Novaya Realnost means "New Reality" in Russian; and indeed, the two heroes of the long-running series, Vasilij Ivanovich Chapaev and his young assistant Petka (real historical figures who participated in the Russian civil war of 1918, but became the focus of countless jokes during the Soviet period) have to become a part of something they have not encountered before: the battle between the forces of Light and Darkness!.. And to think that it all started only because the two wanted to drink some beer... one event led to another, and in the end the heroes have to face ultimate evil in a scenario that is in many ways a parody on the famed Lord of the Rings.

The gameplay is similar to that of the previous games in the series, being a traditional puzzle-solving adventure. This time, branching dialogue and logical puzzles have a more prominent place, along with the typical inventory-based tasks. Graphical style has changed, for the first time in the series: the backgrounds are pre-rendered instead of hand-drawn 2D, and character models are now three-dimensional.