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Interview with Lukas Korba the creator of Octagon

Octagon is the first game from the polygon family we’ve featured on Edamame Reviews that is actually playable. If you’re in need of a game you can enjoy, here it is. – Unless of course you just want to get hammered… in that case, have you ever heard of Super Hexagon?

Original Review of Octagon -> Check it out!

Today we’d like to share with you our interview with the developer of this simple yet innovative game, Lukas Korba.

Before we start, we’d like to thank Lukas Korba for participating in our interview, and for spending some of his valuable time in answering our questions. Thanks Lukas.

Now without any further ado our interview begins.

 

Ok first up, why did you decide to make Octagon?

Great question, it really is… I’d been experienced with iOS ecosystem for 4 years when I started with Octagon. Two games had been already released in the App Store at that time. I thought I knew almost everything about games, users, what they wanted and needed. So at the end I had a pretty complex look and insight. All those details and information helped me to understand about what my next game should be, i.e. it should be easy to understand, simple enough to play, modern and trendy in terms of design and graphics, have simple controls (people love one tap games, right?) etc. All of it lead me to know what’s going to be next… So I was able to describe my next game, but I didn’t have a gameplay for it yet. My best practice is wait for inspiration, it will come, someday, somehow… Don’t think about it too much, it needs to be natural… go out, have fun with your friends, go out of the city, to some forest, etc… Do a lot of inspirational things… and one day, it was there… right in front of my eyes… the whole gameplay… I sat and did a playable prototype of Octagon in just 30 minutes. And I knew it was going to work. That’s how I work, my typical workflow. Making games is an art and you can’t force yourself to find out an idea for a game by brute force… it won’t work. 

Many people think I copied Boson X, but the truth is, we both did our games in parallel. Boson X came out a month before Octagon… I’m pretty sure we’d worked on it for a couple of months… Octagon is the result of something indescribable.

 

Very interesting, so what programming language and or software did you use when making Octagon?

Octagon is powered by my own really simple one game engine.. I used it even for Swing Her!, but upgraded it and modernised it for Octagon.. It uses native iOS stuff and is fully based on it, so no Unity, Unreal or similar. Obviously it’s not based on Swift, so it uses Obj-C and OpenGL ES 2.0. From today’s perspective it’s getting old, thanks to Metal and Swift, but it’s still powerful and easy to use, capable of 2d/3d, supports fonts & particles, own UI/Widget system, etc…

 

Ok, here is a mean question. What was the hardest problem you needed to overcome when developing Octagon?

From a technical perspective there is no such thing. The game is really simple so it works even on older devices. All my problems were related to marketing, user retention & engagement and similar stuff, obligate for an indie dev…

 

Last question. Where do you get your inspiration or ideas from?

I guess I’ve already answered that in the first question 🙂 Just like my friends (graphics artist, musicians, choreographers etc.) the inspiration is everywhere, you just need to absorb it from all around. I’m using all my senses. It’s also really important to know the users and store, trends. Good practice is to see what’s new every single Thursday in the App Store. Learn from your and even their mistakes, follow the good things, read articles, post mortems etc. Every single detail will help you in the future, somehow…

 

A few words to Octagon fans on Edamame Reviews.

🙂 guess what? I’m working on Octagon 2. That’s my ultimate goal, I have some really ambitious plans and new features… It’s going to be huge… Hard to say when it will be finished… It could be ready during Q4 2016 or Q1 2017…

 

Lastly a few words on how you feel about Edamame Reviews and our service.

No cons on my side 😉 The service looks good as you people do…

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