UP/START & ARTWALK
WE JUST GRADUATED!
The three co-founders of UNFATED STUDIOS are now graduates of the Maryland Institute College of Art, and we are extremely proud! None of us ever expected to have come this far in such a short amount of time. Growing up, never would we have thought to have started an official game development studio while we were at college, to be committed to a world and create stories together, but here we are 7 members big!
Graduation photo with our professors Melanie Stegman and Sam Sheffield
Words from founder Roofi Mulya
2025 UP/START Venture Competition
The UP/START Venture Competition is an annual competition held by the MICA Ratcliffe Center for Creative Entrepreneurship, giving senior students and 1-year alumni a chance to not only learn how to start a business, but also win funding from a pool of $100,000. We launched UNFATED STUDIOS together during our senior year of college through the 2025 UP/START Venture Competition program. For us, this was more than just a group project, it was transforming what was once just a passion project into a lifelong dedication and a real, functioning business. As a result, all three of us went through the acceleration program preparing to bite that bullet —extensively learning the language of business, finances, and the market when it was initially quite foreign to us art students. We also would love to shout out our mentors Ashley Guchait and Kyrstin Cooksey from BOBA STUDIOS, past winners of UP/START, for helping us and asking us the hard questions throughout the process.
The core things we’ve learned during the competition has been the language of money and market research. I know “money” might have came across as an early halloween jumpscare but the UP/START program have revealed to us just how useful of a tool it is. We learned from Hakim Dyer the way to view a cash flow projection not just as tool, but a language to translate the calendar of the business into an objective point of view —and to constantly revise that and pivot, pivot, pivot. We also learned the importance of market research and how extremely helpful it directs our business and grounds us in our proper desired place. We found out some very interesting facts, such as how culturally inspired games is a current trend and how the average reviews for indie games have been more or less equal to AAA games recently.
We are proud to say that we are extremely grateful for the UP/START opportunity and will continue to keep ourselves even more educated in business, as not only did it provide us with the necessary skills, it puts our art in a grounded perspective.
ARTWALK
As one of the last achievements of our time at MICA, we were able to put out a stunning exhibition for the 2025 MICA Artwalk event that we are incredibly proud of. Artwalk is an annual event held by MICA in which they showcase every graduating senior’s thesis exhibition, and it usually takes place in almost all the buildings on campus with over 2000 people visiting. Together, we managed to get a sweet corner spot and as a three-people thesis, we got a larger space than others. We created a cozy game lounge with the timeline of our studio on the left wall showcasing how we started, our achievements so far, and our future plan. On the right wall is a salon-style exhibit of the art as well as a little reel showcasing the animations and VFX of our game. In the center is of course the TV with an early playable demo and in the middle of the space is a 3-people couch and a table showcasing our new artbook. We also had Indonesian-inspired ceramics Roofi made during his junior year scattered around the exhibition.
This exhibit was a huge milestone and a testament of the place we’ve reached and the ambitious goals we aim towards. It was one of the first times we ever presented ourselves publicly as a studio and a business, as a professional group.
