A Game Dev Girl Story
“To every artistic gamer soul out there…”
In late 90s- early 2000s I was a rebel kid painting on the walls, breaking toys and seeing myself as a future artist. You could call me creative.
When I first played Tetris I got so impressed that I couldn’t sleep for a couple days. I wanted more.
Then my dad bought a notebook and installed a 3D racing game on it. I don’t remember what it was called, but I guess that’s when I first had a thought: “It sucks here and there, and I could make it better”.
Most of my friends had Sony Playstation. My parents wanted me to study well, so I never got one. Instead my grandma bought me an old-school Dendy (a cheaper version of Nintendo). God bless that day!
My mind infused into the 8-bit world of minimal art and genius mechanics. The idea of being someone else on screen, having superpowers and exploring new worlds was beyond fantastic. I became addicted to it.
By the time I was introduced to Photoshop and Animation Shop, the addiction had managed to grow into a passion. I remember making my first characters and “levels” feeling like a little god in charge of my own realities.
Five years later a virus destroyed all my gallery, I got depressed about it and have put my art activity on hold till the age of 17.
Here I am enjoying graphic software on my first laptop:
I came back to digital art looking for some extra money for my tuition and traveling- that’s how I became a freelancer on Elance (Upwork now), up until I had too many orders to implement and hired my first artists and managers. We formed a studio and I called it Bombart.
We did book illustrations, stickers, portraits, postcards… Things were going quite well and my team grew fast- 22 people by Christmas 2019 when I decided that making games was my new goal!
I’m not a big fan of the «Law of attraction» philosophy, but as soon as I thought about it- I met a person from game industry willing to hire my team on multiple game projects as outsource artists. A week later 2 artist from well known game studios joined my team out of nowhere. It was a priceless experience and a step toward my dream.
In four months we already had enough skills to start our own project. I knew I wanted it to be something brand new, beautiful and isometric. That’s when I got a call from Nikolay- a game designer with his ideas and a team of developers.
We met, I checked the mechanics he offered and absolutely fell in love with them. The idea was to mix a puzzle (as a core part) with the tasty world of French cheese and wine as meta gameplay. “Cool!, I said- I’m in!”
I did a big research on game art and character creation and found out that knowing age and sex of your potential players and their general psychology is 70% of your art and game success. Characters have to bring emotions and compassion, so working on them with a psychologist is the right way to hit the point.
Working on characters (special thanks to PhD Daniela Puertas):
One of the game locations (Notre Dame de Paris):
Tasty cheeses as game units:
It took me a while to get to this place of doing what I really like- from freelance illustrations and art outsource to my own game product. Working on it is what inspires me to create more art and stories.
“A game is an opportunity to focus our energy, with relentless optimism, at something we’re good at (or getting better at) and enjoy. In other words, gameplay is the direct emotional opposite of depression.”
― Jane McGonigal, Reality is Broken: Why Games Make Us Better and How They Can Change the World
I always felt that deep desire to make people happier- I found it possible through making games. Bringing new wonderful experiences to life is a dream of every artist.
Unfortunately there’s not much I am allowed to share about my current project at the moment, not even the name of the game and especially not the mechanics that have to be kept in secret until the release. This is my first “child” and I can’t wait for it to be born. So please stay tuned.
We expect the first demo to come out in February 2021.
And for now…I’ ll keep on working :-)