IGF 09 Interviews: Part 3
by Drew Sikora

Machinarium

Jakub Dvorsky - Amanita Design

Who are you and how are you involved with Machinarium?

I'm Jakub Dvorsky, founder of Amanita Design studio and designer and director of our upcoming game.

What sparked your game development flame?

I grew up on early 8bit computer games, I owned Atari 800XE and later I had my first PC 386. Of course I loved to play all that great games. Later on grammar school I started doing my own games with some schoolmates and we were enjoying it a lot. My first game called Asmodeus was published 12 years ago.

Where and when did the concept for Machinarium originate?

My interest in robots come from old science fiction books and films (Stanislav Lem, Jules Verne, Karel Capek, Ray Bradbury, Stanley Kubrick, Karel Zeman ...), I started to think about using this theme in some illustrations, film or game a long time ago but the definitive vision of Machinarium world started to form 2 years ago.

Over the course of development, what was Machinarium’s most serious issue and how was it resolved?

As this game is our first full-length game there's of course many challenges. The most serious issue for me is puzzle design. I know it wasn't the strongest part of our previous games so I wanted to improve the puzzles significantly. Everything is more logical and the player really has to think about the puzzle before he is able to solve it. No more brainless clicking:)

What’s one thing you did wrong that you feel could have been avoided?

Next time I should discuss everything with programmer before I finalize the level designs. We had some unnecessary troubles which could have been avoided easily.

How long was Machinarium in development? How much development time remains?

We have been working on it for 2 years and about half a year still remains.

What was used to make the game and what tools aided in development?

Our tools are pencils and paper, digital camera, tablets, PC's, Photoshop, Flash, Rebol, sound recorder, some musical instruments and who knows what else.

What's the main thing you think makes your game fun?

I believe it's a couple of things: Exceptional 2D hand-drawn graphics and cut-out animations, original soundtrack and sounds, logical puzzles which are funny and also good for brain training (especially for children and seniors), funny characters and humorous story, peaceful gameplay without stress and shooting.

Is there anything about Machinarium that you would like to reveal to other developers?

Well, it's really a lot of hard work:)

What’s next for you?

At the moment we are focused only on Machinarium so we don't think about any future projects yet, but we'd like to continue in producing independent games – that's for sure.

CarneyVale Showtime

Contents

	FEIST
	IncrediBots
	Snapshot
	Cortex Command
	Musaic Box
	Dyson
	Machinarium
	CarneyVale Showtime
	Coil

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