Who is who: IzHard

We continue to publish materials in our Who’s Who series. This time we talked to the studio IzHard, whose game OVIVO won first place in the category “Games” in the framework of the world technology competition among students Microsoft Imagine Cup 2015.

Recall that the authors of Shadow Fight 2, the Moscow company Nekki, recently undertook to publish it.

We talked with the project designer Aleksadr Vilasak and the game artist Daria Chernova.

App2Top: Hello. The first question is how did it all start?

Alexander Vilasak: It all started with an evening in November 2014 at a hackathon from Microsoft. I wanted to do something of my own. Yes, just come and find out what a “hackathon” really is. Microsoft held the Imagine Cup, and the hackathon was the first stage of the Imagine Cup. I came there. And there was no team, and there was no special experience. I thought I would sit quietly, study Unity and everything else. It so happened that I didn’t join anyone. And if you haven’t joined anyone, then you are a human team. That is, you need to speak in front of people and tell your idea. I panicked wildly! I didn’t know what to say. I decided to get out of it with jokes. Named his team TheyTakingTheHobbitsToIsengard, all in one word. In honor of a very cool song from The Lord of the Rings. People saw it and remembered it. Immediately a guy came up to me and said that I had very interesting ideas. And then Dasha Kruzhinskaya came up. She said I was late here, and you’re making games here, let’s do it together. During the night, they began to saw the game. I proposed a prototype of a black-and-white game. I’ve had an idea for a long time to do something to play on optical illusions. At first there was an idea to make a first-person game. Then they started thinking, and somehow nothing came up. I suggested simplifying and doing everything in 2D. The guys liked the mechanics. During the night, everything was washed down, and, in fact, we won our first prize. It was a Lumia 930 smartphone, one for three.

Then we decided to participate in the Imagine Cup. The programmer lost interest and left, and Dasha Chernova joined us. The three of us started preparing for the presentation and all that. And then, step by step, we came to victory.

App2Top: How different is the thing that was presented a year ago from what was shown at the Imagine Cup final?

Alexander Vilasak: Visually, probably not enough. The game was more technically different. I completely changed the way the character moves in space. There are more interesting riddles, moving animation and everything else. Our first prototype was more static. There was such a frozen figure. Then we had pendulums and everything else. But we can say that we worked on the game very little. In total – two months. Because everyone had their own problems – diplomas, dissertations, it doesn’t work out on time, the programmer guy loses interest … It turns out that the team is not working smoothly.

App2Top: And how popular are these hackathons in general? It always seemed to me that there were only programmers at hackathons. Where do artists come from, for example?

Alexander Vilasak: Actually, at hackathons, all people are important. Sometimes people just come with an idea. They tell it to the guys, find the team. People like the idea, and they just do it. There are people who are really not programmers, but artists. This is also a very important part, because when you speak in front of the public, you not only talk about the project, but also tell who you need. Let’s say you need musicians, you need artists, you need level designers. Hackathons, in general, need people who are not craftsmen in a narrow specialty, but craftsmen in everything. Because you need to do something working in a short time, overnight, and show it to the public. In this case, yes, there is no specific clear work for everyone, everyone does what they can.

App2Top: This is an analogue of Game Jam.

Alexander Vilasak: Yes, only Jam happens not for one night, but for a long period. And not necessarily in the same room – it sometimes takes place online. And the beauty of the hackathon is that you immerse yourself in this atmosphere. There are people around who are busy with work, you are also working. If you suddenly don’t know something, you can just turn to the people nearby. That is, the whole beauty of the hackathon is that everything is in the same room, nearby, and the work from this is much more productive and interesting.

App2Top: Look, you’ve finished the project now. And, as I understand it, they have already graduated with education.

Daria Chernova: Well, Sasha is a graduate student, and Dasha and I – yes, we graduated this year.

App2Top: If they hadn’t won the Imagine Cup, they wouldn’t have received a grant and the project would have been in limbo – would they have continued to engage in games? Or would it just become a positive experience and look for other alternatives?

Daria Chernova: I think we would have finished Ovivo. Besides, now Nekki has become our publisher. In fact, we were negotiating even before the Imagine Cup. Anyway, we wanted to release the game and just froze our negotiations with Nekki at the time of the Imagine Cup, because there was no time and we didn’t know whether we would win or not. Everything depended on it. Now, right after the Imagine Cup, we have resumed our negotiations and have already agreed. I think even without Imagine Cup we would still be interesting to Nekki.

App2Top: Will you continue to participate in hackathons, or is it such an installation that you have won a prize, signed a contract with a publishing house, are going to be a team and are sawing something different, new?

Daria Chernova: I think we need to finish the game for now. Now there is no point in going to hackathons especially, because there is already a team, there is already an idea, there is something to work on. And they rather go to hackathons in order to find this idea.

Alexander Vilasak: And I just like going to hackathons because of their atmosphere. It’s interesting for me to come there and create something overnight. I liked the process, so if I have free time, I’ll go. It’s a pretty stressful situation when you stay up all night and do something. But you get a lot in return – you meet people with common interests, share your experience with them.

App2Top: Let’s talk about style. When I watched the game, I realized that you originally came out of the black-and-white style. It was originally given, and you were already dancing further away from it, looking at how it could be complicated. When I first saw the game, the associations were almost with Arabic script, Oriental motifs. Did you put any such meaning into it, or is it something less symbolic?

Daria Chernova: Actually, we don’t join a certain culture, and each level is unique in its own way. That is, somewhere I want to draw more lively, smooth lines, and, for example, in the “Civilization” level I want to do something totemic, with hieroglyphs. Styles change depending on the levels. We want to create a certain atmosphere, but this does not mean that we will do everything only in the style of India or in the style of Egypt. Stylistics vary depending on the level. But the main thing is that everything is black and white.

App2Top: Independent teams like to add an ideological background to their games. In this context, it was not?

Alexander Vilasak: We’ve been thinking about this a lot with the fourth member of the team. He’s our screenwriter. Unfortunately, due to the fact that he is not a student, he could not participate in these hackathons. He and I often create some philosophical message in our game. Why, in fact, two colors, black and white? This is the unity and struggle of opposites. We don’t know what white is if we don’t know what black is. These two colors are constantly striving for each other, and it turns out that the character moves between two worlds. We want to develop this idea further and show that there will be no such thing in the game that you look at everything only from one side. Even NPCs will be enemies from only one point of view. From another point of view, they will be friends. The dual world.

App2Top: Is this not in the gameplay yet?

Alexander Vilasak: We have not yet fully developed the idea of how to do this. We want to build the levels so that they are dual. We want you to have to choose in any task.

Daria Chernova: If you are in a white space, then on the one hand you see a picture, noticing a black silhouette. If you move to black, then you will be able to look at everything that happens on the screen in a different way.

App2Top: I played the project and imagine how everything happens. But, as far as I remember, the picture didn’t change there, gravity just changed there. That is, you could avoid obstacles due to the fact that you were flying up like a balloon, and not rolling down like a bowling ball. Are you describing something else now, or is it the same?

Daria Chernova: We want to refine the graphics so that a person, depending on how gravity changes, or what color he visually concentrates on, changes his vision of the game. That is, when you are on a white background, you see the level from one side. And when you move, it will seem a little different to you.

App2Top: That is, it’s like in one project, I can’t remember the name now, where you change the time. Rewound the time back, the wall was removed. In that spirit?

Alexander Vilasak: There is such an illusion called “Face or vase”. Depending on which color you focus your attention on, you may have a new picture in your head. That is, you are used to the fact that the object is black. And when you move, black becomes space, and white becomes an object. And you realize that something unusual is painted here. Dasha meant that we will play on illusions.

Daria Chernova: You switch your attention from black to white, and you see that the object is not black, but white. The object is no longer a vase, but a face.

App2Top: Will their properties change? For example, on a white background is a black vase, and water is pouring out of it. You switch to black, and it’s already a face that’s an NPC.

Alexander Vilasak: It’s a good idea. Now we want to make sure that every element of the gameplay is harmoniously combined and logically follows from the fact that we have two gravities. For example, what happens to an element if these layers, black and white, are very thin? It turns out such a spiral. Perhaps she will have a new physical impact, like such a black hole, or the character disappears, or teleports. The singularity is like this. So far, we are experimenting with gravity. In addition to the main plot, we want to make additional levels where it’s easy to play fun and interesting gameplay moments. Or vice versa more hardcore. If we take the first version, it’s so hardcore that we couldn’t go through it ourselves. We didn’t have checkpoints, we played from start to finish, and it took 20 hours to test everything.

App2Top: What about the plot? I understand that you are planning a plot, but what will it be? At least tell us about the tie to understand what kind of ball it is and where it is moving.

Alexander Vilasak: With the plot, we want to show that the world around us is not just a world that we invented, but that this world has its own history. And this character will explore the world. In the beginning we will show how matter appeared. Why everything is black and white. How this matter developed, how living organisms appeared from it and how civilization turned out of them. We don’t want this to last very long. Gameplay for two or three hours. To show such a short story about the whole world.

App2Top: But it’s not much different from what it is now, is it?

Alexander Vilasak: Now there are some hints. There is an “Evolution” level, which briefly shows how ordinary geometric shapes turn into something more complex with living beings and mechanisms. We want to develop it more and work on it more.

App2Top: I also had a question about management. I played from a computer, but as far as I understand, the project is being conceived for porting to mobile devices. How will the control be implemented on touch devices?

Alexander Vilasak: We have a level on our phone where you can take a picture of a black object yourself and play it. And so far, the control is done by the accelerometer, because with it we will not have additional buttons, and usability will not suffer. And to collapse, you need to click on any point on the screen. This is quite intuitive, as far as the feedback can be judged, and quite understandable.

Daria Chernova: You can play with one hand. You go left, right and collapse. And fingers do not block the screen.

Alexander Vilasak: On the other hand, it is clear that it is not customary for everyone to control the accelerometer. Therefore, we made additional button control.

Daria Chernova: Rather, not with buttons, but with a stick and a wheelbarrow.

Alexander Vilasak: Yes, so that you can control it like a joystick. We try to do everything so that the management does not distract as much as possible. And the remote control will hide if you don’t press it for a long time.

App2Top: The question is a bit towards business. You told me that negotiations with the publishing house were going on before you took part in the Imagine Cup. And developers are always tormented by the question of how some find publishers, while others do not. Tell us how it happened that you were quickly contacted or did you quickly contact someone? How did it happen?

Daria Chernova: We just participated in conferences all the time. We were at Winter Nights, then at DevGAMM, where Nekki found us, then participated in White Nights.

Alexander Vilasak: In fact, they did not participate in White Nights, they just came. And we had a showcase at Winter Nights and DevGAMM. And now we have a showcase in San Francisco. We threw off the build, and our friends show our game on Casual Connect. A great way to find a publisher is these conferences. We also participated in many contests, and more than once submitted our game to Silicon Hill – Global Game Jam. Participated in Games Jam Kanobu and in the Global Game Jam hackathon in Moscow. Through Games Jam Kanobu got to DevGAMM. You won’t find a publisher if you just sit around making a game and don’t communicate with anyone. It is necessary, of course, to apply, to be interested in conferences.I found an article on HabraHabr, a list of all conferences for this year. And I was already looking further, what will be the nearest, what is next to us, where it is worth going.

App2Top: From what I heard, I conclude that the project still needs to be sawed and sawed. How do you estimate how much more time it will take?

Daria Chernova: At first we thought we would launch in November. But now we understand that it is very difficult. Maybe by the New Year.

Alexander Vilasak: I think after the New Year, most likely. It is not very profitable to make a release in the New Year. But after the New Year, let’s say in February, it will be a more objective date. Besides, everything we’ve done before, we’ve done in pieces. And now everyone is free from studying, and it will be possible to play the game in full force. A month of hard work will be a big step for us. And if two months, then in general!

App2Top: And how will you work – gather in someone’s apartment, or hire more people, take a new office?

Alexander Vilasak: In general, yes, it would be ideal to settle somewhere. Now we are considering different coworking options. In the apartment… It depends on who is more comfortable, but it personally bothers me a little to study at home. Because there is a place where you rest. And if you work in this place, then you will always want to sleep! But it’s more convenient for anyone, of course. This will need to be discussed further.

Looking for guys who will be interested in our game would also be a good option. See how interested people are, how they can help. Maybe we’ll expand the team, but not much. We have a small team, and we want to continue working as a small team. We are not ready to make a mega-studio.

Daria Chernova: Maybe we’ll find another programmer.

Alexander Vilasak: Unity has been studied since November last year, there was no experience before that. So maybe we’ll find someone experienced in this field.

App2Top: Aren’t you afraid that a cool experienced guy will come and say that you are doing everything wrong?

Alexander Vilasak: We already had experience at presentations when we were told that we were doing everything wrong (laughs). That our game is too complicated, that we are incomprehensibly telling the idea, and everything else. That is, we have already developed some kind of vision, and we already have goals. Therefore, we can already explain why everything is right with us and why we are going the right way.

App2Top: Thanks for the interview!

Alexander Semenov talked

Deciphered by Irina Smirnova