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[BeautifulGlitch]

I like them! But you should freeze the animations after a short time, imho. I'd use them as transitions between two "comic panels" only (or as an introduction to a new panel).

Yeah, the idea is to make a different more subtle animation once the main animation ends. Like a light loop with some effects.

[BeautifulGlitch]

We've prepared char profiles for the KS page!

What do u think?

Which char do you want to see? (:

[Zorg]

I can't see the image(s). 

[BeautifulGlitch]

I can't see the image(s). 

Let's see now:



If not, there's a link: http://i.imgur.com/MRAOid6.gif?1

[BeautifulGlitch]

Here we have the KS preview page. Can you take a look and tell me what do you think? (:

IMPORTANT: we still have to include all the GIFs. We will do that by tomorrow or so.

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/corintio/301157338?token=0d9440c3

[LobsterSundew]

I skimmed the project preview quickly for tonight.

About the pitch video:

At 6 seconds into the pitch that whistle sound effect may be mixed too loud.

By 10 seconds the premise of a multi-player data sim was conveyed. Good.

Good minimalist animations.

The pitch video is currently 1 minute 43 seconds long. The black screen at the end could be used for a call-to-action screen with information like the official website URL.

About project page graphics:

I could not read Liam de Lioncourt's white text write-up on its yellow background when I had my computer monitor at a colour temperature for night viewing mode (that makes everything orange-tinted).

About platform information:

Platform information is one of the first things people look for. Many developers assume visitors will assume the game is for PC. Mac and Linux gamers will quickly want to know the situation about support or potential support through stretch goals.

The supported platforms could be much more obvious. This information could go into the project title, project thumbnail as logos, the FAQ section, the rewards sidebar or near the top of the project page's main body.

About the funding goal:

A €8,000 goal is about $8,709USD or $11,617CAD. That would be about 252 to 483 backers to reach 100% funded. Large pledges can have a big impact with a goal this low, so that is why the estimated number of backers needed has such a wide range.

A healthy average per backer is often 2x to 3x the price of the most populated reward tier. That could be €20 to €30 per backer in this case. That would be 267 to 400 backers to reach 100%.

At a pessimistic €16 average per backer (twice the €8 early-bird price) it would take 500 backers to reach €8,000. 30% of 500 is 150. If you could get 150 backers before the campaign encounters its first Friday, you would should tip towards success.

30% of 267 is approximately 80. In an optimistic scenario you may tip towards success with as little as 80 backers before the first Friday you encounter.

[fall_ark]

Wouldn't it be better to show different characters at the failure/success screenshot instead of two pictures both with Frankenstein's Wife and Bad Boy? I think the Frankenstein's Wife/Little Princess and Zombie/Party Animals pics look much better (though admittedly they were both failures) and it also hints that there's no gender limitation on your love interests.

[Bricabrac]

it also hints that there's no gender limitation on your love interests.

I think this is a very important point to convey! There has been a lot of talking about LGBT themes lately, but few games offer the opportunity to play non-eterosexual characters. You could win the sympathy of many backers by empathizing this.

Anyway, I've looked at the page.
I liked the video, but the voiceover made me difficult to concentrate on the text. So many information! Characters presentation felt expecially chaotic - the on-screen text and the voiceover were saying different (yet interesting) things.
Overall, I'm sold on the setting + presentation, and I more of less understood how the game will be played. My only dubts regard the multiplayer aspect - and moreover, if the game will be fun even if I play it alone.
I think it's important to clarify this, because most VN/sim lovers are used to single-player. If they're getting the impression the game is only fun with friends, they might decide it's not worth the price.

[BeautifulGlitch]

Ugh, Damien is always such a bigot!



Not, really I'd love for people to fell in love with the chars. I'm not talking only about romancing them (that too); but the overall idea. As said many times before, Monster Prom seeks to be similar to a TV show. Game sessions are rather small (45-60') but overall depth can make you play 10 times before you encounter 2 same situations, so the goal is for the players to have such a fun time they want to go back to the 3 weeks before prom again, to live all new situations, uncovering new layers of the 6 classmates and the whole nonsense that is in this crazy highschool.

I want people to say stuff like "damn, I just want to see what new crazy adventures will Polly live this time" and things like that, u know? I hope I can achieve this by beautiful art and superb narrative. I (and my team) will do our best ò_ó

EDIT: soon answering the last 3 messages!

[LobsterSundew]

I typed up more notes after looking at the preview again.

About the rewards structure:

The €10 tier is simply a digital copy of Monster Prom. There isn't a clear other incentive to support the game now instead of waiting for it to eventually appear on Steam. Some people will need more incentive to support a project on Kickstarter than making the game a reality. Examples of incentives are being included in the credits, a discount of the retail price or becoming part of a community.

There is a €8 early-bird tier.

The €20 tier introduces an art book, soundtrack and a zine. It would be a €10 price jump from the €10 tier which is acceptable. It would be a €12 price jump from the €8 tier which is straining it.

The wording of the €30 tier doesn't read smoothly for me. The flow of my reading trips up at "community designed" and "participate on outfits". A community that is designed or a community that was designed are different ways I interpret "community designed".

In general the €30 tier to the €100 tier seem to scale up the same reward content. There are 3 levels of participating.

I have incomplete context for what the "participation" will be. It could be feedback. It could be creating actual art assets. It could be voting with backers have control over the final decision.

The €30 to €100 tiers stand out as a potential failure point. It is difficult to judge the value these community tiers offer due to currently incomplete information about what the process would be like.

It did not find an equivalent of a beta access tier. The €30 tier could potentially become a beta tester tier. It is very clear from past experiences that one thing some backers are willing to pledge for is earlier access. At a €30 price-point it would be approaching the point of pricing beta access too high.

There is the big price jump from €50 to €100. €100 is about $109USD or $145CAD. It skips some potential for pledge upgrading, but this is also often the hardest range to brainstorm reward tier content for.

The €180 tier has a backer's likeness put into the game somewhere.

The €250 tier is designing an outfit.

The €400 tier has a backer-designed character put into the class photo at the end of the game.

The €600 tier has a backer-designed item. I wonder why this appeared after the €400 tier.

The €800 tier has a backer-designed ending.

The €1,000 tier has a more fleshed-out backer-designed character put into the game.

The highest priced tiers reference back to the €100 "Crowd-design lvl3" tier.

There was no €1 tier. There is the opportunity to have a €1 tier with all backers' names being listed on a web page, in the in-game credits, on an art book page or some other location.

About the early-bird reward tier:

There is a €8 early-bird version of the €10 tier.

The traditional early-bird is limited by a specified number of open spots. A common approach is to have the early-bird tier try to rush the campaign towards statistical tipping points.

15% of €8,000 is €1,200 or 150 backers at the €8 tier. 30% of €8,000 is €2,400 or 300 backers at the €8 tier. For a small project it is difficult to recommend more than 500 early-bird spots.

The challenge is deciding how many spots to offer. Too few early-bird spots won't help much with initial traction. Too many early-bird spots harms the efficiency of the campaign meaning more backers needed to reach funding goals. Way too many early-bird spots removes a sense of urgency to pledge due to lack of scarcity.

Time-limited, milestone-limited and hybrid-type early-bird reward tiers use various types of conditions to determine when the reward tier is manually closed. Each has pros and cons. A traditional early-bird tier should be fine for Monster Prom.

About the project page:

It is still being assembled.

There is a Greenlight banner at the top. Good. Once the Steam Greenlight page is live you can benefit from sending traffic from Kickstarter there.

Supporting multiple languages during a campaign is an option to get more backers. Consider doing a project update like update #14 for Ruin of the Reckless. It is then possible to link to such a project update from your project page.

The risks and challenges section doesn't mentioned how far the game is in development. From a PR perspective the "There are no big risks here" line could backfire.

About local indie cross-promotion:

Other Kickstarter projects based in Barcelona are Megamagic: Wizards of the Neon Age and Twin Souls (now called Path of Shadows). There weren't any active projects. There were many unsuccessful projects not worth mentioning.

There is a Unity3D dev meetup in Barcelona. There is the Barcelona Game Makers group, but I don't see anything on their calendar for October. In June 2016 there was the Indie Developer Burger Awards.

Project Automata, BodyFrog, Moon Child, Kewpie, Project Amy and Color Box are active campaigns from Spain. Dead Synchronicity, Moira, AR-K, Moonlighter, Crossing Souls, A Place for the Unwilling, Harem Protagonist, Heart&Slash and Red Goddess are ended campaigns from Spain.

[BeautifulGlitch]

I skimmed the project preview quickly for tonight.

About the pitch video:

At 6 seconds into the pitch that whistle sound effect may be mixed too loud.

By 10 seconds the premise of a multi-player data sim was conveyed. Good.

Good minimalist animations.

The pitch video is currently 1 minute 43 seconds long. The black screen at the end could be used for a call-to-action screen with information like the official website URL.

We're trying to fix the audio a bit!
Thanks for your kind words.
Yeah, we're using the black screen for a call-to-action

About project page graphics:

I could not read Liam de Lioncourt's white text write-up on its yellow background when I had my computer monitor at a colour temperature for night viewing mode (that makes everything orange-tinted).

Damn, we can see if we can do something. But more likely we're leaving like that

About platform information:

Platform information is one of the first things people look for. Many developers assume visitors will assume the game is for PC. Mac and Linux gamers will quickly want to know the situation about support or potential support through stretch goals.

The supported platforms could be much more obvious. This information could go into the project title, project thumbnail as logos, the FAQ section, the rewards sidebar or near the top of the project page's main body.

We're adding that, yeah! (:

About the funding goal:

A €8,000 goal is about $8,709USD or $11,617CAD. That would be about 252 to 483 backers to reach 100% funded. Large pledges can have a big impact with a goal this low, so that is why the estimated number of backers needed has such a wide range.

A healthy average per backer is often 2x to 3x the price of the most populated reward tier. That could be €20 to €30 per backer in this case. That would be 267 to 400 backers to reach 100%.

At a pessimistic €16 average per backer (twice the €8 early-bird price) it would take 500 backers to reach €8,000. 30% of 500 is 150. If you could get 150 backers before the campaign encounters its first Friday, you would should tip towards success.

30% of 267 is approximately 80. In an optimistic scenario you may tip towards success with as little as 80 backers before the first Friday you encounter.

Ooooh, I hope we can get those numbers! (:

[Zorg]

I could not read Liam de Lioncourt's white text write-up on its yellow background when I had my computer monitor at a colour temperature for night viewing mode (that makes everything orange-tinted).

Damn, we can see if we can do something. But more likely we're leaving like that

Original:


You could use a white overlay for the text:

[BeautifulGlitch]

I could not read Liam de Lioncourt's white text write-up on its yellow background when I had my computer monitor at a colour temperature for night viewing mode (that makes everything orange-tinted).

Damn, we can see if we can do something. But more likely we're leaving like that

Original:


You could use a white overlay for the text:

Woah, that's super helpful. How did you do it? If I upload a corrected version of the profile can you do it again with it? (((:

[Zorg]

I used photoshop to extract the text from the color channel with the highest contrast.

Send me a PM when the new corrected version is available.

Or: You could use white text at about 75% opacity for all descriptions.

[BeautifulGlitch]

I used photoshop to extract the text from the color channel with the highest contrast.

Send me a PM when the new corrected version is available.

Or: You could use white text at about 75% opacity for all descriptions.

Woah! Thanks a lot (((:
Message sent!

[Zorg]

No problem.

I noticed some gifs are very fast, compared to others. Personally, i don't like fast gifs, but maybe i'm just old...
All your images are 680 pixels wide, except the items gif (624 px).

[BeautifulGlitch]

No problem.

I noticed some gifs are very fast, compared to others. Personally, i don't like fast gifs, but maybe i'm just old...
All your images are 680 pixels wide, except the items gif (624 px).

I was mistaken... I gave you an image and not the GIF :c

Also... yeah, they're too big. I want the GIFs to go smaller. They're sometimes just too much, right?

[BeautifulGlitch]

There's a reward where u become part of an exclusive community (like secret forums) that propose, comment and vote new game content. Cool?

[LobsterSundew]

Here are more notes.

About the project page:

I see more images have been added since this morning.

With the "Absurd items" GIF I looked at it with GIMP. I was able to reduce the filesize from 2.4 MB down to 1.7 MB by going "Filters", then "Animation", then "Optimize (for GIF)" and then overwriting. It uses transparencies so only the information of changes in a new frame need to be done. If there is barely any movement in a GIF there is significant savings.

Some of the animated GIFs have large pixel dimensions. For animated GIFs you can get a similar impact with reduced filesize and less vertical space consumed. The whitespace barely adds to the filesize if done right due to the optimizations.
Step 1: scale a GIF down.
Step 2: add whitespace to the left and right sides to fit the project page body's width and to center it.
Step 3: use optimizing for animated GIF features in programs like GIMP.

The "Man seeking woman" TV show should have capitalizations for "seeking" and "woman".

The stretch goals chart is fine for now. A tip is to use the performance of the campaign's first day to decide how high to plan the stretch goal chart's levels. It can look bad when a campaign sitting at $38 total has a $2,000,000 stretch goal.

In the team section the "Beautiful Glitch" animated GIF is 282 pixels tall. There is lots of whitespace above and below the logo that may be a stylistic choice. Some of that whitespace could be cropped to reduce the height of that GIF if you needed to recover some page height. Sometimes a problem is a project page becomes very tall and requires lots more scrolling.

The "But our real HQ are the internetz" is a good line. This note is to double-check that you did intend to use "are" instead of "is".

Expect to eventually be asked on Kickstarter about your stance on DRM. It is an important point for some backers. Many projects later use Humble Store's service to distribute both Steam keys and DRM-free builds.

More page weight means longer load times on slow Internet connections or mobile devices. I see a page weight of 10.2 MB without including the pitch video. That isn't too bad. I've seen pages go over 40 MB.

You could clarify there will be a backers-only sub-forum. That would be much clearer to understand.

The project's reward tier text is difficult to change after launching. Once occupied you can't edit a tier's text. The text should be double-checked for spelling, grammar, clarity, etc. by multiple people if possible. This is one of my main concerns. Try to get feedback from native English speakers about the flow of the text.

Some text is using "lvl3", while other parts are using "level 3". In the €100 tier I don't know if "level 3 gets to participate on outfits" should have "level" capitalized at the front.

In the €100 tier is says "and AT LEAST ONE CAMEO CHARACTER EXCLUSIVELY CREATED FOR THIS PURPOSE". If this is the community creating one cameo character together that could be clearer. There is the possibility someone mistakes the €100 tier as getting their own character as a cameo character.

About the project thumbnail:

The current version has Liam and Polly's heads covered by the pitch video play button. I've seen a banner image using the same art assets with the logo between the characters. This means it may be possible to slide Liam slightly to the left and Polly slightly to the right so their faces are still visible. The Monster Prom logo is just above the Play button and not covered which is good.

Project thumbnail images can be re-uploaded after launching, so it isn't as high a priority as getting the project page's main body finished.

About the project title:

The title is currently "Monster Prom [a crazy twist on dating sims!]".

You have the ability to influence the long URL for the project using the title. The first 50 characters becomes part of the long URL. Spaces and irregular characters become hyphens. Punctuations get ignored. Relaunched projects can get a "-0" or "-1" added to the end of their URL (likely so it doesn't result in a duplicate URL if the project title was kept the same for the reboot).

It is possible to launch with a shorter title to result in an easier URL. "Monster Prom" would become "monster-prom". Immediately after launching the title can be changed to its longer form and keep the less simpler URL.

About press:

The press kit now has a studio page and a Monster Prom page. Good.

Co-Optimus is an video game news website for co-op games.

Part of the main pitch for the game is the 1st "local multiplayer" + "dating sim". In 2013 a MUGEN-based multiplayer dating sim that didn't seem to come to anything. There is a tabletop multiplayer dating game in an ero community. There was a joke on a Bioware forum about one of the games becoming a massively multiplayer dating sim. There were comments about YAWHG being a multiplayer dating sim. It looks like Monster Prom is first. There were devs who said they were the first to do something only to learn after launching on Kickstarter that the idea had been done long before.

The Yawhg was stated as an inspiration in the press kit (but not on the project page yet). I had never heard of the game before. The Steam page went up May 2013. SteamSpy currently shows 79,682 ± 7,324 activations.

The "millionaire tiger" is a good Steven Universe reference.

It is good to see more and more team member names hyperlinked to their social media profiles.

About within Kickstarter:

There is a wave of low-effort projects launching. Project creators start to realize they need to rush to launch before the platform gets worse in November and December.

CIBOS has a very interesting soundtrack to its pitch video and some good animations. It was one of the few projects to launch recently worth noting. It is also a 4 player local multiplayer game.

I was surprised Voyage of Fortune's Star saw so little activity near the end of its campaign.

Code: HARDCORE has 35 hours remaining. At The Cage has 30 hours. Clans of the End has 33 hours. Many of the high-quality projects for October 2016 have already ended by now. Competition is declining.

In the top 20, the last row is currently Queer Quest (with a score of 17.5), Socks the Cat (12.2), NAIRI (9.1) and Dragon Bros (7.6). If Monster Prom could get more than 10 backers during its launch it could grab a spot in the top 20. That is significantly less difficult competition compared to earlier this month. It would've needed over 40 backers at launch to break into the top 20.

About outside Kickstarter:

Nintendo revealed its Nintendo Switch. AMD showed off "checkboard rendering" for up-scaling PS4 Pro gameplay. Civilization VI released. Battlefield 1 is out. AAA gaming is getting lots of attention. A Sonic fan game had a great trailer.

Titanfall 2 is on October 28th. I wonder how much of a splash the Skyrim update on the same day will make.

[BeautifulGlitch]

Wouldn't it be better to show different characters at the failure/success screenshot instead of two pictures both with Frankenstein's Wife and Bad Boy? I think the Frankenstein's Wife/Little Princess and Zombie/Party Animals pics look much better (though admittedly they were both failures) and it also hints that there's no gender limitation on your love interests.

TOTALLY AGREE!
Now this is  whole new keypoint with its own GIF that shows BxB GxG BxG GxB endings!

Thanks a lot! (: