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TIGSource ForumsCommunityDevLogsNight of the Blood Moon - 100% LAUNCHED
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Author Topic: Night of the Blood Moon - 100% LAUNCHED  (Read 6723 times)
stix
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« Reply #40 on: August 16, 2018, 04:11:29 PM »

I have just 2 points to make:

1) Lobster is truly awesome and really helped me to survive Kickstarter.

2) I hadn't backed you... (I have now)

You're going to make it. The game already looks awesome, so if you can just deliver a slightly more awesome version of what you have already with these Kickstarter funds (that you're totally going to get) then you're onto a winner.

Good luck!
Thank you so much for the vote of confidence, and thank you for your backing - that is incredibly kind.
Honestly this has been the most humbling experience, and maybe you went through the same thing? What started with the kindness of Lobster has transcended into the kindness of pledges, and supportive people. There is that old saying "the universe doesn't owe you anything". No, but after this I want to give back everything I've gained.

Again, thank you for your backing, and support!
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mbel
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« Reply #41 on: August 17, 2018, 02:00:21 AM »

Hey! Let me start with congratulating you on reaching a major milestone Smiley Great job!
The OST from the last trailer absolutely kicks ass Hand Metal Right

It seems that you have forgotten to link the steam page. I know it's obvious, I'm saying it just in case if you have forgotten it among plenty of other things that you must be doing right now to finish the game: update your page and info on twitch etc. to link there Tongue

Anyway good luck and I hope to play your game in two month time Smiley
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LobsterSundew
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« Reply #42 on: August 17, 2018, 09:42:19 PM »

Here are updated graphs.
https://i.imgur.com/MmvVBwV.png

A big change within Kickstarter was the launch of both Boyfriend Dungeon and Hamsterdam on August 15th. These developers delivered on past projects. Boyfriend Dungeon is from the developer of Moon Hunters (6,044 backers in September 2014) and Hamsterdam is from the developer of Guns of Icarus (4,632 backers in March 2013). They were both part of a Kickstarter e-newsletter the same day they launched. There were other strong projects launching too and this us helping to drive traffic to the video games category on Kickstarter. Not just Night of the Blood Moon, but other active video game campaigns saw a boost.

The campaign is doing better than it was in that August 8th to August 12th stretch. Look at the shapes of the $5 and $10 tiers in the "backers by reward tier over time" graph as a visualization of how well the campaign's momentum is doing.

A reminder is that unallocated funding in the graphs comes from backers that did not select any reward tier plus also the accumulated extra amounts backers have pledged beyond reward tier prices (for add-ons and shipping). When looking at the unallocated funding in this case, view it as a way to potentially see how much of the total raised may end up going towards shipping costs. Notice how the unallocated funding has been gradually rising as backers appear at the tiers with physical rewards.

A risk of too much unallocated funding is the developer in the post-Kickstarter phase could get surprised by higher physical rewards fulfilment costs than expected. A developer expecting 20% shipping could be hit by 30% because more funding came from physical reward tiers than expected from purely digital tiers. Unallocated funding is currently around 20% on Night of the Blood Moon because physical reward items starting relatively early for a small project at the $50 tier (physical stickers). It is not too much to worry about, but also something to keep an eye on so your shipping costs aren't getting out of control. If shipping costs do go out of control there are options like limiting reward tiers, promoting non-physical tiers harder or (as a worse case scenario) announcing to backers a new amount that the campaign raise beyond 100% to cover the higher than expected costs (and warning backers the campaign would be canceled if it doesn't reach that goal). Again, no panic. Think of it like watching high blood cholesterol levels so they aren't allowed to get too high.

Kicktraq shows a trend to $4,883 CAD (108%). BackerTracker shows a trend to $4,809 CAD (106.9%). It looks good for the campaign's final surge getting funded even with potential slowdown looming in the near-future due to Gamescom (expect lots of AAA game trailers). Project update #6 was the strongest feeling so far.
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stix
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« Reply #43 on: August 27, 2018, 02:09:34 PM »

Tomorrow marks the end of this campaign! NotBM is 105% funded which is really cool, and a huge thanks to Lobster.

For anyone looking to get in on the last minute action here is a link:  http://kck.st/2NN2AXy
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LobsterSundew
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« Reply #44 on: August 28, 2018, 11:19:17 PM »

Congrats on getting funded. Night of the Blood Moon hit 116% funded with 179 backers.

Here are updated graphs.
https://i.imgur.com/yVS2ug8.png

The $20 CAD reward tier (that adds backer submitted screen caption) ended up contributing more towards the minimum funding goal than the $10 CAD tier for a copy of the game.

The average pledge hovered around $30 CAD per backer. The final average was a good $29.35 CAD per backer.

There were 19 backers at the $1 CAD tier. That means about 10% of backers picked that $1 CAD tier. Ignoring the $1 CAD backers the average rises up to $32.71 CAD per backer.

A backer disappeared from the $100 CAD tier on August 27th, but newer backers filled in that small setback in progress. On August 12th was a day that the total funding progress slipped backers (also due to a backer leaving the $100 CAD tier).

The campaign was really slow around August 7th, but after August 12th it started to do better and better. The shape of the $10 CAD and $20 CAD tiers for backers over time indicate the health of the campaign. It was gaining momentum even with Gamescom happening.

17 project updates were made before the deadline (and 2 more made on August 28th). The updates became stronger over time.

There are lots of easy mistakes to make with the backer survey process. The consequence is generally creating manual work to fix things up. The general idea is to get the questions right to mitigate future problems. A classic problem that keeps creating more work is forgetting to ask for region info for backers that picked PS4 copies. The PS4 is region-locked, so projects had to go and collect more information about what regions backers were in. The infamous Mighty No 9 had extra issues with sending keys to the right platform but the wrong regions. That is the kind of problem to mitigate when designing backer surveys.

Backer surveys are often conducted after a project creator receives the funds. That provides breathing room to compose and double-check survey questions. The longer you wait to send out surveys, the fewer people might fill out the surveys. That can result in the hassle of trying to contact stragglers. Many project creators can be surprised how many backers might end up never filling out their surveys. It can be a bad response rate if a survey is sent out years after a campaign ran. There was a common past argument to wait until just before shipping physical rewards to do the surveys so there would be an up-to-date mailing address, but Kickstarter now allows backers to resubmit if they moved. You can also do a future project update telling backers to update their mailing address (if they have moved) before a cut-off date so physical items can be produced/shipped.

Kickstarter refuses to accept a backer's survey if not all questions are given an answer. This sometimes creates a panic. Text input questions are not allowed to remain empty. Proposing options like "not applicable" or "contact me later" sometimes provides backers a way out of a confusing situation. Some project creators had such poorly written questions that it was confusing what was being asked for.

For names in the credits you ask how they would like to appear in the credits. The question text can also inform them that vulgar submissions may be rejected and that backers have the option to just put "Anonymous" if they don't want to appear in the credits. Sometimes there are instructions like "no weird non-Latin characters" or having a (generous) characters length limit on names.

Sometimes people want a different e-mail to receive their Steam key than the e-mail their Kickstarter accounts are linked to. A common question is something like "What e-mail address should digital rewards be sent to?".

Radio-buttons type questions are useful for some answers to make sorting easier. This also standardizes input so some backers aren't inputting "2" while others input "two" or even misspellings like "tow".

You may want to ask something like "Would you rather prefer a GOG key instead of a Steam key if GOG becomes an option?". There would need to be some thought put into how people who pick the GOG version would participate or not participate in the Steam alpha. Maybe there is the option to just retire those specific keys as new GOG ones are re-issued. Maybe you just send an extra key.

The $40 CAD tier with a "win or lose screen caption" may need a radio-button option to pick from "win screen message" or "lose screen message" for the following text field. That could help with sorting the spreadsheet for exporting to a CSV file later. It may overcomplicate things, but you would have instructions for what to input if a backer wants to submit an answer later because they are currently undecided what message they want to input.

Sometimes a project update is made just before a survey is sent out with useful information like a link to how to measure for t-shirt sizes and clarifying the t-shirts will use USA t-shirt sizes (sizes can vary in measurement by country). A large shirt in Japan can be different from a large shirt in Canada.

The $150 CAD tier to help make/name a dream creature can include instructions for how to contact you with their dream creature idea. There aren't many large-tier backers, so manually messaging could be enough in this case to get the backers' responses for stuff like the dream creatures.
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« Reply #45 on: August 29, 2018, 06:07:10 AM »

Congrats!

Glad to see the KS notification this morning Smiley

Now you just have to finish the game...

Switch version?

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stix
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« Reply #46 on: January 07, 2019, 04:14:35 PM »

Heyo Everyone!

IT IS FINISHED! well almost finished. There is still one more small update to come out finallizing some animations and re-implementing a few pets. I am also in the process of getting the wiki set-up.


I am incredibly excited about this; 2018 was the year I wanted to conquer a dream, and it has happened. Now I get the joy of sharing it with the world. The response so far has been great, and I'm waiting on the first batch of reviews to come through now. Fingers crossed they are as I expect  Smiley

To anyone who was following this thread thank you for understanding the silence. I am really bad at switching between marketing | programming | art, and so I decided to dedicate all of my time to absolute development. It was probably to my detriment because now nobody knows the game is coming out, but I would rather make sure it is all done right Smiley.



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stix
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« Reply #47 on: January 21, 2019, 03:14:39 PM »

NIGHT OF THE BLOOD MOON IS LAUNCHED!





STEAM PAGE || https://notbm.com/ || twitter || discord

Hey everyone,

This is one of the most exciting posts I've been able to make in a damn long time. Night of the Blood Moon is now complete, and launched on Steam. The reviews have been awesome, the community has been full of feedback, and the blessing of watching people laugh while playing my game has been bestowed upon me.

For anyone who doesn't know. Night of the Blood Moon is a rogue-lite which pulls from many genres. The weapons of a Zelda Game + 1 RTS weapon, Bullet hell mechanics, adventure, skills, pets and more. The setting gives zombies and skeletons a break and lets you take hold of a villainous nightmare as you rampage through dream lands.

Night of the Blood Moon was a solo project which left me very little time for posting devlogs. Gameplay first, but that may have apparently been my downfall. Marketing yourself is very important. I wrote a long form post about it on reddit /r/IndieDev.

At the start of this project I had said my greatest weakness was music, and during a stream one day the perfect musician came along. The composer was an absolute blast to work with, and he taught me a ton about the importance of referencing for your clients. That is almost mentioned in the /r/IndieDev article.

Anyways I am stoked to share this experience with you all, and look forward to all the feedback. Lets keep up the great work TIG.

-Tyler

STEAM PAGE || https://notbm.com/ || twitter
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bryku
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« Reply #48 on: January 22, 2019, 01:57:16 AM »

Congrats on releasing your game! Also, many thanks for the Reddit article - it's great that you decided to share your story.

Do you already have plans for your next release?
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Kebbab
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« Reply #49 on: January 22, 2019, 03:57:12 AM »

First of all, congratulations! I am releasing my game too in 2019 and I took your feedback to the heart.

I am in somewhat similar situation to yours. Also solo dev. Also first game. No publisher. I'm also afraid that I will release my game I worked my ass off on for three years and then no one will know about it.

When I plan my time for the months ahead I think only how much work I need to do when it comes to programming/art etc. What I did not put into my calculations is the time I should actively dedicate to marketing.

The whole gamedev thing taught me to value my time like nothing else. Why would I send emails, post on twitter and reach out to people when I can put this time to making my game even better?

I think its a common fallacy and we need to realize that sometimes it's better to sacrifice some features and focus this time on reaching as many targets as possible.

Anyway, congratz again and wish you lots of sales!
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