The Big Indie Pitch is a regular event run by the makers of PocketGamer.biz. It sees indie developers engage in a speed-dating-styled pitching competition for fame and those sweet, sweet promotional packages.

The event gives indies four minutes to pitch their games to a panel of press, publishers and industry pundits. The judges then pick three winners and everybody gets valuable feedback.

The indie view

The Big Indie Pitch is getting bigger and bigger as we bring it to events all across the world. To give you an idea of what the event is like, who attends the events and the games on show, we've sat down with a number of past BIP contestants to offer their views.

Today, we're speaking to Yarl Bringa from Limestone Games, who submited Aeon Must Die! to The Big Indie Pitch at GameDevDays 2018 and walked away as the first ever champion of the Big Indie Pitch in Estonia.

PocketGamer.biz: Tell us a little about yourself and your indie studio. Who is in the team and what are their inspirations?

Yarl Bringa: Limestone games currently employs 11 on-site staff. You could say it’s a rag-tag group of highly motivated individuals, but during development we became a real team. Members sometimes fulfilling multiple roles, playing on each others strengths growing as individuals and as a collective.

We believe that games are an emerging art-form, not just a way to make money off customers but a way to deliver a - hopefully enlightening - message. We want to make our mark on this young medium while looking back as far as ancient classical works of art to modern visual media for inspiration.

Tell us about your latest project that you pitched at the competition.

Aeon Must Die! is a game that turns the beat-em-up genre on its head introducing breakneck risk-reward gameplay, innovative tactical fighting favoring brains over reflexes, and an RPG alignment system that tracks how you behave as a warrior and changes the challenge and story accordingly.

The ruthless, grim but colourful world looks and feels like that ridiculous action-packed anime VHS tape your parents heavily disapproved of. Go on a violent journey with a disgraced symbiotic emperor, a fuel-blooded amnesiac with a hole in his head and a sentient hoverbike.

How hard is it to survive as an indie developer?

I would like to tell a story that it is all sunshine and roses, but I would be lying. It is hard. On every step of the way, be it skill hunting, funding or even general stress survival. But, it makes us better and stronger as a whole.

In indie development, being a team is not enough, you have to be the team to survive. I am proud to say that Limestone Games is currently on this exact track and are ready to conquer even greater heights.

How was your experience pitching as a part of the Big Indie Pitch?

It was really nice to be able to pitch an outstanding product like Aeon Must Die! game at Big Indie Pitch. In a way the majority of the work was done by the team in preparation for the event, so I only needed to highlight two to three features and I could immediately see that the judges’ eyes lit up with excitement and interest. With great back end, pitching is easy.

What do you feel you have gained from these experiences and what do you still hope to gain?

Overall pitching gave an opportunity to understand the quintessential strengths of our project.

n future we hope that pitching would lead to some publisher/investor/platform holder approaching Limestone Games with a lucrative mutually beneficial offer. Being a true self-funded indie project, any scenario of the above mentioned would be nice.

What are your hopes for this game in the future and do you have any plans for any future projects?

Right now we are fully concentrated on Aeon Must Die! Since the IP is unique and deeply thought through and all the story cannot fit into even a triple-A multi-million title, we are considering further installments down the road if we find our audience.

We would also like to produce some other games that we have on the shelf, unrelated to the Aeon Must Die! title. In general, Limestone Games is here to stay in the game development industry.

Want to show off your exciting new game? We host Big Indie Pitch events throughout the year, so be sure to keep an eye out on our events page for an event near you.

Upcoming BIPs include:

• Jun 12th to 14th 2018 - The Big Indie Pitch in LA 2018
• Jul 5th to 6th 2018 - The Big Indie Pitch at The Big Indie Fest in Vienna 2018
• Jul 5th to 6th 2018 - The PC Indie Pitch at The Big Indie Fest in Vienna 2018
• Jul 10th to 11th 2018 - The Big Indie Pitch at Develop:Brighton 2018
• Aug 3rd to 4th 2018 - The Big Indie Pitch at ChinaJoy 2018
• Aug 22nd to 23rd 2018 - The Big Indie Pitch at Gamescom 2018
• Sep 11th to 12th 2018 - The Very Big Indie Pitch at Pocket Gamer Connects Helsinki 2018

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