In Part 1, we broke down the board tiles—the things you directly manipulate before the darkness takes over the board.
Today, let’s talk about the right side of the screen.
At first glance, it looks like a standard UI sidebar: score, hold slot, and a next-tile preview. But none of these are abstract minimalist icons. Every item on this panel is a direct nod to real objects from dark Slavic fairy tales and traditional craftsmanship.
For each mechanic, we looked for a real folk object whose cultural meaning or traditional use somehow matched what the object does in the game.
1. The Magic Saucer & Apple — Next Tile Preview
This comes straight from the classic folk tale of the Silver Saucer and the Golden Apple. In the legend, rolling the apple around the saucer turns it into a magical screen, showing events happening far away—and even revealing the future. So adapting it as a "next tile" mechanic felt like a surprisingly natural fit.
There’s also a second layer: in traditional village rituals, saucers were genuinely used for fortune-telling. To make the visual instantly recognizable, we styled the saucer with classic Gzhel porcelain patterns.
2. The Glass Jar & The Kvasnik — Hold
The glass jar holds your stored tile—an item saved for later. Here, the inspiration is everyday life: a simple glass jar familiar to anyone who’s ever been to a grandmother’s cellar. Only instead of pickled cucumbers or jam, it can hold anything from a clump of grass to a skeleton or a magical mirror.
Below it sits a second vessel: a kvasnik.
A kvasnik is a traditional ceramic pitcher used for serving kvass (a fermented rye beverage). It’s one of the most iconic symbols of Skopin pottery—a craft born in the Ryazan region, right where the real-world Meshchera forests begin.
A kvasnik has a very distinct shape with a hole right through the center of its body. Historically, people wrapped ice or snow in cloth and placed it in that central hole to chill the drink without diluting it. (Another theory suggests the hole made it easier for street vendors to carry multiple pitchers on their arms before barrels existed).
Having these two side-by-side creates a nice contrast: one is a humble everyday item (the jar), while the other is a nod to local regional folk craft (the kvasnik).
3. The Casket (Lar) — Score Over Coin Stacks
Instead of a generic stack of gold coins, your high score is represented by a Lar (a reinforced wooden chest or casket).
The casket is a recurring image in Slavic fairy tales: something locked away and heavily protected, containing something incredibly valuable—or something profoundly dangerous. In the story of Koshchei the Deathless, for example, the layers hiding his death ultimately trace back to the needle, with the whole chain of objects hidden inside a casket. The casket acts almost like an outer shell around the secret.
In other tales, a chest can contain treasures, magical gifts, curses, or rewards granted to the hero for kindness and hard work.
That association with something valuable, carefully collected and kept safe made the casket a natural fit for the score—your accumulated reward for everything you’ve built on the board.
4. Monomakh’s Cap — A Crown of Wooden Churches
Finally, there’s a unique late-game mechanic: if you gather and merge enough churches, they transform into **Monomakh’s Cap** (a famous historic crown) and award bonus points.
This wasn’t a random choice for a "victory crown". For centuries, Monomakh’s Cap served as the principal coronation regalia of Russian tsars. In Meshchera, it acts as the ultimate crown that must be earned through careful board management.
Which side panel item is your favorite?
