Critique Gaming is a small game studio seeking funding of $35,000 to develop their first title called "Interrogation", a narrative puzzle game about interrogations that aims to explore social issues. Their mission is to create thought-provoking games that address real world problems. The team currently has 5 members and plans to release "Interrogation" over the course of a year in chapters to build interest. Their target market is the niche group of mature narrative gamers, estimated at 10 million players willing to spend around $230 annually.

1. Startup Pitch

2. “Developing socially responsible games”

3. Talking points
• Who are we?
• Mission
• Our games
• Interrogation
• Market
• The team
• Funding

4. Who are we?
Critique Gaming is a small game
development studio, currently
stationed in Bucharest. We are a
team of five which is now trying to
move on from amateur to
professional independent game
development.

5. Mission
We are dedicated towards building
pointful games that explore
important contemporary questions
and that harness the transformative
potential of interactive experiences to
address real-world issues.

6. Our games & competitors
We focus on building mature, narrative
driven games that challenge the
perception of their players and explore
relevant dilemmas.
After testing a few directions, we’re now
looking forward to starting the
professional development of our first title,
Interrogation.
There are very few video game developers that
have ever released similar video games. Notable
mentions are: Lucas Pope (Papers Please), 11 bit
studio (This War of Mine), Red Hook Studios
(Darkest Dungeon), Telltale, The Fullbright
Studio (Gone Home), Campo Santo (Firewatch),
Galactic Cafe (Stanley's Parable).

7. Interrogation is a narrative game that
emulates the atmosphere of dark
investigation procedurals. The game is
intended to emulate the tropes related to
interrogation scenes in pop-culture while
also offering some deconstruction. The
prototype plays as a questions-based puzzle
against a (5 minute) clock in which the player
must manage the emotions of suspects and
interpret information into discovering details
about future terrorist attacks.

8. Screenshots from our prototype

9. Screenshots from our prototype

10. Main game features
• Complex logical tracking mechanics
• Deep story with complex social commentary
• Realistic human interaction representations
• Smart narrative puzzles
• Atmospheric noire art and music
• Hard moral choices
• (and many more you will only see by playing the game)

11. Marketing Strategy for Interrogation
• Pre-launch cult creating
social media campaigns
that consist of mystery-
building releases of
narrative content
• A longer than 6 months
period of time of engaging
the gaming community and
the industry-relevant press
• The continuous release of
the game over an entire
year in the form of
chapters to allow for
interest to build-up
• A first cheaper chapter
aimed at hooking players

12. Market
Our games are aimed at the niche
and underdeveloped market of
narrative-oriented mature gamers.
The sales of the few titles that satisfy
this market point towards it being of
aproximately 10 million players.
• average price of similar games – 10
USD
• average amount spent on games
anually – around 230 USD on PC
games (our primary market)

13. The team
Currently, the team is made out of:
- Andrei (Dexter) Olaru, who is acting as the
leader of the team
- David Moscovici, the creative mind behind
our games
- Marius Petcu, our technical wizz
- Dora Marian, the team's visual artist
- Dragoș (Dexi) Stoica, the team's sound
designer

14. Bussiness Model
Short term
- Commercially release our first game
- Use the obtained revenue to fund the
production of our next game
- Create a loyal fan-base by being one of the
first few entries onto our niche market
- Expand our production capacity after
becoming financially sustainable
Long term
- Also become publishers of mature video-
games
- Further expand our production capacity by
engaging the local and regional creative
community
- Partner with NGOs and other social actors in
our production and release of socially
responsible video-games

15. Financing
We are currently looking to
fund the production of our first
title, Interrogation, process
that we estimate to last
around 12 months.
We estimate our costs to be:
- A minimum of 20,000 USD for paying
our staff
- Another 5,000 USD in administrative
costs
- Another 10,000 USD as publishing and
marketing costs
Amounting to a total of a minimum of
35,000 USD that we are looking for in
terms of financing.

16. “Developing socially responsible games”
(and trying to also make money out of it :D )