2024-04-08 04:05:23
One day was enough for the development studio Zima Software to collect a million crowns from fans for the continuation of the Czech adventure game Polda. The “hard-nosed” detective Pankrác won the hearts of thousands of Czechs over a quarter of a century on the gaming scene. Now his last adventure awaits him. The voice actor of the protagonist, Luděk Sobota, decided to withdraw from the project. “I’m sorry, but luckily the series doesn’t end there,” says the head of development.
Since the end of the nineties, the Zima Software studio has managed to create seven parts of the Polda series and one remaster, i.e. a modification of the popular second part in a more modern coat. The developers started collecting money for the eighth and last episode, in which policeman Pankrác will appear, in mid-March. Within a few hours, the team reached the target amount of 1,088,888 crowns, so it was clear that they would have to get to work.
“I admit that I was afraid when we announced that we were raising such a high amount. But I believed because the players have always supported us. It was successful this time as well. What the public managed to contribute will already cover the cost of the game from approx. eighty percent,” says Petr Svoboda, programmer and production studio Zima software, in an interview for Aktuálně.cz. The collection will run until April 26, and the extra money the studio gets will be invested, for example, in the preparation of a special connecting episode to explain what happened to the protagonist between the fifth and sixth volumes.
Lábus, Nárožný, Zawadská and Sobota
The first part of the Polda series was published in 1998. It gained popularity not only thanks to its peculiar humor, but also to the quality dubbing, which was taken up by well-known Czech actors. Among them, for example, Jiří Lábus, Petr Nárožný, Valerie Zawadská, Sabina Laurinová, and especially the comedian Luděk Sobota, who breathed life into the protagonist of the story.
Photo: Zima Software
Svoboda has been working on the series since the second half of the nineties, so saying goodbye to the main hero of the stories is hard for him. However, he did not originally count on the fact that an eighth volume could be created. The 80-year-old Sobota has already let it be known that recording Pankrác’s voice exhausts him excessively. But replacing the comedian with an impersonator would be disrespectful, according to the development team. “I’m glad that Luděk gave us the nod and is going to do it with us for the last time. But I admit that I have mixed feelings about all of this. On the one hand, I feel great gratitude for Luděk, on the other hand, regret. When the main character leaves, it is possible that the series will not recover from this,” explains the head of the project.
A completely different story
Pankrác will leave the players’ monitors after the eighth episode, but the series could catch a second wind. According to Svoboda, his place would be taken by a yet-to-be-revealed third protagonist who, together with the mysterious detective and his sidekick Monika Black, whom Pankrác met in the seventh volume, will set out to solve a new mystery. “It depends on how people accept him. We are preparing a new unknown to take over the baton. But it may happen that it will no longer be the same and we will simply start a new project,” explains Svoboda.
Photo: Zima Software
Osmička, like the previous two volumes, will have hand-painted graphics by Karel Kopic and stylized rendered characters. What is left, on the other hand, are caricatures of celebrities. The players probably won’t come across Jaromír Jégr, Johnny Dred or Elvin Mlask anymore. And some of them will probably appreciate it. “There have already been enough of them and many people have criticized that we mutilate the name of publicly famous personalities and we think it’s funny. But it’s true that we don’t want to repeat ourselves. We’re preparing a completely different story,” reveals the programmer.
The last part, which is to be released in 2026, will largely take place in the territory of the Czech Republic, but the players will not miss out on traveling. What’s more, they might once again be able to move across space-time.
It was easy to talk the actors into dubbing
The first part of Polda
The premiere part of Polda was created by the authors of the time under the SleepTeam brand, dubbing and distribution was arranged by the company Zima Software, which belongs to businessman Martin Zima. The company took the series under its wing a year later, when the original creators no longer wanted to participate in its production despite the game’s success. “In short, they didn’t want to do another part, they wanted to work on Bulánce (a Czech video game that made the studio famous, editor’s note). And Martin remembered me because in the past his company sold the Mutarium real-time strategy, in which I participated,” Svoboda recalls.
According to the programmer, it was noticeably easier to attract domestic players at the beginning of his work on the video game scene. With less competition and the voices of Czech celebrities, Zima Software managed to gain a large fan base relatively easily.
Photo: Zima Software
At the same time, it was not difficult to come to an agreement with famous personalities. “I heard it from the guys from SleepTeam. All I had to do was find contacts and that was it. When I then looked for personalities, they always agreed. With one exception,” recalls the head of the studio. Only the actor Ivan Trojan refused the offer. “I didn’t ask why, we just didn’t agree,” explains the programmer.
He dubbed the seller in the booth from the seventh episode, nicknamed “Nerd”, himself. He got the role by accident, because the team completely forgot about him during the recording. “It was good that he is a guy that Monika’s character looks up to and fiercely seduces. So my wife asked me suspiciously at home why I had to woo him,” he laughs.
Monetary risk, lack of interest from foreigners and loss of driver’s license
During the time he has been working on the series, Svoboda has gained countless good and bad experiences. A combination of both is the incident during which he lost his driver’s license. “At the time, I wanted to make a remaster of Poldy 1. But I couldn’t get in touch with the guys from SleepTeam, who owned the subject. And one day I found out that Lubor Kopecky, co-owner of the studio, was giving a lecture in Brno,” he says. So he took his teammates and set off on his journey.
However, he was crossed by a charming cellar master. “We slept over in Moravia the day before the lecture. Well, what happened, the next day I was stopped by the police and I breathed half a million alcohol. It is an exaggeration to say that I lost my driver’s license because of Poldo, our play,” he says. He was finally driven to the scene by a colleague who, in the middle of an unpleasant conversation with the police, jumped away to relieve his stomach ache in the nearby bushes. “Then they also let him breathe and he was fine. No sleep was waiting for him, he gave us a nice ride,” laughs mischievously the head of the studio.
The programmer’s smile leaves the moment when he describes the situation during which he invested money from his own capital in the development of a video game and ended up after half a year of work on the title with earnings in the order of a few tens of thousands of crowns. “I put a lot of my money into Polda 6. I thought that we could capture the foreign market as well. The opposite was true,” he explains, adding that, in his opinion, the typically Czech humor is not the reason why the game is not selling well outside the domestic scene. In the sea of new content coming out on digital game distribution platforms, the title is easily lost abroad, according to the developer.