PLEASE START US OFF BY INTRODUCING YOURSELF:

Hello! My name is Matej Jan, also known as Retro on the Internet, and I'm working on a game called Pixel Art Academy where you learn how to draw.

TELL US ABOUT PIXEL ART ACADEMY.

I come from Slovenia where there were no schools for what I was passionate about—video game development. When I got to the university, I chose the closest thing, Computer Science. I considered applying to the Art Academy as well, but the program was very selective and only focused on traditional art. I had much more experience in programming and computer graphics, so I went down the engineering path instead, only studying how to draw as a hobby. After working on a couple of mobile games, I realized my heart lies in learning art. I went back to school to get a second degree in Education and started Pixel Art Academy to allow everyone to experience going to art school, in a video game.

HOW HAS THE DEVELOPMENT JOURNEY BEEN

I just released a smaller version of the game called Pixel Art Academy: Learn Mode on Steam, but the whole idea started 9 years ago with a Kickstarter for a bigger adventure game/RPG where you create your character—an art student—and you learn art alongside them.

After 7 years of (never-ending) development of the adventure parts, I wanted to offer a more finished experience. I took the completed educational core of the game and put it into a standalone, single-player, downloadable version called Learn Mode. It's essentially an Electron wrapper around all the tutorials included in the main game.

WHICH GAME ENGINE DID YOU CHOOSE AND WHY?

Since it's great to share your learning journey with others, I wanted it to be multiplayer. I settled on a server/client architecture and wrote the whole game as a web app with the Meteor framework. I use Three.js and ammo.js (Bullet) when needed for graphics and physics, but most of the game is a custom engine written with HTML+Stylus and CoffeeScript.

WHAT'S BEEN YOUR BIGGEST DEVELOPMENT HURDLE SO FAR?

Looking back at 9 years of development, I wish I could comprehend better how long things would take and prioritize better. I thought that I could just attack development piece by piece toward the full vision, but that made me spend way too long in certain places instead of focusing on the biggest value for effort.

ADVICE FOR FELLOW DEVS?

As I've been reflecting on all these years, I wrote down my biggest lessons and started a series of videos about them. The first one with my production tips can be watched here, with more coming down the line.

ANY FINAL THOUGHTS?

Video games are such a wonderful medium for learning and I dream of a world where we can learn anything with interactive experiences. It's my passion to help that happen. Similarly, I encourage others to seek what they'd like to see in the world and go ahead and create that.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2330360/Pixel_Art_Academy_Learn_Mode/

-Matej

❤️