Art looks amazing!

Also, in case you want to skip a planet in the beta and move on to other planets, all you have to do is enter the Konami Code (http://gamersushi.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/11/the-code.jpg) on the MAIN MENU of the game. It will unlock all planets.

The easiest way imo is through twitter. It may take some time but if you follow their conversation and get to know them (just DO NOT PITCH YOUR GAME...EVER on social media if you try to get in contact with someone or make friends!).

Do you mind elaborating on this? What you're saying is that even if you want them to check out your game, you should never directly tweet at them to check out your game; instead, just follow and comment on their tweets over time, and hope that they'll naturally be interested in your game?

Thank you both! Very helpful info for sure.

If you're chatting about the games you're making/will make/have made, are people in general willing to take a look at a trailer or app on an ipad?

lol. I'm actually a fan of that Ethreal logo in your sig, so if that's any indication, I'm sure you'd be able to come up with a pretty badass design for Despawn.

Despawn's probably fine, as long as you make sure the logo itself doesn't look anywhere close to Respawn's.

Hello!

I'm Kevin, and I helped found a new indie game dev called Serenity Forge. We want to make meaningful games that challenge the way you think. As a development team, we stress the importance of open-minded collaboration. Please say hi to us on Facebook and/or Twitter!

So this might be a bit premature since GDC is still 2 months away, but I'm hoping those of you who have been to GDC can give us first-timers some tips on how to take full advantage of it. I'm personally interested in networking with as many people as humanly possible, but I'm curious to know what to expect in general while there.

Thanks!

I think the art style just sorta improved, I suggest to everyone in this thread to not try to draw conclusions about this kickstarter as the data isnt really reliable enough. Pretty much every project gains more funding towards the end and the values in each day are too low to determine if there really were spikes in traffic and then if that traffic came from an art change or just making an update at all

Congrats on making it though!

Great point actually. This was something I wanted to share about OUR game in particular, so it's important to take it as just that. I hope no one here makes the same mistake we did, but if you DO, the post might be exactly what you're looking for XD

In the post, I also made sure not to count the last 24 hours of the campaign, for the exact reasons you mentioned. What would have happened during the last 48 hours if the art didn't change, I can't really say. What I do know is that before the art change, the funding progress had literally been flatlining for 4 days, and no one was taking the cheap early-bird reward. 

It's definitely really difficult, especially in the field of indie games, where it seems like a lot of the most successful indie darlings were made with just a one-man or two-man team.

You gotta understand that when it comes to finding new team members, some might still treat the game they're helping you develop as a project/hobby rather than a product. Those people are fine to work with if the stuff they're making helps you, but you can't make the mistake of relying on them for the important stuff. A lot of it comes down to attitude, and whether they're more shortsighted or longsighted. 

After Greenlight people basically all panned the art style, we did a very fast mockup of what the new style might look like and asked our current backers which one they'd prefer (https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/serenityforge/a-gravitational-adventure-lunas-wandering-stars/posts/600152). We also asked those who had previous tested the game, and it turns out that they also preferred the new style to the old one.

So it's not necessarily that we knew what the Kickstarter market specifically wanted, it's more that pretty much everyone liked the new style better. While it's true that we didn't specifically ask a statistically valid number of children what they liked, we realized by then that we've been trying to chase after a market that we were woefully ill-prepared to understand to begin with.

We actually had a story that anthropomorphisized all the planets, so that's why they all had different faces and/or accessories. Like I said in the blog post, we wanted to try to appeal to a younger audience, but we didn't put as much thought into it as we obviously should have. It seems so obvious now that we shouldn't try to appeal to a market that A) We clearly weren't familiar with, and B)Didn't actually mesh with the gameplay of the game. 

Btw, if anyone wants to try out the game as it is right now, I just posted its beta on the playtesting board: http://forums.tigsource.com/index.php?topic=38394.0

Still a lot of work to be done before release (including visuals), but a lot of elements are now coming together nicely.

[tl;dr: We did a Kickstarter, our art style was bad, it was affecting donations, we drastically changed it in a week and a half, updated our Kickstarter, money poured in.]

Just wanted to share this featured Gamasutra blog with those who might be interested. As far as I'm aware, no other Kickstarted game has really done this.

tl;dr: We did a Kickstarter, our art style was bad, it was affecting donations, we drastically changed it in a week and a half, updated our Kickstarter, money poured in.

http://gamasutra.com/blogs/KevinZhang/20140124/207605/Why_we_changed_the_art_style_in_the_middle_of_a_Kickstarter_campaign.php#comment229350

Thoughts?

The game my team is working on, Luna's Wandering Stars, is in beta right now, and I'd love for you guys to try it out and provide any comments/critiques you may have.

We also have an online questionnaire (http://ucsas.qualtrics.com/SE/?SID=SV_6llGVd4aAwDSoVT) that I'd super-duper-greatly appreciate you fill out once you've played enough of it.

Win: https://www.dropbox.com/s/7hl0qm81ei2lvdz/LWS_Betav0.7.9.8.5.zip

Mac: https://www.dropbox.com/s/xjfcnkr9zxmzl4z/LWS_Mac_Betav0.7.9.8.5.zip

Questionnaire: http://ucsas.qualtrics.com/SE/?SID=SV_6llGVd4aAwDSoVT

The beta has 90 levels, and 9 unique planetary "powers" that are switched up every 10 levels (aka every time you move from one planet to another). There's still a lot of tweaking to be done (especially difficulty and ease of use of the some the later powers/levels). This is going to be our first commercial game, so we're super excited to show it off to fellow indie devs! Again, I'd love feedback of any kind. Thanks!

Greenlight link: http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=182979907

A main issue with the whole Greenlight vs some-other-system-that'll-probably-be-just-as-flawed topic is which system would be best for games that are otherwise good, but not too marketable. While a major advantage of being an indie dev is making games that you WANT to make, in the end, you still gotta make sure it's interesting to other people.

Since a lot of solid indie games can never really get traction through traditional marketing methods (and that includes most of the criteria that Valve uses to measure whether to Greenlight a game), ideally I'd like to see Greenlight evolve into something that can at least give the not-so-marketable games a chance.

So, an app-store environment wouldn't be very pretty. But...I can definitely see how Valve might implement a lot of the pros of an app-store.

Company names CAN be important not only for consumer perception, but for potential partners who might want to work with you on games. The company I helped found is "Serenity Forge", and the name itself actually attracted a lot of partners and former partners for the past few months.

Just something to keep in mind.