Interview BakeSale: Tzachs Shabtay

Tonight, we feature none other than Tzachs. A fantastic guy runner up for last years OROW with Office Shenanigans, went to Mittens with his lovely fiancee Noa, and know made a game, along with his fiancee doing the character art and gameboy doing the background art.

GO TO THE GAME TOPIC

1) Why and how did you join the AGS Bake Sale ?

Well, I was minding my own business, reading through the forums and engaging
in pleasant discussions. And then the forums went down...

A few days later I heard scratching noises from outside my apartment. I opened the door and saw a small envelope. Inside it there was only a picture of a cow's silhouette.

Yada yada yada, and then I was recruited for the Bake Sale!

2) Talk a bit about your game (what is it about, how you came up with it).


I have a bunch of ideas just sitting and waiting to be created. This game wasn't one of them. The thing is, I felt that what my previous games lacked the most was a compelling atmosphere. So I wanted a game which gave me the option to practice on that.At the same time I was also watching the "Extra Credits" game design shows
(which if you haven't seen, I recommend it!), and there was an episode there mentioning how few games actually had a complete woman character, that wasn't just your stereotypical princess in distress, badass Angelina
Jolie, or just a dumb blond. That inspired me to have a female heroine which has some complexity in her.
Then I thought, there are a few female characters in games, but there are even fewer pregnant females in games, and zero pregnant females in prison. Bingo! That's my game, a pregnant female, an atmospheric prison,
and let's toss in murder, because that's always fun.The basic story was created around that. Then I saw on the forums that gameboy (which I loved his artwork, just take a look at his upcoming game Roadworks)
was offering his help, and I snatched him quickly before anyone else would. My extremely talented fiancee Noa volunteered to provide the character art, and that's how work on the game started.

3) Tell us a bit about yourself and how you got yourself into game making in the first place.

I think I first wanted to create games when my parents got me my first computer. I was maybe 6 years old at the time, and it came with three games in wonderful CGA graphics. It had Digger, Space Invaders and a third game which I don't remember its name, it was about a bartender serving drinks to people. I remember thinking that there are so many other games that can be created, and my mind was set.A few years later, I learned some QBasic and after I got acquainted with the adventure games format (by playing Leisure Suit Larry secretly with
my friends because we heard that there was some pixelated goodness inside it), I wrote some text adventures, which basically were my first games ever.

As a teenager I wanted to make a graphic adventure game, and I vaguely remember being at my aunt's house (she had internet!) and seeing a somewhat old version of an adventure game engine (I think it was AGS, but who knows), I tried to use it a bit, but it was complicated and I didn't pursue it further. Later on I studied computers in the university, went to army, finished it after 3 exhausting years, started working in software, and left my game creation desires neglected in the corner of the room.

Two years after that, my company went out of business, and while I was searching for a new job, I had two months with some time on my hands, I decided to try again to create an adventure game, found AGS and the rest is history.

Oh, and then the forums went down. ;)