We’ve got some thrilling news to share with you. Poetic is one of the 8 most promising startups in Slovakia! This is great not just for Poetic but for video gaming in general as investors and the public increasingly recognize the value it brings.

We are the two dudes on the right

And we couldn’t do it without you, our backers and fans. The Kickstarter result and community support were cornerstones of our success. So thank you for believing in our vision of what it takes to create great storytelling in video games.

So here’s the story of how it happened. Few months ago we’ve applied to Startup Awards 2017. It’s a competition and “oscars” for early stage startups with global potential. We were pitching not just Sacred Fire but our storytelling video game format based on the psychology of characters.

The event is a big thing over here in Slovakia. The grand finale is televised on the national TV channel and the President of Slovakia visits the event and gives speech. Last year Uri Levine, the founder of Waze, delivered a keynote speech. So we were really thrilled when they selected us for semifinals.

The semifinals were actually a weekend-long intense bootcamp filled with mentoring sessions from investors and startup leaders from all around Central Europe. We were able to further improve our pitch and Andrej presented it on stage together with 22 other bootcamp participants in front of a merciless jury. The experience was quite intense. I even forgot to take pictures of Andrej pitching. But he did such a great job.

Lo and behold, they liked our idea so much that they selected us for the grand finale on December 1!

This is when they announced us as one of the 8 finalists

This is exciting news for Poetic and for all fans of Sacred Fire. It may open the door to an investment deal or a partnership which could make Sacred Fire even better.

So now we’re trying to perfect our 4-minute pitch and get ready for a 4-minute Q&A session while Andrej works full-time on the game story writing.

Keep you fingers crossed. We’ll keep you updated.

Alienware partnership

Dell invited us to join their indie game developer program called Indie Center Stage. It’s a part of their Alienware Arena. I’m sure many of you own one of their gaming PCs. Now we do too. They’ve sent us a great looking (and great performing) Alienware 15 gaming laptop so that we can include custom in-game light effects when Sacred Fire is played on an Alienware hardware. Thank you to Dell for their support.