Smuggler's Holidays
Published: 02 January 2026
As the year changes to 2026, there is a second big project I would like to announce as finished: Smuggler’s Holidays! It is a very important project for me, as it was the first, big project I didn’t work alone on. And now, it comes to the point where I can proudly say it is fully completed.
New release
When talking about finishing a project, first thing to mention is: there is a new release! The most recent version of the game is available on both itch.io and Google Play, with brand new graphics, more levels and some quality of life fixes and improvemnts.
The Team
With new release out of the way, it is time to write some more about the project, how it come to be and what I have learned while creating it. And I would like to start with a thank you, a really big and sincere thank you, for the people, who made this game with me.
First is Cyprian “trig0n” Kalbarczyk, a fellow student at University and a friend. It was actually more of his idea to make Smuggler’s Holidays. It has all started in summer of 2024, when we were talking about one of the elective courses he took at the time about experimenting in economy. And one of those experiments was “Smuggler on the Archipelago of Islands”, which (in own words of the lecturer) was perfect to make a mobile game about.
This is why I want to say thank you, Cyprian, for this journey. We have undoubtledly learned a lot, both about game development and team work. You have my respect for your creativity, hard work (you know, the way the game is played is basically your achivement) and a lot of patience.
The second person, who singlehandedly changed the look of the application from “programmer art” and “this looks a bit like a prototype, mostly because it is” into what really feels like a real game - Marysia Dudek! Thank you, from the bottom of my heart for amazing graphics, advice about appropriate fonts to use as well as the colors that make game’s style well defined and consistent.
Last but not least, thank you to Tomasz Kopczewski, Dorota Celińska-Kopczyńska and Eryk Kopczyński, the researchers who wrote about the Smuggler on the Archipelago problem. It were the Mr. Kopczewski’s lectures that has started the work on this project and we have received a lot of support from Ms. and Mr. Kopczyński during the development.
Project summary
The Smuggler’s Holidays is primarily a mobile game (also available for Windows and Linux and even playable in web browser), where you are an interstellar tourist. When visiting new planets mostly covered by the oceans, you discover that you can come back home richer. To do that, you make the plan: to become a smuggler. The idea is simple: you can buy and sell goods at each island on a given planet. Prices are different on each of them. You want to buy them at low cost, travel to a different island, and to sell them at higher price. The remainder is your profit. How much can you earn?
There are also some constraints you must fulfill: the island you end on must be the one you started from (as only this one has a spaceport) and you must visit all islands (again, you are a tourist, so go sighseeing!). As travelling takes some time, you have a limited number of turns - or your holidays will end, leaving you stranded on some tropical island of wonder…
As you progress throughout the game, you visit more civilized planets with more sophisticated rules. You discover new types of paths between islands, and, among others, prices changing randomly, making the levels slightly different any time you enter them again.
The game has been made with Godot Engine and we have heavily benefited from using Git as a version control system. The biggest challenge for me was to write the code in a way that will be understandable and modifiable by other human beings (both of us who have written the code did not care about artificial readability, as this project do not use AI). Did I succed? I think this is a question for Cyprian to answer.
All in all, it was really fun to take part in this project, learn, grow and create what I think of as a first real mobile game I have made (and certainly first that got published at Google Play!). So, once again, thank you Cyprian and Marysia for everything. Thank you to our lecturers, who gave us inspiration and guidance. And thank you to all of our friends, who have become testers and provided us valuable feedback.
Thank you and may we meet again, on some other project!