Studio Betonika

Press Kit

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Fact sheet

One-line pitch

A falling-block puzzle game where every piece is a fragment of Soviet nostalgia, set to brutalist aesthetics and an original soundtrack.

Short description

Dvor is a falling-block game in two parts. Panelka rewards clean building – leave a gap and it's classic rules until you clear back to it, but build clean and the facade comes to life, piece by piece. Stroyka is the competitive branch: an endless Olympics marathon, a 40-line Sprint, and a Daily Challenge with a worldwide leaderboard.

Features

  • NES-authentic mechanics — exact scoring, speed curves, and level system
  • Panelka mode — build without clearing lines; leave a gap and it switches to classic rules until you clear back down to it; build clean with no gaps and reach the twelfth row to trigger the Panelka reward
  • Stroyka mode — Olympics (marathon), Sprint (time trial), Daily Challenge (global leaderboard)
  • Five atmosphere states — Spring, Summer, Autumn, Winter, Gold
  • Facade building — as pieces lock, the facade comes to life
  • Season selector — choose your starting atmosphere
  • Tunable DAS/ARR — Modern, Competitive, and NES Authentic presets, plus a Custom mode with fine-control sliders
  • Original soundtrack by Betonika — evolves dynamically through all five atmosphere states
  • Global leaderboard — Panelka high scores and Stroyka records tracked across all platforms

Links

About the Studio

Studio Betonika is an independent game studio founded by Angelina Severino and Alex Almeida – a wife and husband who live in London with their three daughters.

Angelina Severino is a Visual Artist and award-winning Designer behind Dvor's game art and game design. Her awards include Cannes Lions, Epica, Global Talent UK – Exceptional Talent in Digital Technology; she's also an international keynote speaker across Design and Technology.

Under the name Posteress her poster art is featured in Grafik Editions, she is a member of People of Print, and her designs participated in multiple apparel collaborations with brands like Zara, Massimo Dutti, etc.

Angelina's art sits at the heart of what she brings to Dvor: design, typography and architecture treated as art forms in their own right. angelinaseverino.com – posteress.com

Alex Almeida is the game developer and music composer and producer of Dvor, previously at Kwalee – a mobile gaming company founded by the former owner of Codemasters.

Angelina grew up in the Soviet Union and later lived in Minsk for more than 20 years. Long before consoles ever reached her, she played the unofficial handheld games.

Alex played the same kind of handheld as a child in Algarve, Portugal – an ocean and an entire political system away.

About Dvor

Dvor means courtyard in Russian – the shared space between apartment blocks where countless childhoods happened. It was an extension of the living room; the bench outside, of the couch. People could leave the most valuable items out there and they'd never be touched. Any child could be left in the dvor to play with their friends – and their parents would only periodically step out to check on them. Bench conversations, hanging up laundry, football against a wall, whole blocks turned into a safe communal space. The space between the blocks. The place where Soviet children played, where life happened.

Panelka is the prime experience. Its mechanics are NES authentic – its pieces are called concretes: slabs of a Soviet prefabricated apartment block, falling into place. As each one locks, it reveals part of the facade – a window, a balcony, a painted panel. Posteress gives the game a visual identity unlike anything else in the genre – the space around the board is as carefully designed as the board itself.

In Panelka, rows don't clear on their own – you build. Leave a gap, though, and it switches to classic rules: full rows clear normally until you've cleared your way back down to it. Build clean, with no gaps at all, and the whole board rewards you instead – the board clears itself, and the speed climbs.

Five atmosphere states evolve as you play – from the warmth of spring through the rains of autumn and the cold drive of winter – culminating in a gold transformation that has to be earned. The soundtrack changes with the atmospheres.

Stroyka is the competitive branch – three modes for players who crave records and rankings. Olympics is a marathon, slow to fast. Sprint is a time trial against the clock. Daily Challenge resets globally every 24 hours and feeds a worldwide leaderboard.

Dvor has no advertisements, no in-app purchases, no daily obligations – one price, and both modes feed a global leaderboard tracked across all platforms.

The version the falling blocks game always deserved.

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