A few days after the Guildford Game Festival we received the disappointing news that our application for the Games Finance Market at the London Games Festival 2023 was unsuccessful. We were very surprised by this as we had been met with such a positive response the previous year. This wasn’t going to dampen our spirits, however, and we set to work improving the pitch deck based on the advice from Fundamentally Games.

In March we pitched Quiz Quest to a handful of publishers who we thought would be a good fit for the game and our fledgling company. All of them rejected us, primarily saying the game wasn’t quite right for them. Admittedly, it is a difficult game to pitch because the concept is unfamiliar - it isn’t just an X type of game with a Y twist! We needed someone who was willing to take a risk, not just on the game but also on us - a team of two without any prior development experience (by this time Nate, the most experienced member of our team, had moved on to his own project). Sadly, our saviour was not among the publishers we submitted to. It was at this low point that we decided we were going to have to roll up our sleeves, open our wallets and make this game happen ourselves.

We had a couple of positive experiences in the summer when we were featured on Steam’s Next Fest and we were invited back to exhibit at the UKIE Festival of Play. In preparation, I had started improving the game’s art. Hiring a studio was out of the question financially speaking, so I researched the tips and tricks for how to upgrade my digital art and got to work. Both events went fairly well. We saw an uptick in our Steam wishlists following our moderately successful livestream, and, although it was quieter than the previous year, the Festival of Play was still a lot of fun.

In September we started working with a new developer who I found on the website Fiverr. His first task was to fix a lot of the bugs that had been plaguing the game since the beginning - mostly server connectivity stuff. We also welcomed our new Social Media Manager, Lizzie, who we desperately needed to revamp our online presence. All of this was in preparation for our most exciting event of the year: a slot presenting the game on the Barclays Rezzed Stage at EGX 2023…