CR: Can you tell us a little bit about Anawiki? Who are you, where are you, and what brought you to casual games? And what is an Anawiki?

RB: Let's start with the last question, a very common one. ANAWIKI is a mix of my daughters' names: ANAstazja and WIKtoria. I stopped developing games when I went to University. I though that I would never come back to games development, but... my kids grew up and started playing games. I decided to make one for them and that's how we came back to the idea of developing games. And because developing games is much more fun than developing applications we decided to make this for a living. Our team is very small. At the moment it is Damian (artist), Micheal (programmer), Oskar (programmer) and me (leader, programmer). We make use of contractors, so if we count them up our team can grow up to 12 people :) And then it is not so small...

CR: One of your first games was Tom's Hen House, which was a pretty strange choice for a game. Why chickens?

RB: I wouldn't call it a strange choice. If you look back in time you'll find a game that I call "Russian Eggs". That was one of the most popular handheld game in the late '80s. When I was 10 or so I was very addicted to it. This was one of the reasons to bring this concept back to computer games - to make a game that I love. It looked like a good choice for a startup project.

CR: You followed that up with the very playable and fun "Maggie the Gardener". Can you tell us a little bit about the creative process leading to that game?

RB: As I mentioned I started developing games for my kids (though not only for them). I wanted to create a game like Bob the Builder. We came up with the Simon the Farmer concept that suited our needs well. Unfortunately, what initially looked as an easy project ended up being too big for a startup team. We had to split it up into 2 games: Tom's Hen House and Maggie the Gardener. I found that those two concepts are fun and not only for kids. Personally speaking, I love making gardens in Maggie the Gardener.

CR: Your newest game, Runes of Avalon has a very different look and feel from your other titles. What have you changed?

RB: Everything and nothing. This was a comeback to our roots. In 1994 we created an AMIGA game called FANTRIS. It was called one of the best Tetris-like games ever. Runes of Avalon is a mix of Tetris and match-3 mechanic. When we started creating Runes we wanted to develop a game that will appeal not only to females - that's why we have choosen casual game mechanics and fantasy theme that males love, and that's not offensive to females.

CR: Runes of Avalon is a pretty unique game - how did you come up with the idea?

RB: I was playing computer games with my kids one day and turned one on that I never heard of. When it started, one tile popped up and I instantly said to myself - what a brilliant idea. But then my daughter started to play and I was surprised that it was a totally different game from what I thought it was.

CR: A lot of our readers don't really know much about how these games are made. Maybe you can help them out. What are the key steps to making a game like Runes of Avalon� And what are the biggest challenges?

RB: Usually we start with a prototype. That's a very rough version of the game with a lot of placeholders instead of art. It takes few days to make a prototype ready.

When you have a prototype you can show it to your friends. The game was really fun, but needed better artwork. A huge change to the game style was made by my artist - Damian - the use of runes concept is his idea.

So we had a game idea and all we needed was a bit of story. After few months (around December 2006) we had a beta ready and started beta testing. Beta test results changed a lot in the game and made us completely rewrite the story - players simply asked for more than a few paragraphs of text.

Rewriting the story and adjusting game mechanics took us another three months. It took over 9 months from start to finish. The funny thing is that we considered the game done after 4 months - everyone who saw it said it was extremely polished and so on. But we kept adding stuff and adjusting gameplay for another 5 months to make it the best casual game of the year - not just one in the crowd.

CR: Your team is in Poland, which makes you another one of the many teams in Eastern Europe making casual games. Why are we seeing so many great casual games coming from this region? What's going on over there?

RB: Is it possible that you don't see all the crap games that Eastern Europe devs make? :D

We are one of two - only two! - indie teams in Poland that are dedicated to casual games development. I am sure that we are as talented as US developers are, and the opposite is true as well. The only difference is that our salaries are lower so it doesn't cost us that much to create a game, or we can create better game with the same budget. But in the end it all comes down to the fun factor, no matter how much money you put in development.

CR: We're sure there's a lot of neat stuff you wanted to put in the game that you couldn't add, or decided against. What didn't make it into the game that you wished did?

RB: The final version of Runes of Avalon is the third or forth iteration. We changed ideas during development to make the game even more fun. In one of iterations we had a ring of spells. Player could earn spells after making certain matches and then use those spells whenever one wanted and wherever wanted. After beta testing we replaced the ring of spells with on board spells. We should replace it, we should just add on board spells. The ring of spells was one of my favourite twists in the game and I miss it the most. We will introduce it in the sequel for sure :)

CR: So what is next for Anawiki? what are you working on?

RB: We are working on a new game, codename "World of Ponys". This is a sim game, something between Tamagotchi and The Sims. We also started a new game project - a side view puzzle game inspired by Alice in Wonderland, Shrek and Hoodwinked! The True Story of Red Riding Hood. I am very excited about those projects and hope that players will enjoy them too.

CR: Can you tell us a little bit about what it is like being an indie developer, competing against studios with more people, more money, and more resources? How do you compete?

RB: The sad truth for indies is that you cannot compete with big companies. You just can't. So the only way to compete with them is not to know that you cannot compete with them :D Otherwise you'll focus on competing with big guys, or give up before you start, instead of making a great game. You need to be skilled, hard working and lucky and then in the end you can create a great game. Besids, being small is your biggest advantage against big companies.

You can see more of Anawiki at their website, www.anawiki.com. Be sure to stop by and have a look! Check back at Casual Review soon for more developer interviews, features, and reviews.