Pitching for Investment

Flora Fatalis Pitch Deck

To start creating a pitch deck I researched the information that should go into a typical indie mobile game pitch. I modelled the deck on ‘The Game Company Pitch Deck’ (2021) by The Games Fund while taking inspiration from gorgeous looking pitch decks for Backbone and Bear and Breakfast. Colour pallets and typography had already been decided in the art direction document for the game.

Fig 1. Masters 2021. Pitch Deck Cover v1

Example Pitch Decks

Fig 2. EggNut 2021. Backbone Pitch Deck [image]

Flora Fatalis Draft 1

Copy of Flora Fatalis Pitch Deck by Sarah Masters

Lacking a story

My first draft had all the facts and information that I needed but lacked a story. I realised I had made the “first mistake entrepreneurs Make” (Baker 2015). “The first is probably the easiest to say and the hardest to do they fail to tell – A story this is not bread. This is a collection of ingredients right, this is flour this is egg this is garlic, this is time a lot of pitches actually look like this because entrepreneurs think that they want they need to have a revenue slide and a product slide and a traction slide and a team slide and they just they do it like a checklist and then they end up having a pitch that sounds like and here’s the problem and here’s the solution and here’s the product and here’s the traction and here’s the market and it doesn’t flow it doesn’t convince anybody” (Baker 2015). And this is what my slides sounded like, a checklist of good information but no story. Fortunately, Baker (2015) has five things we can do better. Looking back over my pitch, I tried to do better at telling the story of Flora Fatalis.

Try to tell a story
Why is this the time to build Flora Fatalis?
Be exciting, what is exciting about us
What is unique about us
Try not to be like verybody else

The story is a strange and unique game, a gap in the market and an alternative to your average gardening game. We need to build it now before someone else has the idea and it is an exciting idea, a unique one inspired by The Poison Garden at Alnwick.

To answer these questions I added more in-game screenshots and images, as my concept art and game art progressed the pitch deck started to take a better shape. I also re-wrote some slides, paragraphs and headings, to have a beginning middle and end, a metaphor for a garden growing.

You can see the final Pitch Deck here: https://flora.games/pitch-deck/

Fig 8. Masters 2021. Pitch Deck Cover Final

List of Figures

Figure 1. Sarah MASTERS. 2021. Pitch Deck Cover v1.

Figure 2. EggNut. 2021. Backbone Pitch Deck [image] Wings Interactive [online]. Available at:https://medium.com/wings-blog/the-nearly-perfect-indie-game-pitch-5297182a7146 [accessed 1 Dec 2021].

Figure 3. EggNut. 2021. Backbone Pitch Deck [image] Wings Interactive [online]. Available at:https://medium.com/wings-blog/the-nearly-perfect-indie-game-pitch-5297182a7146 [accessed 1 Dec 2021].

Figure 4. EggNut. 2021. Backbone Pitch Deck [image] Wings Interactive [online]. Available at:https://medium.com/wings-blog/the-nearly-perfect-indie-game-pitch-5297182a7146 [accessed 1 Dec 2021].

Figure 5. GummyCat. 2021. Bear & Breakfast [image] Wings Interactive [online]. Available at:https://medium.com/wings-blog/the-nearly-perfect-indie-game-pitch-5297182a7146 [accessed 1 Dec 2021].

Figure 6. GummyCat. 2021. Bear & Breakfast [image] Wings Interactive [online]. Available at:https://medium.com/wings-blog/the-nearly-perfect-indie-game-pitch-5297182a7146 [accessed 1 Dec 2021].

Figure 7. GummyCat. 2021. Bear & Breakfast [image] Wings Interactive [online]. Available at:https://medium.com/wings-blog/the-nearly-perfect-indie-game-pitch-5297182a7146 [accessed 1 Dec 2021].

Figure 8. Sarah MASTERS. 2021. Pitch Deck Cover Final.

References

Backbone. 2021. EggNut, Raw Fury

BAKER, Brendan. 2015. ‘5 Pitch Mistakes Entrepreneurs Make, and How To Fix Them’ [online lecture] YouTube. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xr1PKaoflLo [accessed 27 Dec 2021].

Bear & Breakfast. 2021. Gummycat, Armor Games Studio

Games Industry Biz. 2021. ‘The Perfect Publisher Pitch Deck’. [online] GamesIndustry.biz . Available at: https://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2021-08-17-the-perfect-publisher-pitch-deck [accessed 27 Dec 2021].

LIEU, Derek. 2021. ‘Derek Lieu Creative – Game Trailer Editor’. Available at: https://www.derek-lieu.com [accessed 27 Dec 2021].

KEEVAHH. 2021. ‘GUIDE FOR PITCHING TO PUBLISHERS’. Chucklefish [online]. Available at: https://chucklefish.org/blog/guide-for-pitching-to-publishers/ [accessed 27 Dec 2021].

THE GAME COMPANY. 2021. ‘The Game Company Pitch Deck by The Games Fund’. n.d. Available at: https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1xoFUWgW9msRkaWZZZVThccnE_35Gt1ltkn2HfyuJRt8 [accessed 27 Dec 2021].

WINGS. 2021. ‘The (Nearly) Perfect Indie Game Pitch’. WINGS Blog [online]. Available at: https://medium.com/wings-blog/the-nearly-perfect-indie-game-pitch-5297182a7146 [accessed 27 Dec 2021].