Developer Interview: To Pixelia

Hi, everyone! My name is Kaan, and I'm from Antalya, a lovely coastal city in the Mediterranean part of Turkey, where it is so hot that it snows once in 30 years. The last time it snowed was the year I was born, so I might have brought some curse to the city with my birth, as I was born on Halloween. :D

I'm the only person that has been developing "To Pixelia" for about three years, along with the help of my chubby cat, Felix.

I am an English Literature graduate with no formal education in game development or programming. I have taught myself programming and all the necessary skills to develop a game during the COVID lockdown, as I had plenty of spare time those days.

Thank you for taking the time to read! Hope to see all of your feedback once the game is released! :)

The main inspiration for this game was the comfort of pixel games that I often played and had so much fun with! I tried to add new ideas of my own on top of that idea so that it would promise a unique experience while containing fragments of entertaining aspects of those sources of inspiration.

There are plenty of jobs, but you don't even have to do a single one of them in order to make money or make progress in the game. But I will still add more of them. :)

Meanwhile, their purpose is to give a different type of gameplay loop and experience for the player. You can experiment with jobs and find what you like to do. Some of them will be unlocked once you get your degree from college.

There is also a plan [to add] a feature for opening your choice of business and employing some Pixelians to work for you and watching your business grow. :)

I think that the hardest part is to ensure that they are going to be entertaining enough for the player to repeat.

Because let's take an example from Stardew Valley. [The] fishing minigame is quite simple, right? There is one vertical bar, and there is this one moving target you have to catch. But regardless of this simplicity, I had so much fun playing that minigame and spent hours repeating it (often more than farming, haha). Finding an idea is not that difficult, but making sure that it is going to be fun; that is the real challenge.

Oh, so many! And not just pixel art games. My main inspirations were [the] Sims, Stardew Valley, and [the first Grand Theft Auto].

GTA I (2D one from [the] late 1990s) was the first 2D game I have ever played as a kid, and it was an open-world game giving you freedom to do whatever you want in a city. There weren't games like that in those days. As a little kid new to the world of games, when you taste a game like that, it just stays with you. And [The] Sims gave me lots of ideas about career, customization, designing and traits etc.

As well as Stardew Valley, ConcernedApe was another gigantic inspiration that encouraged me to take on developing this game. I got help with the art and music from talented people, but apart from that, I [worked] alone on this game. If [it wasn't for] ConcernedApe, I would just look for jobs in other companies and would not start this journey.

When I started developing To Pixelia, the game was originally planned to be a mobile game. Everything about the game is constantly changing, and I owe it to feedback from experienced, creative people I have around me.

When I first started making To Pixelia, I had absolutely zero knowledge of pixel art and how to draw it, so I just bought works of other talented artists and relied on that. My first years were restricted to working in the game engine and not doing anything related to art.

But after a while, I decided to learn to draw my own pixel art, so I could add new animations and new sprites whenever it was necessary without seeking help from outside. I usually write down ideas, build a feature for it, [and] then draw some art for that. Dealing with different parts of development keeps me sharp and not exhausted, as I am able to switch from programming to drawing whenever my efficiency drops.

After To Pixelia, I have an intention of learning how to draw isometric pixel art (which is more difficult to draw but looks so much better, in my opinion) and make the next game in isometric pixel art. :)

Honestly, some of them were just random ideas that seemed like it could be fun to have in-game and some of them were suggested by my friends.

There is this one friend of mine that always says, "How about becoming a chemist? You should add it as a profession in-game". I think that I would normally never think about having that as a career option, so it is nice to benefit from different perspectives. :)

I couldn't be sure if the question is about some real-life job I had to quit in order to focus on developing this game or letting go of adding a job in-game due to technical difficulties I've faced. :)

Alternative I: If it is about real life job,
No, I have been working full-time on this project. I am an English Literature graduate, by the way. I was probably going to become a teacher if I didn't start developing To Pixelia.

Alternative II: If it is about in-game jobs,
Thankfully nothing like that [has happened] so far; actually, even more jobs will be added as long as it has a promising and engaging gameplay loop for the player.

Working alone has been really tiresome for me because it took a lot of my time, and I could perhaps be more productive if I had a few people assisting me as I would be able to focus on a specific area of development instead of dealing with every aspect of [it]. But the most challenging thing was also the most rewarding part of my journey, as I gained a lot of experience dealing with everything. I think there is something good in everything.

Always have people around you [to] benefit from their ideas and perspectives. The game would be a worse version of what it is today without the contributions of other people.

It is also incredibly important to show people what you are doing. Marketing is arguably more than half of the job because if people don't know about your project, your project will never reach its full potential.

I would perhaps choose your job as it looks fun. :D I would try to remain involved in the gaming industry, and being a video game journalist sounds pretty cool and an entertaining choice of career!

There used to be some people among the audience in the club that would get paid to laugh at comedians' jokes, sitting in the front row. Maybe [the] opposite of that, getting hired to mourn at the funerals of people that are not very liked much? That actually sounds like it could actually be a real thing. :)