We’re working on a review on Fobia, so I got in touch with indie Eugene Lazebny to talk about the game. Come check it out!
PS4Blog: Hello! Welcome. Can you help us get started by telling our readers about yourself and your work?
Hello! Thank you for the invite. My name is Eugene. I’m a product designer with 13 years of experience. My wife is an illustrator, and one day we just decided to try and make a video game!
We had no experience in game dev, so we needed to explore this new field. I started to learn Unity and C #, and my wife worked hard on the animation side of things. After a while, we made our first game: Fobia.
PS4B: On that note, Fobia is on its way to the Nintendo Switch. How would you describe the game to someone who’s never heard about it?
Fobia is an indie 2D puzzle-platformer game about a little girl in a red coat. She tries to run away from her fears that turn into the shapes of animals.
It’s also a game about the phobias of the player. When someone starts to play, it will at first looks as if Fobia was a simple game – a beautiful forest, and the calming sounds of birds and nature. It seems a relaxing game where you just need to run. But over time, you realize things are not what they seem. Anything in the game can kill you. And by the middle of the whole experience, the player will have real phobias: you will fear every stone, stick, sound.
PS4B: How long did it take to develop the game and port it to the Nintendo Switch? Where there any particular hurdles or challenges you had to overcome?
I thought about this game for a while. I tried to select the game engine, art style, thought a lot about gameplay, and the story. After working on all of that, my wife and I
And after I decided on the engine, my wife and I ended up making the game in around five months. We then released it on iOS and tried to improve on it over the next six months. Porting Fobia to the Nintendo Switch took another three months.
The main problem was that it was our first experience in game dev. I had to look for a lot of information just to get started with the process! And then with the port to the Nintendo Switch, I actually had to go and work on Windows since I was previously working on a Mac – that was certainly a big one!
PS4B: With the game ready to go on Nintendo Switch, are you currently working on a new video game project?
Indeed! We really liked our experience in the gaming industry, and have been inspired by it. We are currently working on our next big game, which is going to take a lot of time to be ready. Unfortunately, that’s all I can discuss at this time!
PS4B: And that’s all the time we have for today. Is there something else you’d like to add before we go?
I know that not everyone will like Fobia, but I do hope that players give the game a chance. My wife and I have learned a lot from working on the game, and we are sure that thanks to this experience, and the support of those who play Fobia, we can make our next game much better.
