FanCon 2025

The most epic FANCON 2025 weekend has come to an end! For the second time during the full-scale invasion, the Ukrainian geek community managed to gather at the International Exhibition Centre in Kyiv to chat with like-minded fellas, present a multitude of fascinating cosplay costumes, buy various goods from the best Ukrainian artists and craftsmen, play some board games, drop by an interesting lecture and way more… It is hard to keep in mind all the activities, especially for yours truly SBT members who came not only to observe the good stuff but finally be a part of it with our own STAND! And, of course, we prepared a bunch of pleasant gifts and intriguing tasks.

You kept us hyped for 2 consecutive days! Lots of new people, colleagues, and old acquaintances visited us constantly. And our true fans kept returning to check on us 🙂! Our activities were fancied not only by the usual adult community but also by the youngest festival attendees (a little boy diligently read the description of Kratos from God of War and remembered seeing this guy on the cover of his dad’s game!). Despite the general tendency of buying books about gaming worlds and not reading them due to the lack of time (no judging, we are so on the same page here), the majority of you actually liked to pull the translated descriptions from books and guess on the origins of those. You should have seen how many kept saying that they won’t win anything and 2 mins later they left with a prize! We made sure that no one left without stickers 😉 You also enjoyed listening to the phrases from the games! As expected, the most difficult one was the quote: ‘I’m hungry’ that was attributed to Astarion, Skif, and Sherlock even…

The more daring ones tried translating phrases with variables, a riddle, and even a rhyming poem. It was really something to observe your ideas and suggest the most optimal way when you were tinkering with the sentence structure. Many guests were a bit hesitant at first and feared that they wouldn’t succeed, but honestly the attempts were rather witty!

For example, one of the guests tried to translate the poem ‘Goblins swarmed, but we were brave and fried them all with a Thunder Wave!’ which gave us: «Гобліни стояли в купі, та ми хоробрі були й громохвилею дали їм по дупі!». It seems like many of you have the innate talent for translation and zero awareness of that!

We sincerely hope that you didn’t consider this to be a torture because you received a reward in a form of notebooks and pens 😀 The bravest amidst your ranks passed our Kahoot! with flying colours and fought for the beautiful lady Shadowheart! Some gave up along the way, some sought their friend’s help, some stared at their screens in horror… But everyone learned something new. Interestingly, the most difficult thing was finding the correct translation of the idiom ‘the last straw’.

There was also a brief lecture at the stand about our amazing partner Crowdin. Some immediately said they would try joining some volunteer localization project!

During those days we collected donations for the BookFury («Книголють») with a chance of winning Johnny figure, and raised around 28k ₴. Your passionate admiration for Cyberpunk is as strong as ever… Or is it your love for Johnny? 🙂

The second star was Jan Zizka from KCD 2 who could be received for leaving feedback on our work/localizations/stand. Here you also tried your best and proactively sent us a whole bunch of letters, which we read and discussed with our team on Discord ♥

It is difficult to overestimate the level of positivity that we received from meeting all of you! This FANCON gave tons of meaningful and passionate conversations, hugs, genuine laughter and pure joy! Now it will be difficult to resist the desire to join each upcoming festival… 😀

Once again, we sincerely thank each and every one of you who came to us, supported us, shared the fun and their impressions! Hugs for everyone, and we look forward to meeting you again!

Your SBT team ♥

Written by Bohdana Vozniuk

Photography by Bohdana Vozniuk, Yehor Vlasov,
Iryna Andrieieva, Oleksii Ternovyi (TernArt)

12.06.25