Pocket Gamer Connects London is celebrating its 10th anniversary on 22nd-23rd January 2024. This also means the return of the Very Big Indie Pitch, a popular pitching competition that has provided developers with valuable insight, feedback, and prizes for many years. We caught up with the organizer, Sophia Aubrey Drake, for her memories and tips earlier in December.
To celebrate ten years of Pocket Gamer Connects, we’re reconnecting with some of our most successful developers. In this series, we’ll learn more about where they are now, what they gained from their pitching experiences, and their advice for anyone heading to London for the Very Big Indie Pitch in 2024.
Next up, we’re catching up with Olexiy Izvalov of Airapport, one of a select few developers to transition to being a judge, to learn more about their past, present, and future.
Sophia Aubrey Drake: Please can you introduce yourself and the team?
Olexiy Izvalov: I’m an indie game developer from Ukraine. I started my indie game development during the Flash “Golden Age” and then switched to mobile.
Currently, my biggest games are Steampunk Idle Spinner, Idle Tower Builder, and Engineer Millionaire. They are in the idle/incremental/resource management genre. Besides making my own games, I teach students at the Robert Elworthy Economy and Technology Institute, and I coordinate the organization of the world’s biggest game-creation event, Global Game Jam, in my country.
I didn’t just submit my game somewhere to wait for an answer, but I actually showed my game to real people.
Alexey Izvalov
You’ve been part of the Big Indie Pitch as a pitcher many times and have finished in the top three. What first made you want to be a part of the pitch?
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