PLEASE START US OFF BY INTRODUCING YOURSELF:

My name is Jakub Dąbrowski also known as Gobo. I'm from Poland and in my daily job I work as a Java developer with 10 years of commercial experience, currently working for Oracle.

I'm 31 years old and I always loved video games ever since I was a 5-years old kid when I was playing on Pegasus. My dream always was to create a video game and I have been learning Unity for 4 years before I started making An Amazing Wizard.

My ultimate goal is to be able to work on my games only, but time will show if it will be possible to me.

TELL US ABOUT AN AMAZING WIZARD.

An Amazing Wizard is a 2D fast-paced metroidvania-inspired spell-slinging roguelike where you'll create spells. Master 7 elements and merge 120+ unique spells in any order to create endless possibilities with 250+ perks and 200 artifacts to choose from.

I have started working on this game shortly after Dead Cells came in Early Access and my initial idea was to combine it with the Binding of Isaac. However over time the idea slowly evolved into being Wizard of Legend-like as well. Then after developing it for few years I came up with the idea of merging the spells together and that's where I've realized that the game has finally got a strong unique hook. So overall it was all a matter of experimenting with the ideas taken from many games. What's interesting is that a lot of people call An Amazing Wizard as Noita-like even though I'm not that much inspired by it.

HOW HAS THE DEVELOPMENT JOURNEY BEEN

The development is going great, according to my inner schedule! The true development started around 4 years ago when I've hired a pixel artist and before that it was mostly about searching for a great idea for the game.

WHICH GAME ENGINE DID YOU CHOOSE AND WHY?

The game is being made in Unity, that's because it's the only engine I have learned to use and I loved it right from the beginning because thanks to just a few tutorials on YouTube I was able to learn a lot about the engine and it's intuitive to me. Keep in mind that I had commercial experience working with the code as a Java developer which is very similar to C# used in Unity.

WHAT'S BEEN YOUR BIGGEST DEVELOPMENT HURDLE SO FAR?

This will sound silly, but for a very long time there was an issue where people using old PCs had a problem where they couldn't do high jumps! The game was not reading their input correctly, but after doing many changes it works perfectly fine now.

From other technical things besides the spells merging mechanic or randomizing level generator, implementing a ladder was way harder task than I would ever expect it to me.

Overall many of these issues were tied to the fact that I wasn't an experienced game developer when I started working on this game.

ADVICE FOR FELLOW DEVS?

Start small! Sounds simple, but it's the best advice I can give. Don't make a foolish mistake like me to make your dream game as your first commercial game. Start with something simple like Arkanoid, Space Shooter, Snake, Survivors-like, anything that will make you learn basics quickly. Also it's completely normal to fail. Don't be afraid of it and just learn from your mistakes. Accept the fact that game development is hard and there is a lot to learn so read books on general programming patterns and not only the ones related to game development. Online tutorials on youtube are not enough to learn everything.

Oh and also don't make a side-scroller. There are way too many of them, they are harder to make and less people are interested in playing them than top-down games.

ANY FINAL THOUGHTS?

Hmm, a lot of my final thoughts are included in the question above. I would like to thank you for the opportunity to share my thoughts on your channel/website. I would also like to thank you, the reader for taking your time to read/watch this short interview.

So again. Make small games. Learn from your mistakes. Don't be afraid to fail!

Gobo❤️

An Amazing Wizard on Steam