. Another one was my friend and ex-colleague from Ludeon - Kenneth. He gave us shelter in Germany until we stabilize and he still helps us to deal with local authorities and other issues of being a refugee here.
Now we rent our own apartment, I slowly start to return to normal life and work on this project. But our future is very uncertain. We didn't get the same treatment that Ukraine natives get when they get here. 5 month in, we still don't have residency permit, work permit and not even allowed to have insurance... And the sole reason was our passport. If one of us has to go to a doctor - i pay inflated prices with cash. I also had to stay at the hospital for 10 days and they will try and charge me for that. So yeah... a lot of shit to deal with. And so far German authorities keep ignoring us, to the point we had to hire a lawyer and pressure them to just review our case already and give us a f*cking paper.
My mental state is not good, can't sleep anymore. But I hope that there's a good ending to all of this if we persist. And I hope Ukraine persists.
