FOLKLORE IN AN INTERACTIVE ENVIRONMENT: TRANSFORMATION OF FAIRY TALE ARCHETYPES IN THE VIDEO GAME «VASILISA AND BABA-YAGA»

Abstract

The article addresses the functioning of folklore in the digital environment and analyses a video game as a form of its actualisation. The material is the computer game Vasilisa and Baba Yaga (Baba Yaga Games, 2024), based on unadapted versions of the Russian folk tale “Vasilisa the Beautiful”. The study aims to identify the mechanisms by which the central archetypes of the Russian fairy tale – Vasilisa, Baba Yaga and the dark forest – are transformed in an interactive environment. The methodological framework comprises Yu. M. Lotman’s semiotic analysis, V. Ya. Propp’s structural-functional analysis of the fairy tale, and elements of digital folklore studies. Vasilisa is shown to lose her passive function and acquire subjectivity: the player explores locations, interacts with figures of lower mythology and makes decisions that affect the plot. The survival mechanics – limited health, the need to avoid danger, the risk of death upon error – reproduce the structure of an initiation rite, with the character’s death interpreted as ritual death followed by rebirth. Baba Yaga is realised in the three functions identified by Propp – donor, abductor and warrior – which brings the game closer to the folk rather than the literary source. The forest is examined as a semiotic boundary where the codes of “own” and “alien” are reinterpreted. Non-visual components are analysed separately: narration in an authentic South Russian dialect, musical accompaniment based on folk songs with preserved phonetic features, and embedded information about Slavic mythological figures. The authors conclude that such projects possess didactic potential and may serve as interactive teaching aids in school and supplementary education, while dialect speech and folk music foster auditory attention and enrich vocabulary.