October 31, 2018
Jury’s honorable mention winner : Tales of Abbie
Marcin Majchrzak, independent game developer, and winner of this years IMGA’s Jury’s Honorable Mention Award.
How did you come up with the idea for this game and its name?
I’m a huge fan of platformer games. I play them a lot, but there is always something missing to me. One day instead of searching for a perfect action-packed, dark and bloody platformer with very responsive controls and portrait mode, I decided to make one by myself. I was inspired by a few games and stories. Stories like Red Riding Hood, Badland and Rayman.
The title came after base background story. The game is about the fearless daughter of a mighty king, who was sent down to Shadowland. I wanted to keep it in the fairy tale style. The biggest challenge was to choose the name of main the character. Why Abbie? I made a list of around 50 names from which I removed long and hard to pronounce ones. After ending up with around 10 names, I started to check the meaning of each name. The name Abbie means Father rejoiced, or father’s joy in Hebrew. Which matches the story perfectly.
How long have you been developing games?
I just realized that it had been already ten years since I started my career in the game industry. My first years I worked as a programmer and game designer, then I became team leader which I’m till now. Since 2016, I indicated myself the path to the career as an independent game developer by dedicating many hours on personal projects after work.
You won a booth at Casual Connect ASIA, what are you hoping to achieve once there?
Currently, I’m fulltime employed at a company in Bangkok. My goal is to eventually be able to create my own games full time, but for this to happen, I will need to start making money out of my games first. I hope to meet people in similar situations as me and became ‘financially independent’. I also hope to meet potential publishers and marketing/user acquisition specialists. On top of that, I would love to show my work to others and get feedback to improve and realize my dreams.
Assuming you will submit your game for IMGA global, will you change the game and what does the future look like for your game?
Of course! In the last few years, the game industry has become more competitive than ever. Developers are focusing more and more on quality, and so am I. I have numerous ideas in my head, but first I would like to focus on requests from the current players who want to know more about main character Abbie and expect more in-game content (levels, obstacles etc).
Why do you think competitions like IMGA are important?
IMGA gave me such a great opportunity to showcase my work to the industry, professionals and meet other super talented developers. As a single developer, I have asked myself so many times if the path I took was the right one. I always wonder if I am good enough as a developer to create games that are worth being noticed by people. I was completely taken by surprise when I received an email saying “YOU ARE NOMINATED”! To me, that alone was a huge win already. It gives me a lot of energy and builds morale.
