Deponia creator, Daedalic co-founder Poki looks back on making a cult classic
Point-and-click games have never been stranger or curiouser than when Daedalic Games, a German company, developed and released Deponia. The game was brainchild of studio co-founder Jan Baumann (formerly Jan Müller-Michaelis), who would lead development on three sequels before departing the company in 2019.
Baumann, who also goes by the creative alias “Poki,” found himself in a sincere case of life imitating art. Like Rufus, the hero of Deponia, he had to let go of his lifelong dream to do the right thing. His daughter had been born the same year, and he wanted to balance fatherhood with his other creative ventures.
His main new interest is in music—but his other job now is recreating his work after his daughter deletes it from the computer screen.
We wanted to chat with Baumann about his experience creating oddball point-and-click adventure games, and hear his thoughts about Daedalic’s decision to cease internal game development. (Daedalic is working on a fifth game called Surviving Deponia, developed in partnership with AtomicTorch Studio).
Baumann said he owed his success to an unusual creative background and the joy of "Narrenfreiheit"—a medieval German phrase meaning "freedom of the jester."
Baumann began his career studying media technology in Hamburg. While studying, he made short films, recorded his first album, and did freelance art for web design. The work slowed down his studies, and he faced a choice—drop out, or sprint through his remaining courses.
He chose the sprint. Baumann’s program included a "computer-generated media" discipline. He decided to make a computer game for his thesis project. That game became Edna and Harvey: The Breakout.
“I joke that you can see every single coffee I had, because I had little
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