The United States emerged from World War II primed for prosperity. Its government was intact, and as a result of the war effort, its economy had actually been revitalized. Meanwhile, Soviet soldiers returned home to a thoroughly devastated land where as many as 27 million had died. The two cultures had little in common, so it was probably inevitable that relations between the erstwhile allies deteriorated very rapidly. During a visit to the US in the early part of 1946, Winston Churchill delivered a speech in which he encapsulated the growing ideological divide via the simple phrase Iron Curtain. Ultimately, this invisible yet almost impenetrable barrier and the associated Cold War would dominate global politics for decades, lasting until the 1990s when the demise of the Soviet Bloc paved the way for a new era, the current one of detente.

More than a decade later, it's still fair to say that most of us in North America are still relatively limited in terms of how much we know about Russia, the other former states of the Soviet Union, Poland, Hungary, the now-divided Czechoslovakia et al. In a microcosmic view, this is true of the game development industry. Many of us are aware that studios exist in those countries. However, naming them can be another matter altogether, as can describing their projects. Accordingly, there's a clear tendency to underestimate both the number of companies and the overall level of activity. To be frank, while we work to retain a global perspective, we're not always immune to this propensity. So, we recently decided to survey what's going on, and now offer the following synopses of 12 action projects from Eastern European developers.