Interviews with the developer of the “island”, a simulator of a Ukrainian village.

Recently, namely, on March 19, Steam and GOG entered the early access of an unusual urban planning simulator called Ostriv. In this strategy, the player entrusts a small Ukrainian village of the XVIII century, placed along with several other real settlements on an invented island (from there, in fact, the name of the game).

Anonymous Kharkov citizen Evgen independently developed the game since 2014. Eugen seeks to raise the bar of the urban planning genre, adding new opportunities and eliminating annoying restrictions. Therefore, the game allows you to create a natural planning for an old village without reference to cells and without straight angles, and the villagers naturally trample the roads.

To your attention, the translation of the interview given by Evgen ITC.UA, made on the occasion of the start of sales in the main stores.

Hello, Evgen. All who read your messages on Ostrivgame.com, they know that you were passionate about Half-Life, created his cards and fashion, independently studied programming languages, developed his own tools and dreamed of creating his Ukrainian Fallout. But still we do not know who the author of the "island" is. His surname, age, education, place of work? You are somehow connected with the game industry? Tell me about yourself, if this, of course, is not a secret.

Little Zhenya grew up in the nineties and zero in a cozy town of Lozovaya, in the Kharkiv region. As the classic said, "a worshiped place where culture rarely steps". There were years, potatoes dutifully and doomed climbed out of the Black Earth, adults muttered something about how much they did not want to build a new state, and somewhere outside the horizon a plant was desperately buzzing, like a dying whale. The crazy volumes of emptiness and desolation around, like nothing else, stimulate the development of imagination in the child and the desire to create their own worlds. With the advent of the first computer in my life, everything became clear and there was no return. Today’s Evgen is a very mysterious figure of Ukrainian society, an underground figure of Ukrofuturism. When I, perhaps, will write about this book, but now we are talking about the "Island".

Who finances the development of the "island", which has been going on for three years [approx.: Interview 2018]? You yourself? Do you have partners, some agreements with platforms and publishers?

Taking this opportunity, I want to refute all the rumors about the financing of my project by the State Department of the United States. In fact, when a person is motivated enough, a lot of money is engaged, no matter how much the developers at the kickstarter denied it. For the first three years, I had enough fees close to the minimum, and a few hours after work. This, of course, is quite slow, but creates excellent conditions for thoroughly thinking and crystallization of only the best ideas. I never wanted to contact any publishers or investors for considerations of preserving their own creative independence and nerve cells. Although, some proposals were quite funny and could at least cheer up, for example, as an offer to sell the right to game for a thousand dollars.

You develop the “island” completely https://nonukcasinosites.co.uk/review/instant-casino/ independently, alone (engine, tools, art, 3D graphics, sound, interface) or you still attract freelancers for some work?

Yes, in the first years it was just like that. But recently I began to cooperate with several people relative to 2D art and musical design. I think players will soon see our joint work in future updates.

Which engine is used in the game? If this is your own development, then why didn’t you choose one of the alternatives available on the market, for example, Unity?

When free or cheap engines became a common occurrence, I already had considerable experience and many my own developments. In addition, the experience of working with the Half-Life engine reminded that one way or another you will certainly be faced with certain restrictions, or technologies that no one simply counted on your specific case. What makes the game unique, you still have to write yourself, and the development of trivial things like serialization of data is sometimes easier to study these things in someone else’s code. I can’t say if I would advise this path to others or not, because I have nothing to compare with. But, probably, in the later stages of development, when the project is damn about, you feel more confident if you remember every path in it. This is not to mention the unique feeling of satisfaction from the fact that your being lives your own life and brings joy to the world.

We know that the game “Banished”, also created by one person, pushed you to the development of the “island”. Plus an old love for "Caesar III" and "Pharaoh". What other games have become a source of inspiration? "Cossacks", "CITIES: SkyLines"?

In fact, when you live with something, you just cannot but be inspired. New ideas flow into consciousness with stormy streams, not only from games, but also from everyday life. Many who were not developing, it seems that the developers do not have enough ideas. But, perhaps, more often there is not enough courage to abandon them to achieve the final goal.

Judging by the list of what you plan to realize in the "Island"-this is some kind of dream game in the genre of urban development simulators. But, as we know, the desire for the ideal has ruined many good ideas, delaying the development. You are not afraid that bringing the "island" to the ideal will take you the next ten years and the game will not reach the release? Maybe it is worth limiting your own ambitions?

Sometimes from dreams when they lose touch with reality, we must refuse, but I am too clearly represented by my vision of the final product. What I have achieved at the moment could also once seem impossible, but I even expanded the horizons of the project. I see no reason to give up positions. The game brings stable income, the community is active and grateful.

Typically, developers of urban planning strategies choose the most neutral, familiar to everyone European setting for their games. You deliberately chose Ukrainian. You are not afraid that this will limit the audience or calculation precisely that players will attract exotic?

I don’t understand why our developers refuse their own advantages to satisfy some spherical Western buyer in vacuum. The buyer simply believes in honest projects in which the soul is invested. “CD Projekt” created “The Witcher” on the basis of their own well-known culture and for some reason the whole world plays it.

What models did you use to design buildings in the game? He visited open-air museums in Pereyaslav-Khmelnitsky, Kyiv and other Ukrainian cities?

Since the development has been underway for several years, of course, I managed to visit many cities, museums and document numerous species that could not but affect the development process. For example, in early versions, only construction in two -dimensional space was planned, but after visiting the Carpathians, this decision was fundamentally changed. All textures in the game are based on the photographs that were taken during these trips. As for the design of the buildings themselves, they are mostly fictional, because from the gameplay point of view, the recognition of the purpose of each building is important. But all fictional designs as a whole rely on existing architectural traditions and consist of parts of real buildings.

The game now contains English and Ukrainian localization. There is no Russian, what you have already been asked many times on the same Steam. This is a fundamental question or in the final version the Russian translation will also appear?

The peculiarity of the Russian -speaking community is that it has a very high level of vocality and at the same time very low solvency. According to SteamSpy, Russians make up only 3% of the owners of Banished (closest to the “island” in the spirit of the game). If you recall that their prices are usually three times lower than the basic ones, this is about 1% of profit. Therefore, this is clearly not priority localization. Actually, it is already difficult to support the two existing languages, since the game is constantly changing and complementing, and the profitability of localization is very doubtful. When German YouTubens began to play in the Island, there was a noticeable increase in profit, and Germany rose to first place in the sales geography. Later the island picked up Russian -speaking channels. Then the game finally appeared on numerous torrent trackers and sites "Download without registration and SMS". On income, this almost did not affect.