The Republican cartoon hackathon Decentrathon 2.0, the winners of which were awarded on January 31 - February 1 at DIGITAL ALMATY 2025 in Almaty, became an important event for the Olymp Studio team from Kostanay, which took first place in the Gamedev (video game development) category and won 1,200,000 tenge from the total prize fund of $50,000. Yaroslav and Artyom Zmeev, who are 17 and 16 years old respectively, study in high school at Kostanay school No. 19 and have been developing video games for two years. They learned about the hackathon through the QOSTANAI HUB Telegram channel and took part in a competition in which 2,000 teams participated, of which 400 were involved in creating games. The task proposed by the organizers was to solve one of two problems: creating races with customizable cars or creating a simulation of life in which characters interact with the outside world and with each other. The Olymp Studio team chose the second option, and the development process was carried out from scratch under strict time constraints. The development of the game required the use of Blender programs for 3D modeling and Substance 3D Painter for texturing, and the Unity engine with C# programming became the main tool for creating the game. Despite the complexity of the task, the team was able to handle the project thanks to excellent teamwork.

The guys shared that they plan to spend the money they have won on improving their personal technical equipment in order to improve the quality of future game development. The brothers mostly work together in game development: Yaroslav is engaged in 3D graphics, and Artyom in programming. Their first mobile game was Shadow of The Forest, a genre of first—person survival horror. The game is available for download on Google Play and will be available on the App Store soon. In the game, you need to survive at night by completing tasks and fighting bosses, as well as communicate with your partner and NPCs. According to the brothers, they chose a mobile platform for the game because creating computer games requires a lot more people, and their team is still small. However, in the future they plan to expand the team and try their hand at developing computer games.

Speaking about game development in Kazakhstan, Yaroslav and Artyom note that the industry is at a stage of development. The country already has support in the form of regional hubs and educational programs, which helps novice developers. However, the brothers believe that attention to game development needs to be increased, as Kazakhstan has the potential to create unique video games with elements of national culture. They are confident that with the development of infrastructure and technology, Kazakhstani games can take their rightful place in the global market. In the coming years, the team plans to continue developing new mobile games and release updates for its first game, Shadow of The Forest, in order to continue developing the domestic game world and contribute to the creation of Kazakhstani game content.