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[Aloys]

Has anyone any positive experience crowdfunding an iOS-exclusive game?

I'm currently in the process of developing a prototype for an iOS game and I'm looking at the various ways to help fund the full thing, and my research regarding Kickstarter (or other crowdfunding platforms) isn't exactly encouraging..

First off there are very few iOS-only games on KS, and even less on IndieGogo. You see plenty of multi-platform games that include an iOS release (Republique for instance) but very few iOS exclusives.

Second it is very hard to enventually distribute your complete game to your backers. Apple doesn't seem to have any easy (or even hard) way to gift an app to many people (say, thousands of backers). And that alone seems like a pretty big obstacle in itself... (and a weird decision by Apple)

Are there any sucess stories in this regard I might have missed?
Or does this fall under the 'nope' category?

[Aloys]

I guess no.

[bdsowers]

I haven't seen much that's positive. iOS games were always hard to get backed on Kickstarter, and now the hype has died down a bit and *everything* is a little harder to get Kickstarted. You almost need a fully developed game just to have promo materials that draw backers in, or at least a very shiny vertical slice.

Haven't read any success stories, but I honestly haven't looked in a long while, so don't take my word as gospel. 

[JasonPickering]

why is the game iOS only? does it feature mechanics that would only work on a mobile device?

I have thought about this also and all I can say is you would have to have really great rewards as its almost impossible to get a key to everyone who "bought" the game through kickstarter. You could in theory be up front about the entire process and say "Look I cant send out copies but when the game launches it will be a dollar and you will be notified". then I guess you could adjust each tier. so instead of having a 5 dollar tier, have a 4 dollar tier so they get to save their dollar for when the game launches (and make sure you tell them this), but this makes it hard as basically everybody who was going to buy your game will now be getting it after the initial kickstarter run.

If you were doing a free game it might be easier. I believe the people who did space team did something similar when they launched saying "hey we want to make free games, you can help us".

[Aloys]

why is the game iOS only? does it feature mechanics that would only work on a mobile device?

Yes, being a puzzle game this relies heavily on multi-touch input for manupulating items, rotating them, manipulating several at the same time, etc.
Plus, developping a multiplatform project is a headache I'd rather avoid. :p  This could be PC compatible, but it would require several compromises on the design, and I don't want that either.

If you were doing a free game it might be easier.

Clearly. But unfortunately this kind of game doesn't lend itself too well to a free2play model. This will have to be a so-called 'premium' pricing scheme. Which makes things a bit more complicated on the crowdfunding front right now..

[notpatchman]

You could maybe have a secret code given to each backer that when entered, enables special content in the game.

Didn't Godus do iOS/Android release via their KS?  Not sure how they did it.

[Moth]

Pakka Pets: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1298607829/pakka-pets

[bdsowers]

You could maybe have a secret code given to each backer that when entered, enables special content in the game.

You can certainly do this. What's a little more dubious is doing this specifically to subvert the iOS IAP store (example: providing a $5 IAP but then Kickstarter backers get a code that unlocks that). Apple doesn't like people trying to go around the App Store.

[Aloys]

You could maybe have a secret code given to each backer that when entered, enables special content in the game.

You can certainly do this. What's a little more dubious is doing this specifically to subvert the iOS IAP store (example: providing a $5 IAP but then Kickstarter backers get a code that unlocks that). Apple doesn't like people trying to go around the App Store.

That's the whole problem: Apple doesn't provide a technical way to easily gift a game to many (ie: thousands) people. So we have to use more convoluted ways which may end up in a gray area... (ie: not good)

Pakka Pets: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1298607829/pakka-pets

It's interesting, I'll try to contact those guys, to see if they can share how they handled that part. Thanks for the heads up!