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

S.T.A.L.K.E.R.
Genre(s)	First-person shooter Survival horror
Developer(s)	GSC Game World
Publisher(s)	GSC World Publishing THQ Deep Silver bitComposer Games
Platform(s)	Microsoft Windows PlayStation 4 Xbox One Xbox Series X/S
First release	Shadow of Chernobyl 20 March 2007
Latest release	Call of Pripyat 2 October 2009

S.T.A.L.K.E.R. is a first-person-shooter survival horror video game franchise developed by Ukrainian game developer GSC Game World. The series is set in an alternate version of the present-day Chernobyl Exclusion Zone in Ukraine, where, according to the series' backstory, a mysterious second Chernobyl disaster took place in 2006. As a result, the physical, chemical, and biological processes in the area were altered, spawning numerous nature-defying anomalies, artifacts, and mutants. The player takes the role of a "stalker" - a name given to trespassers and adventurers who have come to explore the exclusion zone and its strange phenomena.

The series is loosely based on the novel Roadside Picnic by Arkady and Boris Strugatsky, and influenced by the 1979 movie Stalker by Andrei Tarkovsky which was itself adapted from "Roadside Picnic".^[1] The name "S.T.A.L.K.E.R." is a backronym for Scavengers, Trespassers, Adventurers, Loners, Killers, Explorers and Robbers.