Even the robots are rusty and less than polished. I’ll say this: we wanted to create a world which felt warm and pleasant and not cold or boring like you might image a world inhabited only by robots to be. How deep do you have to go when designing a world? Machinarium, photo: Amanita Design In Machinarium, you created a very specific Sci Fi setting: it is very detailed and it seems to me there are also a number of historic influences: parts of the robot town are evocative of Prague’s Old Town Astronomical Clock or the Jewish Quarter… they are different but similar. It depends a bit on the topic, whether they belong there or not.” At the same time, not all our designs make use of them to the extent Machinarium does. You often have to do different steps in sequence… I take it you are a fan of logical puzzles? Some moments in the game – scenes really – are harder than others.

It is not hard anyway, so I don’t want to teach anyone, they figure out what is required fairly quickly.” I want players to be able to experience the game right from the beginning. I hate tutorials, actually, and there is no dialogue in the game. Is it your aim to keep it simple as well as to leave discovery up to player? One of the nice things about Machinarium is, is that at the binning there is one line of instructions and that’s it. I am still trying to develop the genre in different directions which I like.” I don’t think our designs are typical point-and-click adventure games but they do fall within that genre.

“I was always into adventure games, a genre I wanted to interpret freely.

What design or gaming principals carried over from that first game into Machinarium and the most recent Botanicula? So I continued with designing small games and I am still doing it.” I was a graphic designer doing animation but in 2003 I created a game called Samorost as part of my thesis work and it proved very successful and popular around the world. Jakub Dvorský, photo: Jeriaska, CC BY 2.0“I originally founded Amanita Design only as a graphic design studio for myself.

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