5 questions: Jakub Dvorský

Jakub Dvorský

Amanita Design is an independent Czech team famous for creating some interesting and beautiful game experiences with their adventure games. I’m sure you already know about their previously released games, Samorost 1 and Samorost 2. The team is now working at Machinarium, which is to be released this autumn.

We had a little chat with Jakub Dvorský, the founder of Amanita Design, and asked him if he will continue Samorost, about Machinarium and, of course, if he plans to release any of his games for iPhone.

GMZzz: Is the Samorost story over or can we expect a sequel?

Jakub Dvorský: I hope for a sequel. I don’t know if it will be our next project or not, but I really want this series to continue.

GMZzz: As we’ve all seen, the adventure genre defines Amanita Design. However, are you tempted to try out other game genres?

Jakub Dvorský: I think we will stick with adventure genre as a foundation of our future games, but we’d like to also experiment with other game mechanics and enrich the basic adventure pattern with them. We want to make our next game more playful.

GMZzz: Everybody is looking forward to the release of Machinarium. Is there anything that you’ve wanted to add in the game and couldn’t or everything went as planned?

Jakub Dvorský: The game isn’t finished yet. We are now at testing phase so we are finding out what works well and where are some problems and according to that we are trying to improve the game. We are changing some puzzles, adding small hints at some places and of course sweeping out the bugs.

GMZzz: What do you consider to be the most important lesson you’ve learned from your indie experience so far?

Jakub Dvorský: It’s so many things we learned in a last couple of years – a lot about marketing and business stuff, game design etc. For me was the most important lesson probably collaboration with my colleagues, I have learned to listen to them what they think and how it can improve the game.

GMZzz: What do you think about iPhone as a gaming device? Do you plan to release any of your games for this platform as well?

Jakub Dvorský: I like iPhone because it’s small, intuitive and the multitouch display is great. It would be great to have Machinarium on such device, but I’m not sure if it’s possible. In any case we’ll try to find out.

You can read other interesting interviews with Jakub on Artificial, Gamasutra, The Reticule or The IndieGames Weblog.