8 questions: Jakub Dvorský

Machinarium

A few weeks ago, Amanita Design released Machinarium, the game they’ve been working on for three years. We’ve been expecting this game for quite a while, so we bought it, played it and all we can say now is that we love it.

We got so thrilled about Machinarium that we couldn’t resist “stressing” Jakub Dvorský with another set of questions:

GMZzz: Now, after Machinarium has been released, can you say it came out as you wanted it to be?

Jakub Dvorský: Yes, I can say I’m really happy with the game. Of course there’s still some little issues, bugs and things I don’t like, but it’s almost impossible to release flawless game when your team is just 7 people and you don’t have any spare money for additional testers etc.

GMZzz: There’s an excellent balance between the game setting and the music. How did you work on this? I mean, did you had the music from the beginning or was it created based on that setting?

Jakub Dvorský: The music match perfectly for the scenes because each track was created exactly for its location after the location was finished or at least the background was already painted.

GMZzz: What was your reason behind making the full walkthrough of the game available in-game? It looks really, really good, but it’s also something that players are not used to getting access so easily.

Jakub Dvorský: You’re right, but the game is quite hard and we knew that it will be too difficult for many players (maybe majority of them), so we wanted to make it more accessible. We knew that if someone is stuck he will use any written or video walkthrough from the web anyway, so we created our own, much nicer and funnier and integrated it directly to the game. On the other side, you have to beat that mini-game to unlock the walkthrough so it’s not so comfortable to check the walkthrough every time you are not sure what to do next.

GMZzz: How was the game received by the gaming community (gamers, journalists, but also developers)? What do you think about its reception?

Jakub Dvorský: The reviews and feedback is awesome, we are very happy. However, we are also open to critique – it’s good experience for our next game.

GMZzz: How did the sales for Machinarium go so far? Do you see this as a successful and profitable project?

Jakub Dvorský: Yes, it paid off for us, even if we spent 3 years developing this game. Now we know that we’ll be able to continue in independent development, which is what we wanted to achieve.

GMZzz: Machinarium’s ending clearly left room for a second part. I know it’s (probably) too soon to ask, but what can you tell us about its sequel?

Jakub Dvorský: Hehe, yes you’re right, it’s too soon. We are not sure what will be our next game yet.

GMZzz: Besides Machinarium 2, what are you planing to do next?

Jakub Dvorský: We have one smaller project in the works – it will be interactive music video created by our lead animator Vaclav Blin. Very interesting piece, I hope it will be out soon, I guess in a couple of months.

GMZzz: Why isn’t there an English version of the game in a box on CD? When can we expect one? [Because we really demand one 🙂 ]

Jakub Dvorský: We haven’t find publisher yet, but no worries, we’d like to publish nice CD package on our own if we don’t find good publisher soon.

Machinarium sketchbook

While waiting for the game to become available in about 9 hours, here are some scans from the sketchbooks used by Amanita Design’s artists.

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.