Jyri Kilpeläinen is a 35-year-old game developer and founder of Kiemura, a game company based in Kotka, Finland. He started developing games as a hobby and within 3 years founded his own game company. Some key events included developing the game Mystic Marbles in his spare time, releasing it on Android to modest success, developing additional games like Super Line Rush, and eventually partnering with a publisher to release Tiltagon, which became a commercial success featured in app stores. Jyri emphasizes that being an independent game developer takes perseverance through failures and experimentation over time to achieve success.
3. ● 35 year old dude from Kotka
● Software Engineer (KyAMK, 2004)
● Web & Game Developer
● Husband and a father of two girls (5 & 3)
● Co-founder & CEO at Kiemura
Jyri Kilpeläinen is...
4.
5. ● Game company from Kotka, Finland
● 62 days old
● Making games for digital platforms (duh)
● Available for hire for game / app / web
projects!
Kiemura is...
24. ● Released Mystic Marbles on Android
● Made a few updates
● Released Super Line Rush (game made &
released in 5 hours)
February – May 2014
25.
26. ● Pitched at PG Connects Helsinki (June)
● Updated Super Line Rush and released in
3rd party Android stores
● AppTurbo campaign
● Prototyped a tilt maze game
June-September 2014
32. ● Continued tilt game prototype
● Pitched at PocketGamer Big Indie Pitch
before Slush
--> Got media attention
October-November 2014
33.
34. ● NoodleCake contacted (Dec)
● Publishing deal (Jan)
● Trailer released (Feb)
● NoodleCake demoed game in GDC (Mar)
● Made two meme games
December 2014 – March 2015
40. ● Released on April 9th on App Store,
Google Play and Amazon Appstore
● Featured on App Store 'Best New Games'
and Google Play 'Editor's Choice'
Tiltagon Launch
45. ● Working on Tiltagon update
● Established Kiemura with Piia (Aug)
● Became full-time entrepreneur (Sep)
● Gave talk at PG Connects Helsinki (Sep)
May – September 2015
49. ● ”It's a marathon, not a sprint”
● Things ARE going to fail so be prepared
● Experiment different things
● Play it safe
● Anything is possible!
Takeaways