Our Last-Minute DigithON Pitch, and What’s New Inside YOBY

Three days ago we submitted YOBY to DigithON. Literally on the last possible day.

Like many indie startups, we had been so busy building the product that we almost forgot to tell its story. Then someone noticed the deadline. We opened the application form, started filling it in at full speed... and reached the final field: Pitch video required.

For a few seconds we simply looked at each other.

Then we did what we've been doing since YOBY was born: we improvised, trusted the idea, and pressed forward.

Instead of recording yet another founder speaking over a deck of slides, we decided to try something completely different. We wrote a musical pitch almost at the last minute, generated it with AI, and submitted it a few hours before the deadline. Maybe it's unconventional. Then again, YOBY was never meant to be conventional.

If you're curious, this is what we sent.

Whether we are selected or not almost feels secondary now. Preparing that application forced us to answer a question that every startup eventually has to face: can we explain, in just a few minutes, why our project deserves to exist? We believe we can.

YOBY was born from a simple observation. Children learn mathematics, history, geography, languages... yet one of the most important skills they'll need throughout their lives, building healthy financial habits, is often left to chance. Sometimes it is taught too late. More often, it is never really taught at all. We don't think another budgeting app will solve that problem. We believe families need a place where talking about money becomes as natural as playing together. A digital world where curiosity comes before theory, where exploration comes before explanation, and where healthy habits emerge almost without noticing. That vision has been driving the project from day one.

And while we were rushing to finish the DigithON application, development never stopped. Quite the opposite. During these same days, YOBY quietly became a much larger world.

🕳️ Underground Realm

• Brand new underground world
• Access system
• Exploration map
• Terrain generation
• Decorations and environmental structures

🦡 New characters and improvements

• Badger joins the world
• Bat completely rebuilt with new model, wings, eyes and animations
• Axolotl redesigned
• Improved NPC dialogue bubbles
• Better nickname rendering, including multiplayer support

🦫 Friday Beaver Quiz

• Beaver is now a fully interactive in-world host
• Voxel quiz boat
• Weekly Friday quiz
• Improved quiz flow and player choices

🏆 Progression & Collectibles

• Streak rewards with collectible fragments
• Soundtrack progression
• More accessible collectibles economy
• Image-based collectible asset pipeline

👨‍👩‍👧 Families

• Character creation
• Household and parent provisioning
• Child-only mode
• Idle logout
• New onboarding carousel introducing NPCs and membership tiers

🎮 Gameplay & UI

• In-game school settings
• Complete Game UI restyle with accessibility improvements
• Updated mission and deposit tracking

Building a game like YOBY is a curious experience. From the outside, people often notice the big announcements: a pitch, a competition, a trailer, a launch. From the inside, however, progress is measured differently. It is a bat whose wings finally flap naturally. A quiz that becomes just a little more enjoyable. A new realm that suddenly makes the world feel twice as large. Hundreds of tiny details that, taken individually, seem almost invisible, but together slowly transform an idea into a place that people can actually inhabit.

That is where we are today.

Still building. Still learning. Still believing that one day families won't think of financial education as a lesson, but simply as another adventure they can live together.

🦆