Digitable Adapts Chekhov's 'The Lady with the Dog' as a Branching Visual Novel

Digitable has released The Lady with the Dog on Steam, a visual novel adaptation of Anton Chekhov's short story of the same name. The game is available in Russian and English.

What's in the release

• Fully voiced characters and animated CG scenes
• A branching narrative system with choices at key story moments
• The complete original text of Chekhov's story, preserved verbatim — finishing the game is described as equivalent to reading the source work
• Some choices follow Chekhov's original path; others lead to alternative storylines

The studio describes the character voices and visuals as the product of a "long and painstaking generation process," though it does not elaborate further on the specific tools or methods used.

Beyond this release, Digitable states it is already working on visual novel adaptations of several major literary works, with plans to publish them later this year across Steam, Yandex Games, VK, the App Store, Google Play, and other platforms. The announced catalogue includes War and Peace, Crime and Punishment, The Count of Monte Cristo, The Odyssey, The Republic, and Thus Spoke Zarathustra.

The studio also mentions an editor tool currently in late testing that would allow users to create their own visual novels and educational materials with AI integration, embeddable or available for offline use. A free educational portal with interactive video content — covering programming, mathematics, logic, and online communication — is described as already live.

The Lady with the Dog is also noted as coming to Yandex Games, the App Store, VK, and RuStore, though no dates are given for those releases.