next »

[karlozalb]

Last SS screenshot!



It's a single frame of our trailer (currently in production) 

[karlozalb]

Hi!
We want your opinion about a Kickstarter matter. We’re thinking about not including physical rewards on ‘The Intergalactic Trashman’ Kickstarter. Why? Because the shipment here in Spain is illogically expensive so without physical rewards we'll be able to reduce our main goal limit and increase our success probability. We know that we can produce the physical rewards in the US for example, but we want to control every aspect of the process in order to avoid possible problems with you.

What do you think?

You can answer what you think here, and if you want,you can fill in this one question survey too

Thank you!!!

[oldblood]

It's all about proper budgeting and research. I would support the game with or without physical rewards but its not about physical vs. digital rewards. Its about budgeting. You can have a physical reward (taking into account physical product, packaging, shipping and any manual work you will be doing) and end up with great margin. Or you can do a digital reward that involves taking in a backer idea or putting their face in the game etc and end up spending more time and effort to create this digital reward (and losing money in the process) than you would have with custom t-shirts...

So whether you digital or physical, remember- its about properly budgeting both the money and time you will need to create and fulfill the reward. Look at every reward you have, put a price tag on how much its going to cost you to produce and fulfill it and know how much money you're going to actually make to have that reward tier.

[karlozalb]

It's all about proper budgeting and research. I would support the game with or without physical rewards but its not about physical vs. digital rewards. Its about budgeting. You can have a physical reward (taking into account physical product, packaging, shipping and any manual work you will be doing) and end up with great margin. Or you can do a digital reward that involves taking in a backer idea or putting their face in the game etc and end up spending more time and effort to create this digital reward (and losing money in the process) than you would have with custom t-shirts...

So whether you digital or physical, remember- its about properly budgeting both the money and time you will need to create and fulfill the reward. Look at every reward you have, put a price tag on how much its going to cost you to produce and fulfill it and know how much money you're going to actually make to have that reward tier.

Thank you for your comment & opinion oldblood, it's really valuable (the comments in this post are not common as you can see ). And yes, I agree. We've already done that researching and discussion, and we know the differences in time and effort between physical/no physical rewards and for us, no physical rewards are much better in every aspect, but we want to know your opinion to definitely discard them. In general, all the opinions say the same: "I don't care, I want your game and nothing else, I'll buy the basic reward and I don't want your t-shirts or your branded USB 2.0 pendrives" but, to be honest, we're scared about the KS campaign success and we want to take into consideration as many variables as possible (you know, taking into consideration that there is a random component that we can't control).

[karlozalb]

We've posted a screenshot of this lava stage days ago. Here you have an animated gif of it!

[oldblood]

Yes. It's an interesting dilemma. Not having physical rewards wouldnt stop me from pledging. But would it stop me from  pledging a high dollar amount? Likely. And short of a very large number of backers just backing at the base level (I don't know your targets, just assuming) the challenge will be how do you entice backers to back at a higher level without tangible goods? If you don't include physical rewards at higher tiers, you definitely need to insure that whatever digital rewards you're doing are very desirable. In my opinion, you should use physical goods but in moderation.

In example (all hypothetical). Your base game/level is $10. You really want your median to be closer to $30/per backer so you have a $25 reward level. What else do you add in at $25? Well maybe Beta access? Maybe some special backgrounds or PDF files but is that enough to justify increasing your pledge by 150%? Unlikely. But you could add something small and tangible like a signed postcard. Suddenly, its a cooler and more tempting reward level. It's suddenly a more personal reward. Something real. And something directly from you!

A postcard (with postage) will probably cost you about $1 (likely less) and in an hour time you could sign hundreds of postcards. So this $1 investment could help sway people to increase their pledge by $15 (along with the other digital rewards they get). Obviously, this is just an example-- but something that I think you should consider. Digital rewards are cool, but there is something tempting about getting a physical/tangible reward for your backing. As I said, no physical rewards wouldn't stop me from pledging, but it could stop me from pledging too much. But that is just one perspective.

[karlozalb]

Yes oldblood, I understand what you are saying. I said the postcard idea to my partners and we're thinking about it.We also found a miniature company reasonably cheap (6-7$ per "miniature" of 6cm height * 3cm width * 3cm depth), but the problem is the shipment, it costs about 25€ to send a small packet to the US ¬¬ (and stores like Aliexpress has free shipment from China to Spain, it has no sense). Maybe we could add that miniature for an expensive tier in order to catch more "rich" backers as you said.


And here you have a new gif from our KS trailer, Kepler vs jelly mech . We added that flip time ago, mainly to reach high places jumping back like in Worms (we love Worms!!) but now we've realized that it has another useful usage, to kill enemies in a fancy way xD

[karlozalb]

Here we come with another gif attack. Now, we want to show you a dark jungle stage. In it, you can see Kepler's silhouette jumping around like a happy monkey.

We published it on Twitter days ago.Normally, we post things firtly on Twitter, maybe...you could...follow us, but this is not undercover advertisement of our Twitter account, of course not!.

Hope you like it

[oldblood]

Love the silhouettes. That shot looks epic and I love the foreground layers.

Is this a playable area or more of a cinematic? If this is a playable area, looks like it would be challenging to know where/when to jump with all the layers and silhouettes.

[karlozalb]

Love the silhouettes. That shot looks epic and I love the foreground layers.

Is this a playable area or more of a cinematic? If this is a playable area, looks like it would be challenging to know where/when to jump with all the layers and silhouettes.

Currently it's a playable stage, but it's not meant to be played like this because as you said, it will be extremely difficult to know where to land when everything (or almost everything) is black. We will do something to fix that for sure, maybe fireflies to mark the path, something fancy

[karlozalb]

Last saturday screenshot



Kepler can jump between planets, but if the target planet is far away, he can use the jumping platforms to change his direction and re-propel himself. The mechanic is pretty simple: initially you jump from a planet with the planetary jump button, and as soon as you reach a jumping platform, you can see a noticeable 'bullet time' (chromatic aberration, increased zoom, etc), and if you press again the planetary jump button, Kepler will be propelled to the next jumping platform (if exists), or the target planet.

[karlozalb]

Finally, our Kickstarter trailer, we hope you like it

And here you have the KS article's draft, feel free to comment it here (or in the feedback section of the draft). Finally we've added physical rewards . We will launch it very soon!

 

[oldblood]

Here is a brief overview of my thoughts on your trailer and the project itself. I think first and foremost, the quality of the art, animations, cutscenes really shines through. You can really tell how much time and effort you guys have put into this game from the video and screenshots. I know primarily though you're looking for feedback on what isn't working though so I will skip the praise and cut to a few things that stood out to me (just know I really appreciate the quality of your presentation):

1. I felt the video was a bit long? The cutscenes looked very pretty but I almost think you'd be better served trimming some of them out (but not all of them) and putting a bigger focus on introducing the platforming gameplay sooner into the video. The platforming looks like perhaps the strongest point of the game but you dont see any till (almost) half-way through the video. This is just my opinion but most good KS videos are 3-5 minutes but that also assumes a few minutes of face-time from the team. If you're just going with gameplay, I would try to showcase just the most exciting elements of gameplay and go with a more traditional trailer length video. Sometimes less is more. That may just be me though, I'd see what other feedback you get on the video.

2. You have too many rewards tied into lower levels with your early pledges. If you do Early Bird (some would debate you shouldnt) then you definitely do not need super early bird. I would axe the $12 version which would better encourage the $10 pledges to bump their pledge by 50% vs. just increasing bu 20%. The same for the early and super early beta pledges, I would axe one of those as well.

3. The limited quantities are far too high. People will naturally pledge to lower levels, you need to be encouraging them to increase their pledge. Allowing so many early tiers will make people feel less inclined to pledge higher. Most Kickstarters struggle to break 500 total backers and you have 400 potential backers tied into the 2 lowest game levels and if all 400 back, thats only $4,600 towards your $35,000 goal. On average you need to be shooting for around 1,000 backers at $35 median. If it was me, I would do 100 early bird at $10 and leave that there. Could lead to a quick $1,000 while capping it and allowing others to start back at the $15 level.

4. Make your $35 super-cool. You want to really encourage people to be spending $35-40 on average to have a realistic shot at your goal. You want to make this level of reward too good to pass up. Give backers a good reason to pledge at your target median.

When do you plan on launching?

[ｂ∀ ｋｋｕｓａ]

The video was definitly too long and too slow to starts to the good parts. i could suggest adding sound effects (just my opinion)

And i cannot skip in my mind the weird thing happening at 1:51 . 

[karlozalb]

@oldblood thank you for such a valuable feedback, we're thinking about all you said (especially cutting down super early bird rewards, the limits of some of them and the length of the video). We want to launch this tomorrow

@bakkusa thank you too! I'm afraid that there is no time for sound effects :/.What weird thing? that downward shot?

[ｂ∀ ｋｋｕｓａ]

I don't know, it's just weird how the enemy disappears when he dies. as if it glitched. the camera movement, the ladder climbing, all at the same time. I don't know , maybe it's just me.
I kept reloading that part just to understand what happened because it was weird.

[karlozalb]

I don't know, it's just weird how the enemy disappears when he dies. as if it glitched.
I kept reloading that part just to understand what happened because it was weird.

Ummm.... I see, maybe the particles dissapear too quickly, we'll fix that for our next milestone.

[Kyle O]

The trailer takes too long to get to the gameplay. All people really want to see is the gameplay.

[karlozalb]

After two years of development... we're on Kickstarter!!!




Help us spreading the word (please ).

P.S: we've shortened the video,killed the super early bird rewards and lowered some reward limits.

We're also live on Steam Greenlight

[Fenrir]

Good luck guys!