Ritual Studios, the developer of the music-themed RPG Fretless – The Wrath of Riffson, has shared a brief guide to pitching indie games to publishers, drawing from their own experience and eventual deal with Playdigious Originals. Created in collaboration with Unity, this interview is part of the Indie Survival Guide series, spotlighting real-world tips and stories from the dev community.
In case you missed it, Unity has recently introduced the Indie Survival Guide, a growing archive of Q&As, VODs, and live streams featuring insights from developers and industry professionals. While there’s no guaranteed playbook for success, learning how others have navigated design challenges, business decisions, and day-to-day survival can definitely improve your chances.
What was your initial strategy for finding a publisher? When in development did you start looking?
Ritual Studios: When we initially thought about getting a publisher, we were about 3 or 4 years into part-time development. The game was still pretty early on, and we were still trying to nail down what it was. We were all just working on the game on weekends or after work, meeting up when we could.
At that point, we really weren’t too sure where the game was going as far as if we wanted to really take it seriously or not. Around 2021, we decided to go for it and get a publisher. We found a really great resource from The Powell Group, which is a very large, comprehensive list of game publishers. After we found this, we made a pitch deck and started pitching to any publisher we thought would be interested in the game.
What were some unexpected challenges you encountered during your search?
Ritual Studios: Getting a publisher took a very long time, especially since it was our first game. We sort of expected it to maybe take a few months to be close to a deal, but it ended up taking us a year. Publishers take quite a long time to respond to pitches, if they respond at all. Some of the publishers we pitched to get hundreds if not thousands of pitches a month, so you really need to expect the process to go on for a while. Publishers are going to be giving you a lot of money to let you develop your game, and they really need to be sure that they can take the leap with you.
What went into preparing for the pitch? What did you need to have ready?
Ritual Studios: Preparing for the pitch turned out to be more of a struggle than we were initially expecting. It was quite hard to find resources on making a good pitch deck and what publishers really wanted to see from pitches. Things like estimated sales targets, budget, and timeline took us quite a long time to nail down. You also need to have a very clear understanding of what your game actually is. What is the hook? What is the core loop of the game? Is your game prepped for localization? What makes it different from other pitches they might be getting? On top of that, publishers really want to see a playable demo in your pitch, so we had to curate a small slice of the game while also making the pitch deck at the same time.
Can you talk a bit about pitching your game to Playdigious Originals?
Ritual Studios: When we pitched to Playdigious, we heard back from them very quickly, and they showed immediate interest and asked to meet with us right away. This was very different from most of the publishers we had been talking to before. Emails would go quickly, we had several calls with various members of their team, and they were not afraid to show their excitement for the project, which was really nice for us.
Playdigious understood the game right away, they understood the music aspect of it, the heavy metal, the art style, all of it. Some of these things had put off other publishers, and Playdigious wanted more of it. There were no compromises to our vision, and that made it clear that Playdigious was the right publisher for Fretless.
How did the choice of Unity as your game engine influence discussions about potential porting opportunities/increasing potential market reach?
Ritual Studios: We chose Unity as our engine because we all learned it in school together and were comfortable with it. We didn’t really consider any other engines because, at the time the project was started in early 2018, Unity was just the go-to engine for indie devs.
If you could distill your experiences searching for and finding a publisher into one actionable takeaway, what would it be?
Ritual Studios: If you are an indie dev looking to get your game published, expect it to take a long time and prepare yourself and your project for that. Pitching took around a year for us, and production of the game basically stopped during that process. Also, get a lawyer!
You may dive deeper into the Indie Survival Guide for more hard-earned advice from devs who’ve been there.
