Hollow Home, the Ukrainian-made survival RPG about a teenager trying to get through a city under siege, will not make its 2026 window after all. Kyiv studio Twigames and publisher Crunchy Leaf Games have set a firm date instead: January 27, 2027. The new date was announced on the game's Steam page this morning alongside a release date trailer, and the free demo remains available on Steam for anyone who wants to try the opening days now.
A delay, but finally a date
The team had promised a 2026 release, and its announcement opens with an apology for breaking that promise. The reason it gives is a familiar one: a few more months of polish and content, so that the story of Maksym, the game's 14-year-old protagonist, feels complete on day one rather than being patched into shape after launch.
The good news in the same post is that the game now has an actual day on the calendar instead of a window. January 27 is a Wednesday, and it lands in the traditionally quieter stretch after the holiday rush, where a small narrative game has a better chance of being noticed than it would in a packed November.
The Steam page now lists January 27, 2027 for the PC release. The game also has a listing on the Xbox Store for Xbox Series X|S with Xbox Play Anywhere support, so buying it there should cover both console and Windows PC.
What Hollow Home is
Hollow Home describes itself as a narrative survival RPG with no weapons and no combat. You play as Maksym, a boy left alone in his hometown as it comes under siege, and everything you do is about getting through each day: finding food, deciding who to trust, and choosing who to help when helping costs you something. The developers have said the setting draws on the real siege of Mariupol, and that work on the game began in spring 2022, only weeks after Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
Instead of health bars and ammunition, the interface tracks two things. Action Points limit how much Maksym can do in a single day, and Resolve measures how much he can take emotionally before he breaks. Every errand, conversation and meal costs points, so a day spent helping a neighbour is a day not spent scavenging. The studio cites Disco Elysium and This War of Mine as inspirations, and both influences are easy to see in that mix of heavy dialogue and daily resource pressure.
Choices, people and a changing city
Dialogue branches, and the game has multiple endings depending on the relationships Maksym builds and the decisions he makes along the way. Encounters are presented as short written scenes with choices, much like a tabletop adventure. One shows Maksym coming across a stray dog called Huxley in a scuffle with a down-on-his-luck local, the kind of small, human moment the game is built around.
The city is split into three districts, and they do not stay the same. As the siege goes on, the districts change around you, which means a place that was safe early on may not be later. The map shown in the store screenshots gives a sense of scale: Maksym's home in an old Soviet-era apartment block, a pharmacy, a hospital, a café, a garage, an arcade and a House of Culture, all within a few blocks of each other.
Backed by players
Part of the reason for the extra time is money that only arrived recently. In August, Hollow Home ran a Kickstarter campaign that raised just over $21,000 against a $15,000 goal, finishing at 140% with 558 backers. Twigames says those funds are going straight into the extra polish and content planned for launch, including a stretch goal that adds two new outfits for Maksym.
For a small team making a game about events that are still unfolding at home, that support clearly matters, and the studio thanks its backers by name in the announcement.
Try it before January
If you want to see whether Hollow Home is for you, the free demo is available now on Steam as a separate download. It covers the first days of Maksym's story, which is where the game sets up its central question: what does a 14-year-old do when the adults are gone and the city around him is falling apart? The demo received a small update in September that fixed several bugs, including some Ukrainian localisation issues.
Hollow Home launches January 27, 2027. You can wishlist it on Steam now, and it is also listed on the Xbox Store for Xbox Series X|S.
