The Exchange Student: Episode 1 - First Day in Sweden

Development

The game was initially developed for Symbian-based mobile phones, funded by a Russian developer who contacted Dimitris Manos. After writing the script, he contacted Bill Tiller, who did the graphics for The Curse of Monkey Island and The Dig, who directed him to William Eaken. For the character design and animations, Paco Vink was attracted (known for the Monkey Island comic), while the coding was done by the Russians.

After half a year of development and no contract signed, the funders decided to postpone the project. Dimitris Manos started looking for another mobile publisher, but at the same time grew frustrated with the Symbian platform and the work it would take to market it properly and port it to JAVA. Therefore, he decided to self-fund the project and began development for Windows and Macintosh, based on Flash. Meanwhile, the team had also changed drastically, with Steven Watts as the programmer, while Dave Rigley did the animations, GUI and character design.

Inspiration

Director Dimitris Manos stayed in Sweden from 2000 until 2006. A lot of the characters and events in the game are inspired by real people. The pictures in the kitchen and in the room of the Spanish friends for instance, are real photographs, taken during his time as an exchange student.

References

• There is a poster in the hallway of your student house. If you look at it, Emilio will say: "Mona from A Vampyre Story, She's so OT!". It is no coincidence this adventure game is referenced here, as Bill Tiller, one of the developers originally contacted to work on this episode, was working on it at the time.
• The protagonist, Emilio Carboni, shares a lot of traits with Larry Laffer. The game can even considered be a homage to the character. Al Lowe, the original creator, is mentioned in the special thanks section, and Dimitris Manos used some of the prototype design documents Mr Lowe offers on his site, to write the story for these series.