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[Zizka]

Thank you, io3, means a lot.

Thanks regarding the updates. I just want to make sure we stand out as reliable as far as the project is concerned. There's so many scams and dishonesty on KS, people are skeptical/jaded and I can certainly understand why.

[io3 creations]

Yeah, plus sometimes even experienced devs games can end up with something such as Mighty Fumble 9. 

Just saw a trailer that does what I was referring to with mentioning a feature first and then demonstrating it. 
https://forums.tigsource.com/index.php?topic=32409.msg1286224#msg1286224
Though I'd say it would be better if the letters were larger or aligned differently as there's quite a bit of action with the moving lines so the text doesn't pop very well. 

[Zizka]

...and that other guy who ended up spending the KS money on hookers.

This is why I really hope our KS campaign gets funded. Seems like the right thing to happen to be honest.

Following your comments, I've modified the final reward and leave the final boss design out of it.



I've added an achievements section as well:


I keep descriptions short and to the point. I don't want the KS to be too wordy but on the other end I don't want for the presentation to appear sketchy because information is too limited.

I'm aiming to launch sometimes during next week. I'm still looking for the right day but the campaign is to last 25 days.

We've made a little addition to the trailer I've just shown but other than the things I've commented here, that's about it.

Eventually, you just have to dive in. I've had this KickStarter on my mind for close to 2 years now. It's been a project who has carried me through during very dark days.

Back when the project started in January 2015, I was unemployed. My jobs is almost completely unpredictable and it's very difficult to know what's on the horizon. I had bills to pay which were piling up, things weren't going well work wise (because it was slow), it was in the middle of winter with very short days and since I had no job (and no money) I mostly stayed at home all the time. I had no internet and the only valuable thing I had was my tablet.

Despair was at an all-time high. I needed to believe in something, some vague impression that there was a light at the end of the tunnel somewhere.

This is how I started on Super Toaster X. The idea actually came in a dream one night, a slice of bread riding in a toaster. I spent all of my free time on this. It gave me some hope and some will to keep on going.

Eventually my job picked up again but I continued on the game. Now that we're getting closer to the 2 years mark, I feel ready to launch the game. I just want it to launch and see how things go. I want to see if the time I've invested into this will pay off. I want to see if people will believe in it. I want to see if I had good judgement about this, about how I handled the game, the ideas and the concepts.

This KickStarter is a very personal experience. I didn't realize how personal it was before getting involved in the actual procedure. All the doubts and decisions, all of the time spent early morning at 5:30 drawing before going to work. The meetings with the people involved in the game and throwing ideas around. The excitement over new developments and the disappointment and frustration about aspects of it. It's quite something.

[TonyManfredonia]

This KickStarter is a very personal experience. I didn't realize how personal it was before getting involved in the actual procedure. All the doubts and decisions, all of the time spent early morning at 5:30 drawing before going to work. The meetings with the people involved in the game and throwing ideas around. The excitement over new developments and the disappointment and frustration about aspects of it. It's quite something.

I couldn't have said it better. Although it's much more personal for you, Zizka, now that the Kickstarter is quickly approaching, my excitement and motivation is at an all time high! I'm very excited and honored to be a part of this with you.

[Zizka]

Thanks!

So I've toyed around the reward tiers a bit before launching the campaign. I didn't take into consideration that the $ was in Canadian dollars which meant that a few tiers were a bit on the low side for certain rewards.

Here's the conclusions I came to:

Looking at the Kickstarter website, October seems to be a good month to launch a campaign:


It seems to be second only to September timing-wise.

Total $ for the limited rewards:

1x5000$=5,000$
5x2000$=10,000$
5x200$=1,000$
10x150$$=1,500$
Total: 17,500$.

If all the limited rewards are claimed, we'd be over half of our final goal. If half is met, that would be 8,750$.


Looking at Hypnospace's Kickstarter (congratulations for meeting their goal by the way) since they have more or less the same financial goal as we did:

1$ x 35= 35$
10$ x 441= 4,410$
12$ x 371= 4,452$

Judging from those pledges, the very vast majority of pledges are 20$ or under. So I'm strongly considering tweaking the rewards further to better represent that. There would be very little point in having all of those rewards over 20$ if most people are focusing on the lower tier rewards.

Based on this, it's unlikely that many people will pledge for over 20$. This is very important to keep in mind.

If the majority of backers go for the basic reward at 10$, we would need 3,000 backers to reach our goal. This is unlikely to happen of course so this also needs to be taken into consideration.

I'm not sure the 25$ is judicious at the moment. I'm not sure backers will be interested in going from the early access of the game at 15$ to the soundtrack for 10$ more.

So I'm thinking of lowering the soundtrack to 20$ to make it more manageable and appealing since this is the tier most backers aim for. I still have a few more days to make up my mind about it. Another option I'm considering is getting rid of the soundtrack all together and including it as a tier with early access at 20$, again to make this more appealing. I think this would make a interesting step from the 10$ tier to the 20$ tier.

Apart from that I've added a tier for a postcard with a custom drawing. It seemed like a good idea so I decided to add it in:

[oldblood]

I know I'm late to the KS feedback train, but I'd highly encourage you to lower your goal and find a way to trim down costs. Comparing with Hypnospace KS is apples and oranges. Jay is a known indie with a critically successful release last year, a publisher backing, decent size social media presence, a press following and has successfully raised about $25k on KS previously and even with all that- he didn't exactly rush past his $25k goal and STX has debatedly less commercial appeal as an even more niche' game experience.

You really shouldn't factor in the super-high/limited rewards. Many very successful KS games (like Rimworld: 200k+ on a 25k goal) couldn't move a single backer over $500, despite having 1500, 4000 and 6000 tiers and being wildly successful. There's nothing wrong with benefactor-level tiers, but you shouldn't assume anything that size will ever be filled. If it is- that's awesome!

I could be wrong and this could explode and do really well (in which case, congratulations!), but as a niche' game from an unknown developer with no prior commercial releases, I think you will be in for a very challenging experience. Hopefully this doesn't come across as me being a negative jerk, it would just be my opinion that you should find ways to aggressively trim your budget. Hopefully I'm wrong in that assumption and regardless, I do hope for the best with your campaign!
 

[Zizka]

Hello oldblood,

I don't take your comment as something negative. Even though we don't always see eye to eye, you're certainly entitled to your opinion. Once again I only partially agree with you this time but I think there's some truth to what you're saying.

You might be right. I've actually reduced the objective to 25,000$ CAN, so that's 19,000 $ US, 11,000$ less than what I started for.

This is because it *is* more of a niche phenomenon which *should* be taken into consideration. For the record though, it's fairly hard to say about the final requested amount. Other Japanese learning games have asked for much, much more while being niche games as well.

Koe: 130,000$. Also a niche game but managed to reach its goal.
Magicians: a language learning RPG 34,000$
Learn Japanese to survive: 30,000$

So basically my game would have the lowest budget goal. I don't consider it inferior in any way to those project so it requires a lot of willpower to go for less but in the end I have to aim for what's practical as opposed to ego driven ideologies. I see no reason why it wouldn't reach it (especially considering the production values are in my opinion superior to Learn Japanese to Survive which is essentially a RPG Maker game). I mean why not my project if theirs were funded?

Koe's creator was his first project as well, just like this is our first project.

While the concerns you point out are valid at first glance, judging by the other projects so far out there on KS, STX stands a strong chance as it is at the moment, especially with the lowered funding goal. Three nice games have done well and they don't seem to be by well-establish developers either.


This being said, I would certainly love to read about what the other members are thinking about the final amount. Reducing the amount impacts the final quality of the project in the end though. On the other hand, perhaps going for a lower goal and getting funded and then going for stretch goals might be a better solution? Certainly worth thinking about.


I've added a few more sections to the presentation as well.


Updates during the kickstarter will take place every three days from launching day providing more information about music, art and programming. The updates will also contain a question and answer section to comment on people's feedback about the game.

Updates are meant to be opportunities for potential backers to ask questions and voice their concerns and other inquiries. We'll do our best to answer them in a transparent, instructive fashion.

Updates post-kickstarter will take place once every three weeks.

I've also added more art to promote the actual Japanese itself further:


The financial section has also been overhauled with a detailed description about funding, how the money will be used and so on.

The trailer is up as well.


I'm crossing my fingers it'll be picked as spotlight. I don't really see how the actual presentation can be any better than it already.

I'll think about the final funding today and take it from there. It's certainly something worth considering.

[ｂ∀ ｋｋｕｓａ]

Koe: 130,000$. Also a niche game but managed to reach its goal.
Magicians: a language learning RPG 34,000$
Learn Japanese to survive: 30,000$

wanted to point out that Koe and Learn Japanese to survive, both strike the anime fan niche, and Magicians is a kickstarter project from before ~2012 which isn't representative of kickstarter current state.

I think your project is nicher than those two as you're trying to sell a japanese learning game without the "anime" aesthetic.

[oldblood]

Well you understand that market more than I do, I wasn't even familiar with the other games you mentioned so it's entirely possible I don't know what I'm talking about. It was just my reaction to the numbers at first glance, I would take it as face value as just one guys opinion.

[Zizka]

@bakkusa:
A fair point.

I've just had a chat with my parents about this and it allowed me to edge closer to a decision.

I think it's better to go for a lower amount and get funded than to be too ambitious and fail to reach my goal. I don't want to sell myself short however.

@oldblood:

You think it's still too high now at 19,000 US as opposed to 30,000$. I'll wait and read other people's opinion about this. At the end of the day, other people's opinion will determine if this gets funded or not more than my own.

[next2indies]

Hi!

We're KS enthusiasts. We have backed +70 projects and helped a good bunch of them.
Regarding your project: first we might say that Team should go down and rewards should go a bit up.
Truth to be told, KS has changed in the last years. Don't ever use 2009-2012 projects as reference. Damn, not sure if 2013-2014 are totally applicable. Look those ones with care.
One thing that has changed is that old KS was all about helping humble teams. There is some of that now, we won't lie... but now is more about backing games you like, despite the team. So now team is normally placed on a low priority spot and most of videos used to be devs talking about the project, but now people want to see game trailers that rock. Some not so recent perfect examples would be Night in the Woods or Hyper Light Drifter.

I collaborated on a project were devs were stubbornly stuck in the idea of including themselves in the video explaining stuff of the project. I insisted that was not a good idea. They took it a bit personally and were adamant about this point. The result was a 4 minute video with some cool footage that was constantly interrumped by devs talking about stuff. They even insisted that, to be fair, all team needed to appear at least once. We are talking about 8-9 people.

I attended events and talked to people. They all agreed that the video was a bit boring by being too long and that the parts they liked the least were the ones with the devs.

Sorry... this is an extreme situation. I guess (I hope) you go for a trailer with a "wow" factor instead of a video with the dev talking stuff. But my point was that now team has a lot less relevance. Only exception is
a) the team includes a rockstar such as Inafune or Igarashi
b) the team has a really unexpected component that is worth some storytelling

In the end you need to identify key points that can engage people or even media. Find your keyponts... your hooks. And then maximize them and make them the core of your campaign.

I agree on 30k being maybe too much. It's harder and harder to raise money through KS. First of all check your audience. Calculate how much you could raise solely from them. The result is too small? Find an alternative source of fundings and make a mix, making the KS one of two sources.

Also... first half of month is better than second half, due to payday and people being more prone to spend their money.
Finally, choose a good launching day. Monday and Tuesday tend to be the best options. Worst option is weekend. KS gets really calm during weekend.

So... where is expected for the KS to be released? You have our attention! (:

Best of lucks!

[Zizka]

Hello and welcome to the thread.

Regarding your project: first we might say that Team should go down and rewards should go a bit up.

Right, ok will do. I'll put "team" way down right before the "budget" section.

I collaborated on a project were devs were stubbornly stuck in the idea of including themselves in the video explaining stuff of the project. I insisted that was not a good idea. They took it a bit personally and were adamant about this point. The result was a 4 minute video with some cool footage that was constantly interrumped by devs talking about stuff. They even insisted that, to be fair, all team needed to appear at least once. We are talking about 8-9 people.

I honestly don't know if there's one approach which will appeal to everyone but I prefer short trailers. Ours is one minute at the moment. I seldom watch trailers longer than a minute myself. I guess in their case they thought it would establish a human connection with the potential backers? That's the thing with KS, it's not an exact science so the best choice is not always obvious.

I agree on 30k being maybe too much. It's harder and harder to raise money through KS. First of all check your audience. Calculate how much you could raise solely from them. The result is too small? Find an alternative source of fundings and make a mix, making the KS one of two sources.

I've been thinking a lot about the final sum. I decided that to reduce that amount quite a bit, going from 30,000 to 15,000. This will make the game shorter than what I had in mind but that's not necessarily a bad thing. Stretch games will also aim to make the game closer to the original length I had in mind.

There are still a few tweaks to be done here and there. For one thing, I want to make sure people realize that the amount displayed is in Canadian dollars, not American ones. This could have a fairly strong psychological impact.

As for launching during the first half of October, that's definitely the plan. I'm hoping this week to be fair. Just need to select a day which ends on a Sunday. I want our campaign to last 25 days so I'll need to look into that.

[supermega_peter]

Hey Zizka,

I'm wondering how you arrived at the budget you are seeking, what are you allocating the funding towards?

Now, my project did not do well on Kickstarter so don't take it as the best example, but you need to drive a lot of traffic to your page.

The main thing I have learned from my experience is to really really trim everything from your budget possible.

From my own budget, I would have removed:
- Money to produce physical rewards
- Money put aside to promote the game

And that alone would have halved my budget. No-one really was that bothered about the physical rewards in the higher tiers - so digital rewards with no overhead are ideal.

The lower your target, the more likely you are to get funded. Trim all the fat from your budget and you make your prospects a lot better

[io3 creations]

@zizka
Hookers?  Is that a different one from the one with strippers?   Either way, those type of issues have certainly started to make it a bit more difficult for KS campaigns and as mentioned above, a lot has changed in the lot few years.  However, with a few recent decent looking campaigns that seemed to do similar things that can work well (had articles written about the game, streamers played the demo) and yet have not reached their funding goals.  Ultimately, there's no guarantee, but there are a few things that can help out.  The key seems to be is reaching lots of people and more specifically the *right* people.

At the end of the day, other people's opinion will determine if this gets funded or not more than my own.

A question: What happens if KS doesn't succeed?  Is that the end or will you continue regardless?  If it's a must to succeed, then that could motivate you to do your best to find as many people as you can that would likely support your project.  You've talked about the dark side of marketing (like trying to convince vegetarians to eat meat.  Hey, some like to challenge themselves ) and also mentioned sending the demo to streamers.  There have been a few other suggestions about targeting communities in previous posts.  So, to a large part, it's actually how much do you (zizka) believe in the project and willing to do for it that will play a significant role in whether the KS is a success or not.

Having team members appear in the video is a good question.  My guess is that it can help those that are looking for the personal connection and can help if the passion for the project is shown.  It might have worked in the past as well since at that time KS was truly a kickstarter where most projects were at a concept level and didn't have much to show in terms of gameplay.  However, one of the shifts at KS have been (again due to some projects failing to deliver) is that nowadays people seem to expect some work already done - i.e. a decent demo that shows the game.  So, I'd say it's good that you have the team videos on the page.

Regarding the funding amount, I agree with others that nowadays even a few thousands can be hard to reach if you don't do your part in terms of reaching out and have a decent exposure. 

[Zizka]

Note: I'm writing up a funding document which I'll be sharing here.

So, to a large part, it's actually how much do you (zizka) believe in the project and willing to do for it that will play a significant role in whether the KS is a success or not.

I say this in all honesty: I have no idea what I else I can do to promote the project further aside from contacting youtubers/streamers. If you think there are other things I can do, go ahead and tell me and I'll do them  . The way I see it, apart from buying ads, there's nothing else I can do, I've done everything remotely possible to promote the project as much as possible.

[io3 creations]

There have been a few other suggestions about targeting communities in previous posts.

This is the post I was referring to: https://forums.tigsource.com/index.php?topic=45455.msg1275449#msg1275449

[Zizka]

Meaning, your game is about learning Japanese, so target some indy japanese gaming communities, target weebos, target anime forums, and anime streamers on twitter and the like. Btw, do you have a twitter where you are aggressively courting anime Gaijins and the like?  Aggressively target people that your game would appeal to, that way MOST of the people you send to the page will vote "yes" instead of "no."

I've contacted anime gaijings on twitter, the most popular ones.

As for indie Japanese gaming communities, I doubt they would see the appeal since it's a game to learn Japanese, so I don't think they would see much of a point in supporting it on KickStarter.

I have no idea where I can contact weebos.

I've presented the game on all the indie game forums I could find on google and some anime forums as well as Japanese learning forums.

I wasn't kidding when I said everything that could be done 

[Zizka]

@supermega_peter:

There are certainly a few areas I could further cut down on budget, rewards being a big one. Following is the detailed budget. I don’t think a budget has ever that detailed in the history of KS so I might be a pioneer here.


I had originally planned 1500$ for gifts. I just went for the rule of thumb that presents should be about 10% of your total amount. I wanted to make sure backers would get their due in the end. I played it way too safe however.

Out of a total of 15,000$ US, I think 750$ would probably be more than enough to cover the expenses of the physical rewards of my campaign since they’re so high up. So that would put at 14,250$.

1,500$ is to pay for the Unity engine. I don’t think there’s a way I could include paying for this unless I want to stick with the default with the splash screen. I mean, it wouldn’t be the end of the world but it’s sort of amateurish I find. I’m between two fences about this one.

1,000$ is the budget for the music. I don’t feel comfortable revealing the financial arrangements I have with Tony about this but it should cover the compositions and the SFX for the game. From what I understand, it’s a reasonable amount.

I put 4,000$ for taxes. This amount of course will vary depending on the final financial goal. The higher the more taxes.
From my understanding, 16% goes to taxes. In the case of 15,000$, it’s 2,400$ for taxes.


As for the programming, that’s the most important funding aspect of the game. To put it bluntly,  finding a reliable and skilled programmer is the most challenging aspect of game development by far, all categories included. This means I can’t cut back on expenses on programming to make sure the programmer doesn’t quit halfway and goes dark for ages. The pay has to be enticing enough to make sure the programmer takes his job seriously and gives his or her 100%.

30% is meant to cover programming costs. So 4,500$ to cover programming. 20$ US an hour the goal here to cover all the programming costs for a total of 225 hours.
I honestly doubt this will cover the programming costs. At 40 hours a week, that’s a bit above a month of coding. This is my main concern budget wise.


30% is for art. This is to create the rest of the environments, abilities, foes, animations, the rest of the skill icons, the rest of the achievements and missing UI elements. 4,500$ again for art. I think that should provide enough to make quite a lot of visual content. I’ve been told one of the major appeal of the project was its aesthetics so I think that’s a priority worth going for along the programming.

I probably will end up using a part of that budget to go for programming and have the graphical assets done for free in order to cover coding though which sucks but we’ll cross that river once we reach it.

Kickstarter includes the amazon fees for a total of 10%.

So to sum everything up:
1,500 for unity + 2,400 taxes + 750 for gifts + 4,500 for programming + 4,500 for art =  13,650$ US total.  We’re still missing the KS fees here which are 10%.


Where else could I cut? I could not buy the engine which would set us back to 12,150$. I guess it’s not a necessity so that’s something I could do. I think that would be advisable if only to cover the KS fees. So the KS fees would be 1,250$.

As for the rest, I certainly can’t do anything about taxes. I could still cut on art, code and music but at this point we would pretty much have no budget to make the game which is the whole point of the campaign.

So, again:
4,500 art +
4,500 code +
750 rewards +
1,000 music +

Total: 10,750$. But if we want to reach that amount post KS share, it would need to go to 12,000$ US. That way, once the KS fees have been deducted, I will keep true to my original budget.

So I hope this explains. This would mean a further cut from 15,000 US to 12,000 US.
More realistic? Let me know what you think.

EDIT: I've also added a crafting section to the presentation:



All that's left to do now is to reorder things around. I'm thinking of also including the detailed budget I've provided here on the page description, think it's a good idea?

[alvarop]

I really like the face on that last image you shared (right above crafting)! I think it looks way more friendly and less creepy than the more detailed ones.

[io3 creations]

@Zizka
What about a few other possibilities. 

I agree that the visuals style looks good and that is one of the reasons why I mentioned in past posts that it could work as a game and not just a teaching tool.  So, who would be interested in it from more of a playing perspective?  Perhaps people who:
-like RPG and either know Japanese or wouldn't mind "learning" Japanese to play the game.
-like the pixel style or the nostalgia for various "early" games.

Have you contacted gaming websites?  While I can imagine "learning" is not the top priority for most gamers, the idea of a game as a teaching tool might still be good as a "something different" type article or as a quick mention.