Kickstarter changed some of its visual design today. Some parts that were previously green or dark grey are now blue. As a backer, the reward tier that I selected on a project has a new blue outline on the reward tier's box and a more obvious darker "Manage your pledge" button. I haven't noticed any other changes yet.

More campaigns are launching. Most of them are small projects that aren't gaining traction. Some medium-sized campaigns are having their final pushes.

Epic Tavern is $3,880 from its $40,000 goal with many days remaining. It should end up working towards stretch goals soon.

--- Part 1 --- campaign exposure.

Moonlighter is strongly holding onto the 2nd rank in popularity for the video games category. The 1st place is held by Sam Dyer's new Famicon visual compendium book. That project creator has previously used Kickstarter for Commodore 64 and ZX Spectrum visual compendiums. Fable Fortune is 3rd. The 4th rank goes to a Lovecraftian CRPG called Stygian that launched. 5th is Chronicles of Elyria that has started its last 48 hours. 6th place is SAURIAN which was previously the top project before the new wave of fresh projects. Moonlighter is 3rd in the overall games category.

The Steam Greenlight campaign is now live and bringing in traffic.

There were more non-English gaming news coverage. OnlySinglePlayer, Game Skinny, Gaming Cypher and One Angry Gamer made posts about the project. The press release appeared on Gamasutra. Square Enix made a post on their blog linking to the project.

There was a bunch of Twitter activity. Some small Reddit posts also appeared in addition to the /r/Games AMA thread. There were more than 700 Facebook likes so far. Bitly is showing 109 shortlink clicks.

AMD's new graphic cards announcements are currently soaking up a lot of press for major gaming news sites. The Xbox One also has rumors about drops in pricing and potential hardware revisions. Overwatch continues to have articles and guides posted.

There are 44 supporters on the Thunderclap campaign already.

--- Part 2 --- campaign performance numbers.

1,354 backers have pledged $36,120 (90.30%). The campaign could be over 100% by tomorrow. Keep reminding yourself that right now is expected to be the easiest part of June for you to get press coverage. The focus shifts from achieving 100% funded to achieving the first few stretch goals.

Kicktraq shows a trend toward $400,520 (1001%). Remember this can be very optimistic this early in the campaigns' run. BackerTracker shows a trend to $174,493. My instincts are pointing towards being around $70,000. It takes about a week to have a better understanding of how the campaign is doing.

SideKick is still acting weird by showing just a 32% success probability while the campaign is $3,880 away from 100% with more than 30 days still remaining.

Here are graphs about how the reward tiers are doing:
http://i.imgur.com/TTHxQtp.png

Unallocated backers are those that didn't select any reward tier. Unallocated funding is pledge amounts I can tie to reward tiers. When those numbers are high it can indicate a problem or cheating. Moonlighter is doing well. It has 7 unallocated backers and $415 in unallocated pledges.

The $25 tier for beta access (and that bonus weapon) is performing better than expected at up-selling backers from the $15 tier (for the game, wallpapers and PDF).

The drop in the number of backers from the $25 to $40 tier is acceptable, but should be watched to see if it gets worse. There is the opportunity to insert a new reward tier between the $25 and $40 tiers, but for now efforts can stay focused on marketing.

The largest individual pledge appears to be $500. There aren't 5 hidden $2,000 backers or a hidden $10,000 backer like other campaigns will try. The traction is impressive because it isn't relying on very large pledges.

350 backers at the $12 tier are contributing at least $4,200. There are 385 backers at the $15 tier contributing at least $5,775. The 354 backers at the $25 tier are contributing at least $8,850 towards the total raised. The $25 tier is the best contributor towards the goal providing 25.82% of the current $34,275 in allocated funding I can trace back to the reward tiers.

The average pledge amount is now up to $26.81 per backer. I feel it may reach $35 per backer if it starts getting more large pledgers.

704 backers have currently pledged $16,270 (40.67%). The launch day went well.

--- Part 1 --- campaign performance.

By 12:53PDT Moonlighter's campaign had surpassed 30% funded with 543 backers pledging $12,357. Crossing the 30% funded objective so soon is very good for its chances to get funded. What is more uncertain is how many stretch goals will be reached.

The average pledge is $23.11 per backer. A $15 priced game usually lands an average of between $22 and $31 per backer. All 350 $12 early-bird tier slots are filled. The average pledge amount should rise as newcomers pick the more efficient (at cover funding distances) $15 tier. At $31 per backer it would take 1,290 backers to reach 100% funded. At $22 per backer it would take 1,818 backers to do the same.

Kicktraq shows a trend to $273,190 (682%). It takes about a week before the Kicktraq trend becomes more accurate. It is possible to add tags like "PS4" to the Kicktraq page using that "+Suggest" button. It can take some time for tags to appear due to moderation.

SideKick is for some reason showing a 12% success probability. Weird.

BackerTracker shows a trend to $78,556.

Bitly shows 81 clicks of the project shortlink (this is not the long project URL).

Kicklytics will show a trend after 5 days.

--- Part 2 --- exposure.

Moonlighter is ranked #1 in popularity for the video games category. It is 3rd in the overall games category behind the tabletop projects Xia: Embers of a Forsaken Star and Outlive.

Hardcore Gamer did an article. There were also German and Spanish web sites. There was a post on the NeoGAF crowdfunding thread.

A post on /r/Games had 72% upvotes and 11 comments. A post on /r/gamernews had 68% upvotes and 2 comments. Overall the majority of comments are positive and about the art style. A /r/SquareEnix post had 100% upvotes and 3 comments.

The pitch video has 2,991 views on the YouTube version.

The project received a "Project we love" staff pick very quickly.

Exposure within Kickstarter is not a problem. It is the external environment outside of Kickstarter that will decide if stretch goals are achieved.

--- Part 3 --- communication with backers.

There is confusion about if the early-bird tier offers the choice of console keys.

The first day had 4 project updates. That is okay. Too many project updates can result in backers unsubscribing from just the updates of Moonlighter. What to avoid is having too many updates. It usually means no more than 1 update per day until the very end or a critically important announcement. If you are worried about making too many updates try to condense/combine potential updates together or use the comments area. There have been campaigns in the past that annoyed backers with multiple project updates every day.

Project update #4 about the timezone differences was good so that backers didn't have to wonder why there wasn't a quick response to comments. In the future, announcing going to sleep in the comments section instead of as a project update may be enough.

--- Part 4 --- other campaigns that launched.

Fable Fortune isn't in good shape. It suffers from the drawbacks that F2P digital CCG campaigns have with their reward tier structures. If someone wasn't willing to pledge at one tier, just piling more of the same thing at the next tier probably won't convince the person to pledge. It can force the average pledge amount down. F2P also means there is a disincentive to pledge for "cheap" gamers. There are also comments about the design of the game (such as how difficult some visual information is) in comparison to Hearthstone. Currently Fable Fortunes has 625 backers pledging £21,245 (0.085% of £250,000 goal). For perspective, realize that over the last 48 hours the pre-launch marketing was pushing hard. IGN did an article and a 17 minute video of play. The news about a Fable-related game went around most of the gaming communities I check. Moonlighter has done better with its backer numbers and it had less overall exposure.

A bunch of other campaigns have launched, but many of them are low quality and without traction. Two that were high quality are ZED and GREEDY GUNS. ZED is a Kickstarter project from one of the artists on Myst and the Command & Conquer series. GREEDY GUNS is a project inspired by Metal Slug.

June 1st may see more high quality projects launching.

3 days remain. On Monday the campaign will be in the first half of its last 48 hours. Kickstarter will send out automated reminders to users that have starred the campaign.

550 backers have currently pledged €10,936 (26.04%). €1,664 more until 30% funded.

Here are updated graphs:
http://i.imgur.com/86oQRKl.png

May 26th had a backer at the €500 tier disappear. May 29th had a €60 tier backer also pull out.

At the start of a month is a fresh wave of campaigns on Kickstarter. This also means that near the end of the month that wave of campaigns ends. Many campaigns are ending right now. What ends up happening is backers can pull pledges from campaigns they don't expect to succeed and put those pledges into campaigns that are close to reaching their goals.

The percentage of the total number of backers by reward tier graph hasn't really changing and part of that is simply due to a lack of new backers.

Tower of Samsara has been hovering around the 20th and 21st rank in popularity for the category. It is currently at the 22nd position.

Kicktraq shows a trend to €12,516. BackerTracker shows €12,749. Kicklytics is interesting because it shows a trend to €10,558 (lower than the current €10,938) because of the recent events of pledges being pulled.

The Thunderclap campaign has 128 out of the 100 supporters it needs. 9 hours from now it will send out tweets. The social reach is 285,762 according to its counter. An indie dev with 56.4K followers on Twitter supported the Thunderclap which helped boost that counter so high. Krowdster brought a reach of 49,924 with its connections although since it is generic overall crowdfunding news it won't be as tight a match with indie gaming followership.

At €20 per backer it takes 2,100 backers to reach 100%. For perspective I often can see campaigns that need 4,000 to 8,000 backers just to reach 100%. 2,000 backers isn't an extraordinarily large number. €30,000 within 48 hours is a magnitude that can be achieved on Kickstarter. It would require a social media surge.

A final surge needs backer engagement to happen. The need for project updates will be at its highest in the final 2 days. The low number of comments has been an issue. Project updates would allow discussions to expand if those updates provided talking points to work with. That is the missing element. Without it the campaign may see just a small increase in momentum and then coast to the deadline.

There are 121 slots open at the €8 tier. If those 121 slots are filled that would be at least €968 more in pledges.

The game Niche has 23 hours left on its campaign. It is currently one of the largest active campaigns. Chronicles of Elyria ends in 4 days, so its final surge will be starting around the same time Tower of Samsara is set to end. Starflint has €10,821 pledged of its €40,000 goal after a rough execution at launch. With 5 days left Starflint is starting to gain more ugrency. On May 31st a Square Enix Collective game called Moonlighter is scheduled to launch.

523 backers have pledged €11,140 (26.52%).

Here are updated graphs.
http://i.imgur.com/dimgauy.png

The €8 early-bird tier has 140 out of 499 slots left. That reward tier is slowing down. The overall campaign has slowed down over the past few days. The campaign will hopefully recover some momentum around May 29th. The next few days may be the slowest in the campaign's entire run. What is important is enduring to see what the momentum after the upcoming weekend will be like.

Tower of Samsara dropped to the 27th position. A few strong projects like Epic Tavern and Saurian have launched. 4 campaigns have gone into their last-48-hour surges making them also jump up the rankings. May 25th had a bunch of campaigns canceled on the same day.

A week remains until the scheduled deadline. The minimum goal is low enough for a decent final surge to succeed, but the looming problem is if backer morale and word-of-mouth can improve enough. The project page has been fairly quiet for many days of its run. The last comment was on May 22nd and before that was no comments after May 17th. Without such engagement, it is easy for some backers to even forget they pledged to the campaign. The hope is that the demo will spark the levels of engagement with backers that the campaign has really needed.

I assume the next project update will be able the demo. There was some recent Twitter activity after GadgetGirlKylie's playthrough of the demo was uploaded to YouTube.

Kickstarter has weird re-sizing happening to the images in the project page body depending on the current width of the web browser window. The text in the reward tiers also jumbles around based on the width of the window. One old trick was to use unicode characters to implement lines to break up reward tier text so it was visually more readable, but now those characters just jumble together unpleasantly.

Here is info about scheduling a campaign in June you may find useful. I've been closely monitoring how Kickstarter campaigns perform for a few years now.

--- Part 1 --- Looking at potential times to run a campaign.

Here is a table of possible dates to run a Kickstarter campaign in the near future:
http://i.imgur.com/u0XTEoB.png
Red is bad, green is good and white is okay based on the weekly traffic cycle.

● In general I can't recommend launching or ending a Kickstarter campaign on Fridays, Saturdays or Sundays. Those dates are colour-coded red. I've watched many good quality campaigns that launch into weekends fail to get traction. Bad starting dates for a campaign are already eliminated from the table so they aren't a distraction. Bad ending dates harm the potential for how much the final days can raise.

● Mondays and Tuesdays perform very good for both launching and ending. They are colour-coded green.

● Wednesdays are okay for both launching and ending. In a good month a Wednesday can be considered nearly as good as a Monday or Tuesday.

● Thursdays are special. They are poorer for launching a campaign, but actually good for a campaign deadline. For launching the campaign, it immediately goes forward into a weekend which is generally bad for performance. Launching on Thursday often risks blogger coverage getting delayed until Monday. If ending on a Thursday there is all the exposure from the earlier Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday to help if the campaign is pushing to just reach its goal by its end.

● It is good to launch in the morning and schedule the deadline for the evening in the Eastern Daylight time zone of North America where most backers live. Launching in the evening means wasting lots of time at the start when fewer people are around overnight. Ending in the morning means the campaign could end while many potential last-minute backers are still asleep or at work. This can be rough for European developers due to time zone differences. There is the feature to specify a specific end time for the campaign. It is very useful. If that option isn't used then the campaign will end on the last day at the same hour of the day that the campaign launched on the first day.

● On the Internet there is the common Kickstarter advice to only run a campaign for exactly 30 days. What I've seen is that it is far more important to properly synchronize with the cycles of traffic the platform receives. Blindly conforming to a length of 30 days creates problems. Being closer to 30 days in length is generally better, but 1 to 4 extra days can help the campaign end at a much better time. There are many disadvantages to running a longer campaign like 40 to 60 days.

--- Part 2 --- Looking at what events will be happening around the campaign.

June is one of the harshest months out of the entire year to run a video game Kickstarter campaign.

● July 4th is Independence Day in the US. Running from May 31st to July 4th initially looks good in the table, but July 4th complicates things. Potential backers can be out celebrating instead of being bored on the Internet and deciding to browse gaming blogs.

● June 12th has an event being held by Electronic Arts. I don't know much more about this.

● June 14th to 16th is E3 2016 in Los Angeles. Getting press for an indie game becomes a nightmare if one doesn't have presence at E3. During E3 there are many AAA gaming announcements and trailers that bloggers will give priority because they get way more clicks. Even if an indie game does get covered, the post about the game can be quickly buried by new content faster than usual. Bloggers that attend E3 can get sick with convention flu after attending so their output suffers. Some of the larger YouTube Let's Play channel creators also go to E3 so they can't respond as quickly to make videos.

● June 23rd is rumored to have a Steam Summer Sale begin. A Steam Sale can be a difficult time on PC gamers' wallets. While they can still be backing Kickstarter campaigns, the size of individual pledges may be smaller than normal around this time.

● June 24th is when Mighty No.9 is supposed to release. That game may damage the reputation of crowdfunding if the final product is not what people wanted.

● July 7th is Mirror's Edge Catalyst's release date.

● Sometime in July a playable demo for Yooka-Laylee is expected for backers that pledged high enough.

● June 6th is the anniversary for World War II's D-Day landings.

● June 10th is the WarCraft movie in theaters.

● June 19th is Father's Day.

● June 24th is the Independence Day Resurgence movie in theaters.

● July 1st is Canada Day.

● June 3rd is Chronicles of Elyria's Kickstarter campaign deadline. This could be a good thing if it brings in lots of traffic for the Kickstarter category during its final days.

● June 29th is scheduled launch on Kickstarter campaign for System Shock Remastered. From the look of the teaser trailer this could be one of the strongest campaigns of the year to compete against. It also means people being drawn to the platform that may check out what other campaigns are active before they leave.

● Kickstarter has an update to itself scheduled for June 9th. In the past this type of update results in new features, but also redesigns to project pages. There is apparently a new collaborator feature which is why the privacy policy for Kickstarter was recently changed.

--- Part 3 --- About strategy.

The easiest months of 2016 to run a campaign have already passed. A month like April is a paradise compared to the summer months for campaign performances. From June onwards it will be rough until improvements in late August or September. While June may be a rough time to run, that does not mean many campaigns can't get funded. Many are able to get funded in these months. If Moonlighter can hold a good popularity ranking it could get the traffic it needs. It does look strong enough that it could survive in June.

Delaying a launch for too long may weaken the attention the recent successful Square Enix Collective campaign was able to generate. The Collective is a great form of pre-launch marketing. Moonlighter's run there also helped get it some good coverage.

Pre-launch marketing and building up enough of a fanbase are ways to overcome poor timing. The general idea is to raise at least 15% of the goal amount in the first week. To achieve stretch goals it would be better to raise at least 30% in the first week. With enough preparations a campaign can raise 100% in its first day and not have to worry about what time of year it is.

One option is to launch around May 30th and try to rush to 100% funded before it gets really bad around E3. The first part of June isn't really that bad. This is easier said than done. The campaign may have to endure significant slow-down in the middle and then work hard to rebuild momentum in its second half. Another issue is that bloggers are usually e-mailed a preview of the project the week before a campaign launches so they have articles ready to go on launch day. A May 30th date may rush that process. I do not know how complete the project page draft is.

If there are enough followers already, then the campaign doesn't need to worry as much about getting the traction it will need. There are ways to estimate if there is enough of a following yet, but I'd need to have an idea of how large the minimum funding goal is and some of the pricing of the main reward tiers. The process involves trying to figure out what is the expected average pledge per backer (many factors are involved), then dividing the minimum goal by that average to get the number of backers to aim for. When you know how many backers you need, then a marketing plan can use historical conversion rates to try to estimate how much exposure is needed or how much pre-launch marketing is still required. The design of the reward tiers can me optimized to try to reduce the number of backers needed to reach 100%. The scope of the game could also be modified to get the minimum goal low enough that the current number of followers can provide enough initial momentum to get it funded.

Once you pick a date, there are tactics like setting up a real-time countdown on the official site to try to focus backers to pledge on the very first day. A Thunderclap campaign can be useful. There are options for what to do for early-bird reward tiers. Teaser images and trailers can be used. In general you try to promote the game around before the campaign is live and provide backers reasons for them to want to pledge on the first day. A $10 backer on the first day can be more valuable than $10 backer on later days. Kickstarter campaigns are often about getting enough momentum.

511 backers have pledged €10,990 (26.17% of goal). Congratulations on getting over 500 backers.

Here are updated graphs:
http://i.imgur.com/JPp5Gyt.png

Less than 150 slots remain on the €8 early-bird tier. It is still growing consistently.

The €15 tier saw an increase in activity recently.

The average pledge is €21.51 per backer. At €25 per backer it takes 1,680 backers to reach €42,000. At €20 per backer it takes 2,100 backers to do the same.

Tower of Samsara is currently 17th in popularity for its project category. Most of the projects launching right now are fairly weak and immediately not gaining traction. No big scary large projects have launched recently.

Kickstarter has changed some of its page formatting. The "Project we love" hearts now take up more horizontal space for some reason. A note on Kickstarter's privacy page mentions that on June 9th 2016 there will be a new "project collaborator" feature. The changes to the privacy agreement were to allow for project creators to also show backer information like their names, pledge amounts and e-mails to collaborator accounts. There is a green circle on Chronicles of Elyria's thumbnail in the discover section that appears and disappears.

Project updates near the end of the campaign become important to remind backers to check in on the campaigns status. The last update was May 14th.

For exposure there have been a few Reddit mentions and then more mentions for the PS Vita community. Twitter saw some activity. There was a GameFAQs forum thread. I didn't see much else worth noting.

Overwatch hype has many gaming blogs focusing on that game's launch today. Many sites are releasing how-to-play guides. My brother today has been waiting queued just to finally get into a match. Getting press will be difficult for Kickstarter campaigns.

460 backers have currently pledged €9,760 (23.23%). €2,840 more to reach 30% funded.

Here are updated graphs:
http://i.imgur.com/h9XqdYC.png

May 16th was one of the better days of the campaign for new pledges.

The recent €95, €150 and €500 tier backers helped raise the average pledge up to  €21.11 per backer.

Steady growth is still happening at the €8 reward tier.

Kicktraq shows a trend to €17,798. BackerTracker shows €15,469. Kicklytics shows €15,856. These three are slightly optimistic thanks to the large backers.

Bitly's analytics shows 400 clicks of the project shortlink (this is not the long project URL). There was a recent spike in activity from May 16th to 18th.

There was new comments after days with zero new backer comments.

I saw a post on /r/vita. So far the PS Vita community has reacted well to the game.

On Twitter I saw Liam of the Super Best Friends Play backed both Tower of Samsara and Demoniaca Everlasting Night. He is known as the PS Vita supporter. That is not a guarantee of coverage if you get the playable demo ready, but it is a very good thing to have your foot-in-the-door.

One opportunity is seeking out campaigns to cross-promote with. Ilios Betrayal of Gods explores Greek mythology in a steampunk twist. Tower of Samsara explores the lower to higher karmic states of Buddist mythology with a semi-medival-semi-future-robots twist. If more projects launch with twists on mythologies they could cooperate in ways like character cameos or working together on a guest article that talks about gamedevs using mythology for inspiration.

Within Kickstarter the competition is fairly steady. Many very low quality projects are launching that shouldn't be a threat. A few strong projects are popping up. Because of E3 2016 being such a tough time to run, many large projects will postpone launching so they don't end during that convention. An exception is freak projects like Shenmue 3 last year which had stage presence at E3. Tower of Samsara is currently 20th in the rankings. Victory Belles, Quench and In The Shadows are doing better in the rankings as their final surges have started. They will clear up spaces in the rankings soon. Lynn and the Spirits of Inao's campaign underwent a spectacular self-destruction going from one of the top campaigns to suddenly canceled. Its graphs show backers pulling pledges due to accusations of illegal treatment of unpaid interns.
http://i.imgur.com/epu2tSz.png

I did find an IndieDB page already for Tower of Samsara. Making consistent updates and posts to the IndieDB page could help bring in some views.

For the external environment Overwatch is soaking up more press than anticipated. The next Steam Sale is rumoured to be June 23rd, so you wouldn't have to worry about that happening during Tower of Samsara's campaign. System Shock Remastered's team has delayed their Kickstarter campaign launch until June 29th, so that also isn't a threat.

Multiple changes are happening to Kickstarter itself again. There have been some bugs with how project page tabs loaded. Back when Mable And The Wood's campaign ran there was a change to the dimensions of project thumbnails. For a little while today it appeared that there was another change to project thumbnails that added more height (resulting in black bars at the bottom of the images), but it seems to have reverted back to what it previously was. The privacy policy page was reworked earlier in the month. When such things happened in the past it was before Kickstarter released new features.

----Part 1---- Performance

405 backers have pledged €7,530 (17.93% of goal). The average is €18.59 per backer. At an average of €20 per backer it would take 2,100 backers to reach 100%. €5,070 more until 30% funded. The famous 30% funded tipping point has the condition that it happens before halfway through the campaign which is less than 72 hours away. Some experienced project creators have the condition even stricter requiring 15% to 30% in the first week to have a good chance of reaching 100%. Exceeding 30% after halfway is still good.

Here are updated graphs:
http://i.imgur.com/GoR1VSE.png

The €8 tier keeps making progress. I get to see campaigns every month that completely stop growing and start sliding backwards with progress. The campaign for Tower of Samsara is not dead in its graphs, but its chances of getting funded are low (but also not impossible).

Kicktraq shows an optimistic trend to €16,361. BackerTracker shows a trend to €9,591. Kicklytics shows €11,570. SideKick shows a 2% success probability.

----Part 2---- Strategy

One option is to switch to a strategy that could still have a chance for getting the current run funded, but also tries to reduce the time costs needed to run it.

In city builder games like Tropico there can be the "roach patrol" option for maintenance in apartments blocks. It reduces the monthly upkeep because the building won't be receiving any upgrades or improvements. It is just paying someone to occasionally be checking for roach infestations. It is not ideal for long-term, but it is a desperation tactic to help in the short-term. In the context of running a Kickstarter campaign, putting it on roach patrol would be to scale down the biggest time sinks and continuing to do project updates.

Trying to get press coverage easily becomes a full time job during a campaign. A thorough job at contacting press is one of the more time expensive parts of the campaign. At an average of 8 minutes per blogger for researching, tailoring the e-mail and proofreading it would take 1,600 minutes to send out 200 personalized e-mails. That is around 26 hours. Some project creators in other categories easily send over 1,000 e-mails out. Non-personalized copy-and-pasted template e-mails to bloggers often get rejected. Contacting press is also one of those tasks where out of 100 e-mails sent out maybe 1 or 2 pieces of coverage may result if the project is worth covering.

There have been successful campaigns that never received press coverage from a large blog. They generally had much smaller goals than Tower of Samsara, so they could feed enough off the traffic within Kickstarter.

Another big time sink is answering messages on Kickstarter. If it optimistically takes an average of 1 minute to read a message from a backer, compose a response and then proofread it then 30 messages takes up 30 minutes. Some project creators aren't very fast at these messages. Some with think very carefully, rewrite the message over again or have the scope of their reply be too long. At an average of 5 minutes per message for a slow project creator, 30 replies would be 150 minutes. Replies to backers should still be made, but an effort is made to also keep the scope of replies in check. One way to reduce the number of incoming messages is to proactively answer likely questions using the project page. Kickstarter projects that really go viral easily get swamped with the job of answering messages.

Ceasing trying to contact bloggers for press doesn't have to mean ceasing all promotion. The focus shifts to seeking out exposure options where you have control. With a blogger you are reliant on his or her decision to cover your game with their post. Bloggers and Let's Players act like gatekeepers to their audiences. An example of where you are the gatekeeper is posting a gamedev tutorial or Imgur album to Reddit. It may be quickly down-voted or removed, by you were the one that had the power to click the button to post it.

If the campaign suddenly starts doing way better, then the strategy could shift back to the standard burn-out marathon of trying to get as much press as possible and finishing a demo before the end. I don't know the state of the demo, so gambling on trying to finish it before the deadline may be simple or too much work. If the demo waits until the reboot, it could also be in a much more polished version that makes far better impressions. There is also the option to plan for a final marketing burst at the start of the final week of the campaign.

Continuing to make good quality project updates is a key part of this strategy. Backers don't get to directly see the effort a project creator pours into contacting members of the press. It is invisible to them. They do get to see the effort put into project updates. If you continue to make strong updates showing off the game and its art, then existing backers may start to go "Why isn't this funded yet? I better do something about it" and then start generating word-of-mouth. Strong updates can also build confidence in the skills of the team. I'd suggest creating update content that could later be recycled for the reboot. What often happens is a campaign loses momentum and all communication with the project creator stops. This doesn't inspire confidence. Another plus for making project updates is that it reminds existing backers the game exists.

The pace of making project updates is a big topic. It boils down to picking a pace that can be sustained. More than once a week could be beneficial, but once per week can also be satisfactory. Some types of project updates that take too much time to create can be given lower priority than quick and easy types of project updates.

I don't know the situation the team is in, but a harm-reduction approach could become a focus. If the campaign fails, then the team should still be able to stay intact. There could be rules like limiting efforts put into a project to a specific number of hours set aside per day so the team can get back to work on other tasks like contract work to pay the bills. In general it would be trying to avoid burn-out from desperately trying to save the campaign. It can get ugly when project creators are trying everything they can think of to get funded.

The current run is also a great opportunity to work on refining the presentation of the project. There can be experimentation and feedback as I've mentioned earlier in this thread. Iterations and improvements can be recycled into a rebooted project. I'm preparing another post about this topic.

I can't really suggest buying paid ads. Tower of Samsara is currently 16th in popularity for the category. Keeping the campaign up for free is likely to be much more effective than a small paid Facebook ad campaign would be to raise awareness. In 2014 a problem that emerged on Kickstarter was that there are many grey PR firms spamming the struggling campaigns. The legit crowdfunding PR firms are not the ones that will be spamming you. The same funds can go towards professionals like contractors that do indie game trailer for a living.

You may want to make sure your personal schedule has room to pay more attention to the campaign in its last 48 hours. If a surge does happen, you would want to be able to devote full attention to it.

----Part 3---- About relaunching

Talking to backers about a reboot can have a weird (often negative) effect on morale. While it is okay for them to know a reboot is an option, talking too much about rebooting saps away the urgency to promote the project around. In general, it is a good idea to focus on the small upcoming milestones like 500 backers. It is about drawing attention to what you have already accomplished instead of how much farther the campaign has to go to reach its goal.

October is often the strongest performing month. It can be busy with many projects getting buried, but the traffic can be great if your project can keep a good ranking in popularity. April and May are also great months to run, although May 2016 had a concentration of really hyped AAA games from hyped franchises.

Sometimes potential investors and publishers will contact a project creator. Some of these offers are legit. Others are very grey. Always be cautious.

There are many €8 tier backers. If the campaign relaunched, many would want the chance to pledge at that same price again. There are a variety of approaches like a time-limited early-bird reward tier that can deal with that issue. In  general the rewards structure could be refined in many ways based on already seeing how it performed with the current campaign. The minimum funding goal could also be reduced by reducing the scope of reward fulfillment. This often means digital rewards and simplifying physical reward options.

387 backers have pledged €7,144 (17%).

Friday May 13th was one of the better days for the campaign. A search for any press articles in the last-24-hours didn't find anything for Tower of Samsara. It was Greenlit the other day which helps. I am assuming most of the traffic came from within Kickstarter itself because Sentinels of the Multiverse, Fear Effect Sedna, Ghost Theory and The Wild Eight were ending at roughly the same time drawing visitors to the platform.

The popularity ranking for Tower of Samsara jumped up to 12th. Not only did many of the largest projects reach their deadlines, but I also watched a bunch of recently launched campaigns cancel themselves on Friday.

The campaign is going into another weekend. Weekends are generally slow, but also a time project creators can use to recover from the stress of running a campaign.

Tower of Samsara is €5,456 away from 30% funded. It could take about 287 additional backers to get there. If the current campaign can exceed 30% funded then it would significantly help a reboot.

Being greenlit for Steam is an advantage for a reboot. It means the rewards can promise Steam keys with more certainty.

Let's Players are very unlikely to upload a second video for a Kickstarter demo. I agree that it can be more suitable to have the demo ready for a rebooted campaign.

An immediate relaunch right after the first run fails could face some problems. The current Tower of Samsara campaign is scheduled to end at 12:03AM PDT on Thursday June 2nd. Launching into a weekend is generally a poor idea. Monday June 6th would be the next opening. June 14th to 16th is E3 2016 to be aware of. A June 6th launch means the campaign's middle would be happening during what is the second harshest time of the entire year to run (Christmas is a worse time to run). There is also the potential surprise of another large Steam sale any time after E3. The hope would be to reach the minimum funding goal quickly after relaunching so it would be over 100% when E3 started.

The current campaign is not a complete write-off either. Avorion's campaign was in bad shape until a May 10th post. It is another example of a final surge working near the end. It started that push with less backers than Tower of Samsara has.
http://i.imgur.com/3onYb0r.png

The last project update was May 6th. It is a good idea to do an project update at least once per week.

It is close to bedtime for me. There is a risky strategy involving project updates and the demo. I'll need to think about this strategy more before my next post. At its core the strategy involves giving up on getting press. The effort that would have gone into getting press instead goes into very strong project updates to produce material that gets re-used for the campaign relaunch.

Here are updated graphs for Tower of Samsara's progress:
http://i.imgur.com/QITpSsI.png

The €8 tier should be viewed as the canary-in-a-coal-mine that helps indicate the health of the campaign. Most backers pick the cheapest option to get the game. It was slowing down on May 7th and then picked up a bit on May 10th (Some strong campaigns launched that day bringing in traffic to the Kickstarter category). The €8 tier will plateau when it becomes full (with the €10 tier taking on most of the new growth) or it the campaign completely stalls. Stalling out completely is the common fate of many campaigns that launch. It hasn't stalled yet, so that is a disincentive to cancel. Slow progress is still progress that can benefit a relaunch.

Tower of Samsara dropped to 22nd in popularity. Dropping below the 20th position means potential backers have to go through the extra step of clicking the "Load more" button. In the next 40 hours 3 of the top campaigns will have their deadlines and free up space in the rankings, but new strong campaigns can also take those spots. A big wave of low-effort campaigns also just appeared. Many project creators will try to run now instead of competing against E3 2016.

Potions: A Curious Tale is another very recent example of a campaign that didn't give up and made it with a final surge. For surges to happen, morale needs to be kept high. In Potion's case there was a livestream with the consumption of hot peppers. If press won't cover a game on the big sites, then a campaign is more dependent on the social media burst its backers create. Low morale means apathy about promoting the game on social media.
http://i.imgur.com/FEO05ef.png

Kickstarter had been cracking down on the usage of unofficial staff pick badges in project thumbnail images. They now have the "Projects we love" system instead. A game's logo is generally not considered clutter. They would refuse to retweet projects on the official Twitter that used banners and badges too much.

Undertale is okay to reference as long as the reference is clear about what specific parts of the game are similar. Dishonored and Deus Ex Human Revolution are also games with pacifist play-style options built-in at the core of the game. If there is both pacifist and killer routes through the demo it could effectively double the potential playtime that Let's Players could work with.

"A pixel art platformer where you will struggle for ascension" could be rearranged. The first part could become "Struggle for ascension" and then followed with the rest of the description. That way the reader doesn't immediately bump into the pixel platformer part. "Struggle for ascension. Climb the tower. Achieve enlightenment. Don't let your light be lost". If the project description itself was a haiku that could be interesting (but also potentially more difficult to do).

Backers like to be involved in the campaigns they pledge to. If you are prioritizing a playable demo, then you current 300+ backers are a valuable asset. You could use a backers-only project update to ask for testers on different platforms like Linux and different grades of hardware like basic laptops to beefy GPU desktops. You can outline the plan and get their input like potential places to send a demo build or ways to improve the demo. This interaction also provides a good excuse to have project updates. Project updates are a way to show a dev hasn't given up all hope. Often failing campaigns just go silent and ruin backer morale.

I'll send a private message through Kickstarter's messaging system.

[is not]

-----Part 1-----

A core problem I see with the campaign may be poor first impressions being generated in the discovery area. What do visitors see: the project title, thumbnail and description.

The project title is fine.

The current project description is "A pixel art platformer where you will struggle for ascension". It begins by invoking a description that has become a stigma in indie gaming. There are many 2D pixel art platformers on the market. It is something that 2D pixel art platformers have to constant fight up-hill against. HardcoreGamer's article even opened with the note of it being easy to skip over such games. As well, there are many many low effort 2D platformers on Kickstarter that are "low-effort" project pages without much to them. The "struggle for ascension" only hints at the theme of the game. It should be possible to improve the description.

I wonder if "sidescroller" is more accurate to use than "platformer". While there is jumping, it seems to be more ledge-graps and working through the terrain. It isn't like a Mario game where there is constant jumping required to do everything. Prince of Persia was mentioned in this thread as an influence.

The current project thumbnail has no logo or title graphic. This may have been done for artistic reasons. Some project pages look unwell with the amount of clutter like platform logos and multiple badges. In this case the lack of work on the project thumbnail reinforces the impression that it is a low-effort campaign (Remember this part of the critique is only about the 3 pieces visible in the discover area). Many low-effort campaigns are seen using just a plain image without any extras. Falling down in the popularity rankings and a low number of backers also reinforces that perception the project isn't worth clicking.

The art of the project thumbnail is good. The protagonist does get covered a bit by the play button, but not too badly. The blues and yellow stands out. It looks like concept art which is both good and bad. Many low-effort projects will slap on some commissioned concept art, so frequent backers don't fall for it as easily as they did back in 2012. Tower of Samsara is not a low-effort project. There is very good potential inside, but casual browsers of the discover area might not be able to see that on just the outer layer which many projects try to puff up better looking than it really is. The games pixel art is strong, but potential backers don't know that the in-game art is about par with that strong piece of art in the project thumbnail.

When the pitch video starts it has a repeating walk cycle of the protagonist. It fades through a bunch of backdrops with flat terrain beneath his feet. A potential backer may suspect this is mock-up footage. It also isn't the most exciting start and doesn't show off one of the by far biggest strengths which is the pixel art animations (especially for the enemies). An alternate version of the video with the first 24 seconds of the current pitch removed could be tested. Many viewers are lost in the first few seconds of a pitch video.

-----Part 2-----

The problem I previously mentioned is that it took much more effort to skim the project page than usual.

First there is the visuals. The project page is really really tall.

The awards/quotes section takes up a very significant amount of vertical space. There is lots of whitespace that feels wasted. An example of one way to salvage vertical space would be to put the Desctructoid quote to the right side of the Destructoid logo, instead of below, by making it an image. The image could also potentially be hyperlinked to the article the quote came from. The same idea could be applied to salvaging space in the team members section.

Under the project subsection are 7 large animated GIFs that almost fill the width of the project page body. Such GIFs would normally be used to break up walls of paragraphs. Here they are just stacked one-on-top-of-the-other. The GIFs themselves are good.

The paragraph about the hermetic champion has a giant tall image following it. The two deities images could be shrunk and but side-by-side. So much of the project page could have space saving layouts applied. If people want to see an image in more detail, you could hyperlink a smaller version of the image to a larger version they can load in another web browser tab.

I looked at the scrollbar size in web browser tab. Tower of Samsara's project page body is very very tall. It is even taller than Chronicles of Elyria tall project body.

Second there is the information conveyed by the project page text.

It is good that the platform information is relatively near the top, but other key selling points aren't near the top. I then go looking for the next paragraph to read. It is all the way down past where the $500 tier is. When I actually get to the section about the 6 different realms the text is good, but it was a mini adventure just to scroll down that far. Casual visitors are more likely to give up by then.

The karma system is actually one of the most attractive selling points I see for the game, but it is way way down below the talks of the wormhole device. A sort of Undertale or Trigun style pacifism is something many gamers are now welcoming as an option. It is an angle that some bloggers can use to cover the game.

This next bit is not intended to offend: most potential buyers are going to care much more about the game play than the lore. The amount of lore is burying the info about gameplay/mechanics/abilities. I double-checked to see if I missed any embedded YouTube videos on the project page; there weren't any. The videos I remembers watching were in this thread.

There is also information not on the project page. I had to go digging. I had to learn about the 3 main types of attacks (horizontal/vertical/thrust) from this thread. The YouTube videos conveyed much more information than the pitch video. Seeing the controller tutorial prompts appear was very good. The force push was explained in the thread. In modern Internet marketing there is the concept of minimizing how many layers or mouse clicks are needed to get to information. The more layers, the fewer people will make it to that information. Instead of a strong concise summary, the game's selling points are littered around different places.

When the lamp is talked about, it would be good to go more specific instead of being generic or ending with only a brief note. The environmental manipulation may be one of the core selling points. Examples of it warding off ghosts or revealing a hidden path would be shown. Sometimes talking about a feature isn't enough. Sometimes it has to be shown in action to be easier to understand.

SUPERHOT is an example on the extreme end of the spectrum for achieving a summary of core gameplay very quickly. To convey what the essence of the game is, the devs just need to show some brief footage of dodging a bullet while saying "Time only moves when you move" and then show a bullet blow away the enemy. The brain of an experienced gamer can then rapidly fill in the details they need to decide if they are interested.

Part of the act of copywriting a project page is condensing and organizing the information into one easy to find spot. It is sometimes the process of wrangling a unique selling point to focus upon above all the other selling points. Sometimes the focus in on creating a specific emotional response like a sense of mystery, nostalgia or a challenge. There is also the traditional exploration of why the game is worth playing, why the team is the right team for the job and what are the benefits of its features. The project page for Tower of Samsara may need a few iterations of polishing.

-----Part 3-----

Most of the problems seem fixable. The game itself should be able to reach such a minimum goal. The rewards structure could work in its current form. The big problem will be gaining enough momentum.

It is possible to experiment with different project thumbnails. If one doesn't work, another might. At the end of the campaign you upload the image you want to keep.

Sometimes an Imgur public gallery post or a /r/gamedev Marketing Monday post can be used to test how the copywriting of the project is received.

Trying to get more exposure within the Souls community may be something to prioritize. Comparing a game to Dark Souls can be a bit tricky and there can be backlash. The franchise means different things to different people. For some its difficulty. Others its atmosphere, the bonfire system or the stamina depletion system. When you do make comparisons, try to be as specific as possible about how the two games are similar. The haiku system has already been described as similar to the bloodstain/notes system.

What kind of skills are being tested? Patience, reaction speed, timing, planning and combinations are examples. The game may be attractive to those who require a challenge from gaming. It isn't too clear how easy or hard the game is intended to be on the normal difficulty setting.

The boss for Pluto with the falling swords is one of the strongest pieces of promotable material I see on the project page.

The particle effects and visuals like the ragged cloth blowing in the wind could be good project update material. Submitting tutorials to places like /r/gamedev is one method to promote a project.

It is still possible for the current run to be successful because of how relatively low the minimum goal is. As pxloto mentioned, a playable demo can significantly help with traffic. The graphs for Moira show the benefit of Jesse Cox's video.
http://i.imgur.com/hhFN4vZ.png

If playable demo is prepared, I'd recommend sending a playable build to Liam of the Super Best Friends Play. Why? He is known as a strong supporter of the PS Vita. In general the game fits with what they show on their channel and they've had discussions about wanting to see more Dark Souls inspired games in the future. If you can't prepare a demo soon enough, you could try to at least get a mention on their podcast. That podcast often talks about active Kickstarter campaigns. Woolie is their member that manages the podcast.

308 backers have pledged €6,037 (14.37% of a €42,000 goal).

Kicktraq shows a trend to 63%. Bitly shows 178 clicks of the project shortlink. Kicklytics shows a trend to €11,925 (28.4%). SideKick shows a 2% success probability. The project's comments tab has 15 comments total.

The campaign is enduring its first weekend. The next few days will paint a clearer picture about how the campaign is really doing.

Here are graphs about the reward tiers' performance:
http://i.imgur.com/xL0pA07.png

The €8 tier is the most populated. Just over 70% of backers are deciding to pick that tier. The drop in the number of backers to the €10 tier is acceptable because the €8 tier is the early-bird version of it. There are 271 out of 499 early-bird slots remaining.

The price jump from €10 to €25 breaks the rule I use of not doubling the price when still in the range of between the tier that first offers a copy of the game and below $100USD. Covering funding distances if often about getting backers to upgrade in the lower priced tiers. It is like optimizing the air flow of a race car. Such small improvements matter. €50 could be covered by five €10 tier backers or two €25 backers.

The upper range of the reward tiers ends at €500. There is a general disincentive to pledge beyond the highest priced tier because if there isn't a tier to contain such a pledge there less benefit to the backer in terms of receiving a bigger reward for pledging more. Adding new higher priced tiers is an option, but it is more important to worry about the performance of the low priced tiers that are expected see far more backers and cover more funding distance towards the goal.

25.5% of the total pledged is unallocated funds I can't trace back to specific tiers. Unallocated funding can come from backers who don't select any reward tiers (Often family or friends pledging). Backers that pledge extra to cover shipping also contribute to the pool of unallocated funding. It is worrying if that amount gets too big because it often isn't money that will end up going towards actual development. It can create the illusion of greater progress.

The campaign has been hovering at the 15th rank in popularity for the video game category. There are some very strong campaigns that arrived in the same wave at the start of the month that Tower of Samsara launched in. Some of the strong campaigns that ran last month just had their final countdowns over the last 4 days.

At a minimum goal currently equivalent to $47,879USD I'd expect at least 1,544 backers needed to reach 100% funded. 463 backers in the first week would likely have provided sufficient momentum to endure the Kickstarter trough phase in the middle. There are 308 backers, so the campaign did about 66.5% of what it needed to aim for.

The current average pledge is €19.60 per backer. At an average of €16 per backer it would take 2,625 backers just to reach the €42,000 goal. At €20 per backer it would be 2,100 backers to reach that same goal.

Tower of Samsara would need to raise €12,600 before halfway through the campaign to hit the famous 30%-funded-statistical-tipping-point. Right now it has about 47.9% of what it needs for funding. It is far from the doomed situation, but it also isn't great.

Uncharted 4 releases May 10th. DOOM is May 13th. Overwatch is May 24th and its open beta ends tomorrow. It doesn't look as bad a time to get press as it was when Dark Souls III had launched. The campaign's scheduled end date is also far enough away from E3 2016. Overall the timing of the campaign's launch was good.

I agree with others that it is often more advantageous to keep the campaign live instead of canceling. The current campaign can be used as a learning experience to get feedback and test what works. Backers accumulated with the first run could return for the second. It is also possible with a minimum goal of €42,000 that a last 48 hours surge could get it funded because it is small enough. A recent example of a strong final surge are the graphs for Arcadian Atlas.
http://i.imgur.com/w9v3T27.png
Those surges need the right conditions to happen which is a large topic.

I'm taking a deeper look at the project page tomorrow to prepare another message. So far the big thing that is standing out in my notes is that it took too long to get to information I'd want to find immediately to be able to make a decision as a backer. It should take seconds, not a few minutes. This can result in conversion rate issues of less visitors converting into backers. I had to go hunting for information that is normally easy to find. Potential backers and members of press generally won't have as much patience for this kind of hunting. I find my eyes do not skim over the page easily (and I've skimmed thousands of Kickstarter project pages since 2011). The tall full-width images sometimes make it feel like I'm getting lost trying to read through the page.

Congratulations on getting past the minimum funding goal.

629 backers have currently pledged £7,351.

Mable has risen up to the 7th rank in popularity.

Here are updated graphs:
http://i.imgur.com/gED2Uo1.png

The momentum is good right now. There was a good surge of £7 tier backers. Some of the higher priced tiers show pledge upgrading happening.

17 hours remain. Now is the time to focus on achieving stretch goals.

Congratulations on 500 backers. 507 backers have pledged £5,562 (79.46% of the goal). The average pledge went slightly down again to £10.97 per backer.

Here are updated graphs:
http://i.imgur.com/VoUXxH0.png

That £7 tier keeps on moving forward at a steady pace. It is now the reward tier that is contributing the most towards the funding goal.

BackerTracker shows a trend to £6,969. Kicktraq shows £6,156. Kicklytics shows £5,766. Sidekick shows a 91% chance of success.

The campaign has endured its final weekend. Less than 3 days remain to fill in the £1,438 gap. At £10.97 per backer it would take 131 additional backers to fill in the gap.

Mable is holding the 20th rank in popularity. It is right on the edge of falling below the "Load more" button. It has been fighting its way up the rankings slowly. I expect it to rise faster as the sense of urgency the approaching deadline creates should start bringing in second looks from frequent Kickstarter backers that browse the category.

The chances of getting funded are very good. The last 48 hours reminder messages have not been automatically sent out yet. Those reminder messages can create a sudden surge that the campaign could ride to a few stretch goals. In a less optimistic scenario it is also possible for the current number of existing backers to upgrade their pledges enough to fill in the missing amount.

When a campaign ends it gets archived. You can still edit the spotlight portion of the project page, to redirect late visitors to places like a page on the Steam store, but project creators lose the ability to edit most of the main project page. This means you should be happy with the final look of the project page before the deadline is reached. Some project creators will implement changes in the last few minutes such as a celebration image.

A standard project update when the last 48 hours starts will also remind existing backers to check back in to see where the campaign is. That project update often tries to hype up the stretch goals. Sometimes projects produce so many updates it becomes annoying (it was really tempting to unsubscribe to a campaign that was doing like 4 to 6 tiny news updates per day that should have been combined together), but when a campaign is in its final day there really isn't a taboo to keeping backers up-to-date with the situation through multiple small updates over the last day.

Currently 480 backers have pledged £5,296 (75.7% funded). The average pledge went slightly down to £11.03 per backer.

There is £1,704 remaining with 6 days to go. I would be surprising if the campaign doesn't reach its goal.

A £7,000 goal divided by £11 per backer would be 637 backers at 100% funded. That would be 157 more backers from now.

Here are updated graphs:
http://i.imgur.com/VjPqGXI.png

The £12 tier didn't grow for a few days. Not much else to note besides a spot to potentially insert a reward tier between the £24 and £40 tiers. The £5 tier did jump to 201 backers temporarily.

BackerTracker shows a trend to £7,386. Kicktraq shows £6,518. Kicklytics shows £5,788. Sidekick shows a 93% chance of success.

Mable dropped to 22nd in popularity. It is now outside the top 20 for the category, meaning people browsing projects need to click the "Load more" button to find it. While it was in the top 20 it hopefully accumulated enough future backers who starred the campaign to receive a reminder going into the last 48 hours.

The external environment is going to get tougher for getting press. A reminder is that PAX is April 22nd to 24th. Dark Souls III (plus its official boardgame) and console refresh rumours continues to be popular in the media. John Romero of ex-id Software fame will reveal his new game on the 25th (he was involved with SHAKER that didn't make its crowdfunding goal). People are speculating if Romero will try crowdfunding again. This week has had a bunch of projects launching that will have a presence at PAX.

Interestingly, there are 6 tactics-RPGs currently active on Kickstarter. Chronicle of Ruin, Arcadian Atlas, Masquerada: Songs and Shadows, Warbands: Bushido, Himeko Sutori and City of the Shroud look like they are tapping into the same niche.

Currently 440 backers have pledged £4,899. It rounds up to 70% funded for a £7,000 goal. The average pledge is now £11.13 per backer.

Here are updated graphs:
http://i.imgur.com/iZNp87h.png

The £7 tier continues to move forward.

BackerTracker shows a trend to £7,325. Kicktraq shows £7,454. Kicklytics shows £5,783. Sidekick shows a 94% chance of success.

Mable is hovering around the 11th rank in popularity. April 2016 so far ended up being a slower month than expected for the category. The amount of AAA games to compete against for news right now is very high.

Exposure for the campaign has dropped very low outside of Kickstarter. The amount of comments on the project page is also low. The last update mentioned working bugs out of the demo. Hopefully the release of the demo will solve both those problems at least temporarily. The minimum goal is low enough that the campaign could be funded even without coverage from any of the large gaming blogs.

£2,101 remains and it would take an average pledge upgrade of £4.77 per backer from the existing backers for that missing amount to be filled. That amount will continue to shrink as the campaign gets closer to the deadline. Get close enough to the gaol and existing backers can suddenly become excited and fill in the missing funds.

Less than 11 days remain in the campaign's run. It is past the halfway point. It should fill in the remaining pledge amount near the start of its last 48 hours if it can continue at its current pace. The campaign will be able to celebrate reaching 500 backers soon.

Here are updated graphs for Mable's campaign:
http://i.imgur.com/NEc4SwF.png

The £7 tier is continuing fairly steady now that the early-bird tier is filled.

One speculation for why the trough period hasn't really sunk in is because the campaign is relatively tiny and doing well with the organic traffic Kickstarter provides. If it was getting coverage from any of the big gaming blogs it likely would be much farther along or have much larger bursts of new backers. Mable is a 65% which is good for it, but for another perspective the same performance numbers of 401 backers pledging £4,552 would be horrible if it was a £100,000 minimum goal campaign's first day results. Success is relative.

BackerTracker shows a trend to £7,839. Kicktraq shows £8,092. Kicklytics shows £6,111. Sidekick shows a 77% chance of success. The average pledge has risen to £11.35 per backer.

Mable is holding the 15th rank in popularity. When a project falls beyond the 20th position it takes an additional click of the "Load more" button for people to find the project. Fear Effect Sedna launched and is already over 1,000 backers. Arcadian Atlas is also going strong. The top positions are filling up with high quality projects again. LUX was temporarily able to leapfrog to the 2nd rank with what looks like two batches of fake backers.
http://i.imgur.com/8SlbOuc.png
Moira had a good final surge.
http://i.imgur.com/hhFN4vZ.png

For mentions a YouTube channel reuploaded the announcement trailer, there was Independent Game Community's Kickstarter recap and Games Freezer's Kickstarter recap and a Retrogaming Foro thread. There was also some Twitter activity, but generally not much exposure is happening right now. Hopefully the demo will generate some exposure.

The Dark Souls III review/discussion threads are multiplying rapidly. There are some open beta tests for some AAA games. There are also some AAA trailers coming out that are getting articles. Drinkbox Studios announced their next game will release April 26th.

343 backers have currently pledged £3,727 (53.2% of £7,000 goal).

Here are updated graphs:
http://i.imgur.com/CDZgScz.png

April 9th brought in £550. That is £45 more than the launch day. 63.6% of April 9th's total pledge increase came from a single £350 tier backer. Ignoring that single backer, April 9th brought in £200 from 26 backers. The campaign has been less predictable as it hasn't really settled into a consistent momentum.

BackerTracker shows a trend to £8,804. Kicktraq shows £8,517. Kicklytics shows £10,170. Sidekick shows a 56% chance of success.

The average pledge has risen to £10.85 per backer. Both the £350 tier backer and the filling of the £5 early-bird tier have contributed towards the rise.

Mable was ranked 6th in popularity for the category. The score went up from 24.6 to 26.4 which is good. Many small projects will plummet after launching. Mable has been able to not only maintain a good position, but also recover a little.

Mentions for the project included a Russian site for Steam Greenlight news, a blog called Final Boss Fight, the site for Read The Trieb Magazine and a Russian gaming site.  Bitly shows 1,021 shortlink clicks.

There has been 8 comments on the project page over the last 4 days. Comments per day has been a weak area for Mable's campaign. So far project updates have been happening at a good pace of 3 days apart.

For the external environment, EGX Rezzed will be over by tomorrow and Dark Souls III will release in the USA on Tuesday April 12. The crowdfunding game Hyper Light Drifter has been getting reviewed recently and raised the discussion about how it is missing promised features from the Kickstarter stretch goals. The Banner Saga 2 has announced an April 19th release. Battleborn has started an open beta yesterday on PS4.

About the infographs, it may be a bit crazy but I manually combine together with GIMP the 3 separate screenshots of the spreadsheet pages with the project thumbnail image. I've been thinking a lot about how I'm going to tackle that problem going forward. It is a long story of slowly increasing in scope over time. Those green lines are actually a bug in the screenshot widget for Linux Mint 17. I just don't bother removing them from the top edges in the image editor. The project thumbnail images often varying in size and alignment. The big disadvantage is that it isn't like Kicktraq that you could go right now and get the most recent version of the graphs. On the other hand it also means I get to look over each infograph when a campaign has ended and can find interesting scenarios such as when a campaign is behaving unusually, outright cheating or events like when backers are leaving in mass protest.

I've been trying to see if some of the existing analytics sites out there would implement such graphs because I don't have interest in running such a site. So far I've received no replies. Kicklytics can track tier data. Kicklytics already has a "Total backers per reward price level" graph, so it is the closest to already having graphs like mine implemented. It would just need to show how those backer counts change over time. Its "$0 reward tier" is the same concept as the "unallocated backers" I use. The shutdown KickSpy was also tracking tier data, but I never saw it graphically implemented in a usable form. Kicktraq just tracks the net changes in the overall totals for backers and amount pledged which does not reveal as much about how the internals of the campaign are performing.

316 backers are currently pledging £3,168 (45.3% of the £7,000 goal).

Congratulations on the greenlight.

For mentions of the game there was Siliconera and Slickster Magazine's site. The game being greenlit for Steam also generates some exposure. Mable had dropped in rank, but then rose back up to 6th in popularity for the video games category on Kickstarter.

Here are updated graphs:
http://i.imgur.com/y1fmJEi.png
- Most of the new backers in the greenlit-for-Steam surge picked the £5 early-bird tier.
- The £5 tier has just 11 out of 200 slots left.
- Unallocated backers that didn't select a reward tier remains at 2.
- The average pledge has risen to £10.04 per backer. Remember I expect it to slowly climb closer to £14 per backer once early-bird tier is full.
- The £95 tier saw another backer. The £140 tier also received another backer. The £140 tier is the highest priced one currently occupied.

A new game with the Fear Effect IP, that went through the Square Enix Collective, is scheduled to launch its Kickstarter campaign on Tuesday April 12th. Still haven't heard more about that System Shock remake project. So far April has had a good wave of high quality projects.

The new project thumbnail image dimensions, because of the recent update to Kickstarter itself, means there is plenty of room to eventually add a "Playable demo" or equivalent badge.

Mable's campaign is entering another weekend.

Kickstarter did an update to itself on Wednesday. I don't even know yet what the ideal pixel dimensions are with this new setup for project thumbnails. Apparently transparent background PNGs like what Quest of Souls was using don't work the same. There is now the black background instead of a white one. A bunch of projects in the discover area now have coloured bars on either side of the project pages. I see Mable's thumbnail has already been modified.

It would be abnormal to not experience a trough period in the middle. Some campaigns that do better in the middle simply did poorly at the start. Most of the backer activity is at the start and end of campaigns. Many campaigns can raise 50% of their total funding in the last 48 hours. There are many factors. There are last 48 hour reminder emails to those that starred the project, there is press coverage mostly happening at the start, more urgency at the end from the all-or-nothing deadline, competition from younger campaigns, the social media reach of accumulated backers by the end, the initial surge from pre-launch followers, etc.

A playable build should generate some more exposure. Getting greenlit for Steam that should create a small bump.

I've started reading over supermega_peter's devblog.

Here are graphs for NELO:
http://i.imgur.com/OeF9l5r.png
- That campaign was saved largely thanks to NeoGAF and the Super Best Friends Play. It was very clear that it had successfully recreated at least part of the special feel of Japanese character action games. The top-down twin-stick mode was also a good twist. This also makes it very niche because of the learning curve of such games.
- The final project thumbnail I would rate very well. The first one was problematic. It was more of a close up of the protagonist's head. The Internet Archive Wayback Machine only has caches of the second thumbnail.
- It launched on Friday March 26th. It ended on Sunday March 27th. It was out-of-sync with both the weekly and monthly traffic cycles.
- Way too many $15 early-bird slots dragged down its efficiency. It never did fill all 1,000 early-bird slots.