Early in the development of the game it was named "Oblivion Lost", and the game was planned to have more of a futuristic theme before the idea was reworked to set the game in Chernobyl, being a nearby location to the game's Kiev based development team. Eventually, this was reflected in the change of the game's subtitle to "Shadow of Chernobyl". Screenshots and trailers of this early version can be found on various web sites, depicting the robots and spacecraft originally planned for the game.