Goncharov

Goncharov is a fairly short stylised kinetic piece, presenting itself as an adaptation of the “original” movie, through snippets of different critical scenes, as defined in the meme lore. Though, you could play the scenes chaotically, by doing a random order for examples, the story is best enjoyed when followed chronologically.

Above a usually animated background, dialog boxes pop up on the screen, typing out descriptions of the scene or the dialogue between characters. Locations, time and present actors are visualised through small screenshots - the character sprites do not change from scene to scenes, so it is easy to recognise who is who.
Depending on your setup, the animated background and text may lag.

A few scenes in, you get the sense that something is not quite right. Maybe it is because each scenes have very few words, or because they lack connection between each other. Their succession from the listed menu makes sense, but it is clear there are gaps between each scene. Or it could simply be the game trying to send you off track, like any good intrigue movie: nothing is truly as it seems.

While the end scene is quite something, the truly interesting part of the game, in my opinion, is when the credits roll. We sort of leave the realm of the movie and the canon, to have a more… meta discussion. Some criticism mentioned above, as well as potential failings of both the game itself and the meme at large, are discussed through two viewers of the movie you just experienced through the scenes. These criticism, from the lack of coherence to the missing actions, are linked to discourse that happened around the meme (though in-game, the discourse is about the movie).

You could take this final conversation at face-value: two friends watching a movie and discussing it when it ends. Or you could look at is as a discussion of the strange phenomenon that was Goncharov - the meme. Taking the internet by storm, it spread without rhyme or reason, with many users contradicting each other with sequencing, lore, or details, as they made up their version of the fake movie. As a collective, we all made the “movie” happen, each adding a scene or lore, trying to make our voice heard through the sea of creators participating. Maybe we were all Matteo, in a way, directors of Goncharov.