S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Anomaly

Lore & Background

The franchise takes place in an alternate Chernobyl exclusion zone (or 'the Zone'), where a number of classified laboratories were established following the nuclear disaster of 1986. Due to experiments conducted in these laboratories, a second catastrophe occurred in 2006, causing physical and meteorological phenomena and mutation of local plant and animal life. Anomalies — inexplicable phenomena that do not obey the laws of physics — cause artifacts to appear, items with unique properties such as anti-gravity or radioactivity absorption.

Stalkers explore the Zone for personal enrichment. Factions include Duty (who believe the Zone must be destroyed), Freedom (who believe the Zone should be freely accessible), Bandits (wanted criminals), and Clear Sky (who seek to understand the Zone). A military checkpoint called the Cordon was established by the Ukrainian Military Forces. The most dangerous dwellers include the Monolith sect and mutants with psionic powers.

Reader's Guide

The series includes four main games: Shadow of Chernobyl (2007), where the player is an amnesiac stalker called the Marked One tasked with killing Strelok; Clear Sky (2008), a prequel where the player is Scar, a veteran mercenary working with the Clear Sky group; Call of Pripyat (2009), set after Shadow of Chernobyl, where Major Alexander Degtyarev investigates a failed military operation; and Heart of Chornobyl (2024), where veteran Yevhen 'Skif' Martynenko enters the Zone after an anomaly destroys his apartment. Each game's primary goal is to reach the center of the Zone.

Did You Know?

• The series is based on the novel Roadside Picnic by Arkady and Boris Strugatsky, and influenced by the 1979 film Stalker by Andrei Tarkovsky.
• By August 2021, the franchise had sold over 15 million copies.
• A board game titled S.T.A.L.K.E.R. The Board Game was announced in March 2023 and funded successfully through Gamefound in July 2023.
• The first game of the Metro series was released in 2010, created by ex-members of the S.T.A.L.K.E.R. development team who formed 4A Games in 2006.