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Re: The active Kickstarter projects discussion thread.

Posted: Tue Jul 28, 2015 10:29 am
by matt
It was good that the mentioned they received permission for the 13th Doll. When I was reading the campaign, I was wondering is this kosher? Should I report this? What will happen, but then my questions were answered. It is a much better approach than the Zelda Anime Series that basically said "We are as surprised as you that Nintendo hasn't stopped us", and then sure enough they were stopped.

Re: The active Kickstarter projects discussion thread.

Posted: Thu Jul 30, 2015 10:11 pm
by LobsterSundew
SnarfQuest Tales is an adventure game based on the comic strip.

There was a article on Kotaku about how problematic RED ASH's campaign is. With the news about FUZE Entertainment many people yanked their pledges out. The Kicktraq graph shows negative funding for July 30th. In my graphs I see a lot of $25 and $49 backers leaving. The number of backers not picking a reward tier (Likely to keep being able to comment) has increased.

There is a new trailer out for Dropsy. It was way back in 2011 when I backed the frist campaign. The game has come a long way since then.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SfRjByXbenA

Re: The active Kickstarter projects discussion thread.

Posted: Thu Jul 30, 2015 10:19 pm
by RightClickSaveAs
Dropsy's coming out in September, it looks great! Did anyone see how he makes the game? All the backgrounds (and I think the characters, but I'm not sure on that) are pixel art drawn, by him, essentially one pixel at a time. It's mind boggling and impressive, I didn't know anyone made games that way! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dlP8qfKxuSU

Re: The active Kickstarter projects discussion thread.

Posted: Fri Jul 31, 2015 11:28 pm
by LobsterSundew
RED ASH's campaign is going backwards for the number of backers at many reward tiers. For July 30th the Kicktraq's page shows -22 backers. July 31st had -3 backers.

Foxtail is another well animated adventure game with good atmosphere. That scene with the giant turtle was well done. It is launching into a Saturday which isn't the best. It apparently is also live on IndieGoGo at the same time. I was almost going to back it until I saw that other campaign for it.

Hengelight is a ASCII art dungeon crawler that is co-op. The characters that represent the characters don't seem to be locked to a grid which is something different.

Tsioque may have decided on too many $8 early-bird tiers. I don't like the look of the graphs.
http://i.imgur.com/NdERlPX.png

I received a beta key for Dropsy. I played less than half an hour before I had to go to bed back on July 14th. There was a lot of work put into the art.

Re: The active Kickstarter projects discussion thread.

Posted: Thu Aug 06, 2015 5:01 pm
by LobsterSundew
New August campaigns are launching.

Dark Storm: Ascension is a 3D game inspired by Metal Gear Solid an it has a VR missions prototype, but there is some annoying occasional beeping in the pitch video audio.

EVERSPACE is a 3D space shooter with strong visuals.

Poi is another 3D Super Mario 64 inspired game.

Prush's pitch took 3 minutes before showing gameplay.

Tower 57 is a twin-stick shooter with some strong art.

SYSTOLE is another one of those projects that actually has a demo, but doesn't have gameplay footage in the pitch video.

Mooncrest is a RPG from designers that worked at BioWare.

Retronator Pixel Art Academy is an adventure game about teaching art.

Blackwake is a multiplayer pirate combat game that has relaunched and quickly funded thanks to posts on Reddit and over 27,000 views on the new YouTube trailer.

RED ASH's campaign failed, but at least it produced some very interesting graphs.
http://i.imgur.com/gYnyNmY.png
On July 30th there was the start of many backers downgrading their pledges after being angered by the news about the Chinese publisher deal. It was also revealed yesterday that Mighty No.9 will be delayed until 2016. This angered their community even more because the developers were denying that a delay would happen last week.

Re: The active Kickstarter projects discussion thread.

Posted: Fri Aug 07, 2015 11:30 pm
by LobsterSundew
PaciFire is dubstep and creepy 3D models of babies engaged in multiplayer shooter battles.

Eco is an ambitious multiplayer Minecraft-like survival game with a focus on building up player economies and civilizations that have group decisions. It was mentioned in update #17. The rest of this post will be about this project.

It launched on a Friday, but it does a better job ending on Wednesday September 9th at 9pm PDT. The Greenlight campaign launched back in June and was a success with 549 comments there when I was writing this.

The visual presentation is very good. The images are colourful. There is good use of animated GIFs. The pitch video is under 4 minutes and has pretty visuals on environments and animals to keep people interested. The rewards text is big solid chunks that take more time to skim.

What the game attempts to do is something that Minecraft modders have been trying to implement, such as player run economies and stores. There is an appeal to creating a game that seamlessly integrates what would be a lot of Minecraft mods. It is still going to have to try to present its differences from Minecraft. It isn't clear what other players will look like in-game.

I wonder if it will have to eventually change its name. There was a Amiga game and it may be too close to Ecco the Dolphin. Three characters is very short for a game's title which may lead to SEO problems later. There are a lot of products on Kickstarter that started with "eco".

233 backers have pledged $13,060 for an average amount of $56.05 per backer. A general rule is that the average will be within double or triple the price of the introductory tier for a copy of the game ($20 in this case).

Averaging $40 per backer would mean the campaign needs to aim for 2,500 backers to reach $100,000 funded. At $60 per backer it would be about 1,660 backers. To reach $30,000 would take 750 backers at $40 per backer or 500 backers at $60 per backer. It needs to aim for around 250 to 375 backers in its first 7 days to have good enough momentum going into the trough period. It did get covered by Eurogamer and Indie Game Magazine on its first day. There was also over 2,400 Twitter followers. Some time ago it had a good /r/games post.

The $25 early-bird tier has 5,000 slots, the $30 tier has 2,000 slots and so on with every following tier having caps. From one perspective I would worry about a big pricing gap occurring when one of the reward tiers becomes full, but really the limits are so large that they aren't going to be easy to fill. At first glance I thought they went with a cascading type early-bird rewards which can be poor performers, but I know see it is more like they just put a cap on every reward tier after $20.

I can't really judge if a game like this is priced well at $20 to $25. There is a price jump from $65 to $125 that may need to be filled later. The $30 tier for alpha access is the most populated. Being named in the credits is at $10 and it isn't as clear as it should be with the wording that all backers at $10 or more get into the credits.

The project thumbnail shows concept art that is less pretty than an actual screenshot of the game. The logo in the top right corner is also very small.

The rewards structure has vary little variety in what it offers. It is mostly just earlier access and multiple copies until the large priced rewards. There is a t-shirt reward, but it may get complaints for being at the $135 tier. Add-ons would be the easiest way to try to enhance those existing rewards.

A CTRL+F for "Linux" came up with no mention. On Greenlight it says PC, Mac and Linux. They could be losing potential Linux backers by not being clear about supporting it.

For a minimum goal that large the project is going to need to get a lot of external press coverage in the first half. If it can't then it might not see a fast enough growth rate during the Kickstarter trough.

Re: The active Kickstarter projects discussion thread.

Posted: Mon Aug 10, 2015 7:20 am
by evilkinggumby
yeah everspace looks really solid already. I suck at these types of games and so won't bother backing it as i won't ever play it much, but very kool so far. I hope it does well.

Re: The active Kickstarter projects discussion thread.

Posted: Mon Aug 10, 2015 9:33 pm
by LobsterSundew
Bootleg Systems is a neon 1980s themed first-person shooter.

Phantom Knight is back with its 4th attempt at getting funded on Kickstarter.

Shutterbug is Pokemon Snap with butterflies.

Many very low quality projects are launching.

Here are graphs about Eco:
http://i.imgur.com/ElQ1NMO.png
■ 454 backers have pledged $20,836 (20.84%). The average pledge amount is just a little big high $45.89 per backer.
■ There are 10 unallocated backers. The lack of a $1 tier is a potential reason. A $5 tier was just added, but a $5 tier is not a $1 tier.
■ There is a big price gap between the $65 and $125 tiers.
■ The $30 tier for alpha access has 258 backers. It is both the most populated and largest contributor of funding. The $20 tier is the introductory tier with 35 backers.
■ The $4,500 tier is over 35% of the allocated funding.
■ There are no backers in the $400 to $3,500 tiers.
■ The drop from the $30 tier to the $35 and $60 tiers in the number of backers is very large. The $35 tier is explained because the $30 tier is its early-bird. It is the $60 tier to worry about. That tier just adds a second copy of the game.
■ The project creator made at least 7 comments of the comments for August 10th.
■ The $125 only recently saw activity.
■ The $250 tier has stopped growing.

Re: The active Kickstarter projects discussion thread.

Posted: Tue Aug 11, 2015 10:44 pm
by LobsterSundew
GRIP is a spiritual successor to the vehicular combat Rollcage.

Voidrunner at 2 minutes 14 seconds into the pitch finally shows gameplay. It does some fancy visuals to its aerial combat.

There continues to be a lot of projects even without any pitch videos launching. There have also been cancellations like Mooncrest.

There was an announcement for Woolfe The Red Hood Diaries that they've run out of funds to even mail out the physical rewards they already produced.

Re: The active Kickstarter projects discussion thread.

Posted: Wed Aug 12, 2015 6:58 am
by evilkinggumby
LobsterSundew wrote:There was an announcement for Woolfe The Red Hood Diaries that they've run out of funds to even mail out the physical rewards they already produced.
that is a shame. i didn't back or even hear of this but it sounds like the first chapter was released, digitally at least, for them to enjoy. So not a total loss, but def a bummer for those investing a lot and not getting any of the physical rewards expected. I guess they didn't even see the writing on the wall and consider doing what Hero U did and throw out a supplemental second kickstarter? I suspect we're going to see a lot more of these as time goes on and a number of projects that popped up years ago crumble and fall.