At the public event games.kickstart, all those interested in games were invited to view the students' prototypes and pitch presentations live. As a supporting program, the two entrepreneurs from Smoke Stab gave a keynote speech on the topic of successful start-ups in the games industry.
For the on-site pitch, the professors or instructors in GPM each nominated the best teams from the first four semesters of their courses in advance. A total of five teams pitched in the evening in front of the assembled plenum. The groups had the chance to win: 7,500 euros in start-up funding, mentoring by start-up coaches and space in HNU's Founders Space to realize their concepts.
The jury consisted of Prof. Jens Müller (HS Augsburg), Prof. René Bühling (HS Kempten), Yves Masullo (Smoke Stab) and Robin Mächtel (Smoke Stab). This year, Ravensburger GmbH could be won as a prominent external member of the jury.
The jury finally nominated the following three teams, which received an option for a kickstart grant to further develop their ideas with financial support:
- Cycorgs (GPM4): playful sensitization for multidimensional resource management - a game mechanic that is unknown in this form.
- Nova (GPM2): Exploring the fusion of the point-and-click adventure genre with the stealth genre. So far, there are hardly any existing role models that successfully answer the question and, in particular, depict the aforementioned benefits.
- Off Track (GPM 1): Transfer of the fun racer genre to the board game level. This form of board games does not currently exist.
