Here are
new graphs for Steel Assault. The campaign continued to skirt close to stalling out, but the campaign kept moving forward with its $10 tier. It is actually interesting that the campaign is doing better on weekends (Ignoring the PAX weekend). I wonder how well the Screenshot Saturday posts are doing. Referrals from Reddit and Twitter would be visible in the project creator dashboard.
Children of Morta (Already over 100% funded) and
STRAFE (41.4% funded) will end just after
Steel Assault, but your game will still be within the last 48 hour period for those two when they should be generating traffic to Kickstarter. The
graphs for STRAFE aren't that healthy partially due to the initial high pricing problems and a small problem with the new $15 tier cannibalizing backers from the $25 tier (It is not as severe as other campaigns have experienced).
STRAFE needs about 3,000 additional backers to reach 100%. There is the strong possibility of a massive social media surge as backers try to save that campaign.
At 02:35:26 in
episode 78 of Super Best Friendcast was a mention for
Steel Assault. There was also another brief mention in
episode 10 of their Silent Hill 2 playthrough. Other than that and previous mentioned coverage,
Steel Assault is closer to the "no press at all" start of the spectrum than to the "good amount of press" end of the spectrum. It had dropped down into the lower popularity rankings that don't get much traffic from within Kickstarter. I saw on the
latest page of the NEOGaf thread that a build was sent to the Super Best Friends Play. I hope they do make a video. The chances are decent since they have already mentioned the game in their podcast.
Having a playable build for press and prepared material for project updates ready before launching avoid a lot of trouble trying to assemble them during a campaign's run. It is a piece of wisdom that more indie developers need to hear. Update #3 for
Steel Assault was the best one yet. The updates continue to be of high quality.
Currently I see a
97% chance of success on SideKick, a
trend to $5,242 (65%) on Kicktraq and a
trend to $8,148 (102%) on KickSpy. Kicktraq does not anticipate last 48-hour surges because it is just a linear trend.
Steel Assault's campaign needs about 180 additional backers to reach 100%. It could be funded by simply achieving 20 backers per day in the last 9 days. The campaign was already able to sustain such a pace in the first few days. From my perspective this is very realistic to achieve once there is even one large press mention that bumps it up the active project rankings. I noticed you had backed
Legend of Iya which is one example of what a last 48 hours rush can look like on Kickstarter when backers become motivated.
The project thumbnail also needs to be visible higher up the rankings so that regular Kickstarter users can see how close it is in the last few days. To rise up the ranks is going to require external exposure. There is hope that YouTube will bring in enough backers. It is also very acceptable to message the major blogs again now that the campaign is closer to its deadline. The biggest problem I see is lack of exposure. It is another NES-looking indie game, but a chunk of the market still buys NES-looking indie games.
One tactic is called a 48-hour-challenge. That happened with
Jenny LeClue's campaign. The basic idea is that someone agrees to make a big pledge only if the campaign is able to achieve a specific milestone. The biggest problem is often finding someone willing to be the person who provides the money for the challenge. It works closer to the middle of the campaign than at the end. It doesn't make as much sense having one in the last 48 hours.
The "10 Days Left" image could become the new project thumbnail. Each new day the number would be reduced. In the final hour the final version of the project thumbnail gets uploaded before the page gets archived.
For a last 48-hour rush to work, backer apathy needs to be combated. Backers need to have morale maintained. It needs to matter to them that the project gets funded. There are already comments like "Why isn't this funded yet?" which is a good sign they already care. Solid project updates help maintain morale. There is also showing the calculation of dividing the minimum goal amount by the average pledge per backer amount for an overall target number of backers to aim for.
STRAFE needs about 5,512 backers to get funded.
Steen Assault needs about 332 backers in total and backers can be told to not give up because gap is so small.