Incredible Indies: Planting The Green Book for cross-platform pollination

• The Green Book game is based on the idea of caring for and discovering new plants
• It is being developed as a cross-platform title for PC, Nintendo Switch, iOS and Android

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The games industry has many big-name studios with eager eyes on them, all waiting to see what their next big hit could be. But giant studios aren’t necessarily the home to what could be your next favourite game. 

There are thousands of independent game studios and solo developers, all hard at work crafting new game experiences with often unique ways of looking at games.

In this interview, we highlight The Green Book, the latest project by game developer and founder of Tapteek, Eugene Lazebny.

PocketGamer.biz: Tell us a little about yourself. How long have you been working in games, and what types of projects have you worked on?

Eugene Lazebny: My name is Eugene Lazebny, and I am the founder of Tapteek. First and foremost, I am a product designer with 18 years of experience. I have participated in developing various apps for startups, companies, and banks, earning multiple awards along the way. I truly enjoy this profession.

Initially, at Tapteek, we took on projects from different startups and companies for design and software development. Depending on the tasks, I often had to hire additional team members, so the size of our team varied with each project.

With extensive experience in software development, I was always intrigued by game development. Seven years ago, my wife and I decided to create our first game, Fobia. I was thrilled with the result and decided to dedicate much more of my time to developing games.

At Tapteek, we continued to develop mobile games in collaboration with different publishers. The last mobile game I worked on with a small team was Among Water, which we released with the publisher Mamboo Games. It was the first game where I became interested in incorporating mechanics that allow players to relax and de-stress. In Among Water, we even added a meditation system as an experiment.

Your new project is The Green Book? Where did the idea for this come from?

My wife came up with the idea for the game about five years ago. She is very fond of taking care of plants and, at that time, created various sketches, drawings, and stories. However, I had no time to work on such a project back then, so she developed The Green Book world on her own as a hobby.

We discussed various ideas about how wonderful it would be to bring it to life, but it never went beyond drawings and animations.

Are you working on the game together? And how long have you been working on this project so far?

About half a year ago, I came across the sketches for The Green Book and felt a strong desire to give this game a shot. Unfortunately, my wife was not able to join me this time, so using her work, I continued to develop the game in my free time.

What is it like working on a game independently in today’s game climate? What are some of the biggest challenges you are facing?

Being a small team is incredibly hard. You constantly have to manoeuvre to survive. The biggest challenge is finance, which limits our marketing strategies and the ability to hire more people. I’m now hoping to find funding for further development so I can fully focus on finishing The Green Book.

You also have to handle many tasks and figure out many things on your own. This significantly affects your work schedule, often requiring you to work from morning until night.

On the other hand, what do you enjoy most about the freedom of working independently?

Less bureaucracy means less time needed to make decisions. Small companies are very flexible, which provides a significant advantage in speed.

The Green Book is being released across multiple platforms. Does this present additional challenges in the development phase? Or is it easier since the intention was always to be cross-platform?

Yes, definitely. The hardest part is designing the control logic and the layout of the various windows.

Mobile screens are much smaller than computer screens. If you make everything identical, elements on a mobile device will be too small, or on a computer screen they will be too large. For this reason, I work on adaptive windows so that their size changes depending on the device.

The controls are much more complicated. You have to develop controls for mouse, keyboard, gamepad, and touch screen simultaneously. While the mouse and touchscreen are somewhat compatible, the mouse and gamepad add significant complications. For example, many games adapted for mouse control on consoles use a separate cursor, which I find to be a simple but not very effective solution. I prefer gamepad controls to be fully adapted without using a cursor.

So, yes, I spend a huge amount of time thinking these details through in advance. Even though you can’t play with a keyboard or gamepad in the demo right now, the game already has this logic in place, and the buttons are signed. In the future, once I’ve tested everything, I’ll enable this feature in the game settings.

And where is development currently up to? Any ideas for a launch date yet? 

Right now, the game is in early development. We have a lot of ideas. The stories for the plants have been written, and the characters and most of the plants have been drawn. However, there is still a lot of work to be done.

I currently think that the game might be released around the end of August 2025, but I fully expect that this date may need to be postponed.

Are you an indie developer?

The leading games industry conference, Pocket Gamer Connects returns to the heartland of mobile gaming that is Helsinki, Finland this October 1st & 2nd and – as ever – it’s a MUST for indies.

Our Big Indie Zone gives indie devs the perfect platform from which to broadcast their new games and talents and our Very Big Indie Pitch event is a fantastic chance for media coverage and invaluable feedback from our expert judges.

Find out more and get your tickets here!