The success of 2008’s Machinarium, the studio’s first big game production, springboarded it into financial independence allowing the team to pursue a multi-project structure.įounded in 2003, Amanita began as Dvorský’s theses project while studying Animation Film at the Academy of Arts, Architecture and Design in Prague. Not only has Amanita been recognised by the BBC and Nike, making small games for each of them, the studio has picked up multiple awards from bodies such as Indiecade and the Independent Game Festival. This passion has been rewarded over the years, too. It would be a clever thing from the state to support the games industry, but our politicians are not very smart people Jakub Dvorský These games are populated by insects or insect-like beings they are swathed in the magic that Dvorský sees when he holds a zoom lens to a tree knot. But even that game’s rusted metal city has a similar organic quality: a tangled metropolis of crawlspaces and staircases, the interiors arranged like snail shell patterns, the clusters of spires like an autumn thistle. The exception is Machinarium, yet another adventure game this time about a robot saving his friends from a band of criminals. He talks about investigating nature at every level, from microbes to landscapes, to the universe beyond Earth. Born in the region and a nature lover, he now brings his two small children out to pick mushrooms and wild fruits, to spot animals or to stargaze long into the night. It is here, where many of the city’s folk tales originated, that Dvorský draws his inspiration. Venture beyond the city, into the surrounding forests, and you’ll often find Jakub Dvorský, founder of game development studio Amanita Design, exploring and foraging with his young family. But that was just a song, and the monster hanging by chains in the town hall is actually a crocodile – probably a gift from a visiting king in the 17th century. Ivan Mládek’s popular song Jožin z bažin tells of a swamp creature from Moravia – the lush region of which Brno is the largest city – travelling to nearby Prague to eat its tourists. This area of the country is synonymous with myths and monsters. The beast was said to have terrorised the inhabitants of the city centuries ago, until it was poisoned by a brave butcher. H anging from the curved ceiling of the old town hall in Brno in the Czech Republic, is the preserved body of a dragon.
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