Jarek Kolář

Jarek Kolář
Born	8 November 1977 Czechoslovakia
Residence	Brno, Czech Republic
Nationality	Czech
Occupation	Game designer
Years active	1993-present
Organization	Bohemia Interactive
Known for	Vietcong

Jarek Kolář (born Jaroslav Kolář; November 8, 1977) is a Czech video game designer.

In the early 1990s he enjoyed playing LucasArts adventure games, especially Indy III and Monkey Island I. While studying at the secondary school Gymnázium Slovanské náměstí in Brno, he met programmer Petr Vlček and they together created a parody of Monkey Island where Guybrush (transcribed as Gájbraš) had to escape from an island inhabited by donkeys. His opponent was LeGek, a brother of LeChuck (with reference to the book Chuk and Gek by Arkady Gaidar about the adventures of brothers Chuk and Gek in "the great and happy country named Soviet Union", a compulsory reading for school children in communist Czechoslovakia).

Petr Vlček at the time only had an 8-bit Atari 800 and therefore developed the game editor and engine at school. Jarek drew the locations and wrote the plot. While on a school trip to Polička, Jarek decided to skip a lunch with his classmates and instead went to find the panelák where entrepreneur Petr Vochozka lived at the time. Two weeks later, Vochozka saw their demo and agreed to produce and distribute the game.The Secret of Donkey Island, released in June 1994 after two years of development, is considered the first Czech commercially successful point-and-click graphical adventure. The sales were supported by an enthusiastic review written by Petr Vochozka for Czech game magazine Excalibur. In the following months Petr Vlček and Jarek Kolář created an adventure game called Seven Days and Seven Nights, based on a story about a womanizer written by Petr Vochozka for a semi-developed Amiga game.

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