Interview with Anna Mimik Antonova, creator and developer of Kapia.
Kapia is a fun and fulfilling adventure that tells the incredible story between Stefan and Reny.
The World Union has dissolved, nations have split into East and West coalitions. A mysterious intelligent infection forces people to live in forced lockdown. This is the world that needs to be saved. The world of Kapia.
Stefan, a retired pilot and intrepid grandfather, takes responsibility for ending the conflict, aided and supported by his sweet granddaughter Reny.
Francesco:
Hello everyone and welcome back to Indie Games Devel.
Today we are pleased to have here with us Anna, the developer of Kapia, a story driven point and click adventure out on January 25th 2022.
Hi Anna and welcome to Indie Games Devel.
Anna:
Hi, thank you for having me.
Francesco:
Hi Anna, would you like to tell us what Kapia is and how this project was born?
Anna:
Well, Kapia is an adventure game and it’s about a very strict guy who is out to save the world but what he doesn’t know is that he’s actually being helped by his granddaughter Reny, who is also a playable character in our adventure game about this apocalyptic universe called Kapia.
Francesco:
Okay, one question i have to ask you is, what are the key features of this game and what is, in your opinion it’s strength in Kapia?
Anna:
First of all I would say that it isn’t just a point and click adventure because we do have a controller and it is perfectly playable on the controller as well.
So, I would say it’s an adventure but if we would go into point and click part of it as a genre, because I know that a lot of people call separated into separate genre instead of more of a mechanics, if you go into this direction I would say it’s a point and click with a modern twist. Because we do have a lot of mini games inside our Kapia and we do have a lot of interesting mechanics that we implemented.
It is faster, more dynamic than you would expect from classical adventure, but it is still very classic in the sense of puzzles and I would say probably in character development. Because we’re huge fans of classic adventure and that’s something that we wanted to bring into this universe. So this is what I would say, I think the strength of our game is that, it is very classic and another strength is that it’s also modern.
Francesco:
Is there an historical event that influences this production or is it just my impression?
Anna:
Historical event, oh that’s interesting, I haven’t heard that one before. You know, Kapia, the story itself is kind of an impression or a collaboration of impressions that we’ve got while traveling all over the world.
I mean I’ve been to United States and we’ve been quite a few places in Europe and we’ve been to Israel and now we’re back in Europe and Balkans.
We kind of picked up certain issues that people were having in their history, maybe too as well because, I mean, we do live for a few years in each country as we travel.
So we do study their history and the language most of the times and probably that’s why you got this impression.
But that’s very interesting, I’m glad that we could communicate that.
Francesco:
Thank you, I have to say, I tried the demo and I was very impressed.
Almost sad that the demo ended so soon.
The question is, have you already received some feedback from gamers or other developers?
Anna:
Well, I think that the biggest feedback that we got was the fact that we passed kickstarter.
So for us it was, I mean, we went on the kickstarter with our demo and it was successful.
For me it is the biggest feedback of course, but also of course I speak to people all the time and they do like it, I genuinely get a positive feedback and we always listen.
With the demo we published it and we also run the whole game through our numerous test groups who gave us their feedback and we always listen.
We try to fix things to extent us to as much as we can without it influencing our own version of the game.
Francesco:
And, behind the scenes how was the work?
Because you have worked this project with your husband right?
Anna:
Yes, well, it’s good it’s good but we do have a history of working together.
I mean, we’ve been together for 16 years and from the very beginning of our life together we started doing things as a team.
So as the time progressed we started small and then as time progressed we could expand two bigger projects and probably the biggest one that we had was two years and a half years before Kapia.
Then of course that’s something that we were expecting from this game, this project, it did take us longer but we were prepared for it, to be longer.
Maybe not as long as it was, but we were so prepared for it and we did have our pipeline already developed for this for this game.
Francesco:
This question maybe can be difficult for you but, do you have a favorite game or favorite video games from which did you take inspiration for Kapia? if is there an inspiration by any video game…
Anna:
You know, it’s a difficult and an easy question simultaneously because, I mean, I can take the whole era of Grim Fandango and say Grim Fandango.
But of course there were quite a few games that influenced our vision but I wouldn’t take one out and single it out too much because, it is quite a modern game in the end.
So maybe something a bit of this and a bit of that.
Francesco:
Okay the last question is, we have to wait the new year for the release but my question is, are there any future projects after Kapia?
Anna:
I sure hope so, because, this whole idea that we had, we started this project the moment we got together.
We just decided that we want to make games and then, our 10 years of our career we actually studied the field.
We went into studies 3d, we studied everything that was around 3d Animations and all those things do actually make games and so here we are.
We finished our first one and we are hoping to start next one.
Maybe not immediately because we will be thinking at maybe porting copier to consoles.
But this will take a little bit of a technical vision before we can actually announce it properly, but yes, absolutely more games to come and that was always an inspiration.
Francesco:
Okay first of all thank you so much for your time and thank you for follow us.
We remind you that the Kapia will be released on january 25th 2022, so if you’re interested you can add it to your wish list on Steam.
See you in the next video bye Anna thank you.
Anna:
Bye, thank you.
