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[Jay Tholen]

Thanks all, and thanks Lobster! That is immensely helpful. Here's a cheeky promotional gif I just whipped up:

[LobsterSundew]

The campaign experienced its first weekend.

570 backers have currently pledged $12,548 (44.81%).

More Twitter activity keeps happening. Two Japanese sites covered the project. An IndieGames.com article was the biggest recent piece of coverage.

Here are updated graphs:
http://i.imgur.com/Z1y72Lm.png

Kicktraq currently shows a trend to $50,192 (179%). BackerTracker shows a trend to $35,786 (127.8%). SideKick shows a 44% chance of success.

Hypnospace Outlaw is 5th in popularity. It has been doing well competing against newer campaigns.

[Jay Tholen]

Thanks Lobster! I'm gonna keep pluggin' away.

Because the game squishes two radically different types of games together, I'm entertaining the idea of creating three modes of play:

• Default - The game as it was originally envisioned. Balanced OS/Investigative and Highway modes.
• Sleuth Mode - Heavier emphasis on the OS parts, with the Highway being greatly reduced in difficulty and prominence. This will result in a shorter total experience, but people who play games for the narrative elements will benefit.
• Arcade Mode - Heavier emphasis on the Highway parts. Violators will be assigned to you via inbox messages sequentially.

Haven't had MUCH of a chance to improve the game itself during the Kickstarter, but I did upgrade the Scumbag Tracker a bit.



Had a stream and a bunch of folks got on a skype call and coached me while I made this page:



And finally, my bud Hot Dad made a song about the game:

[LobsterSundew]

695 backers have pledged $14,752 (52.69% of $28,000).

Hypnospace Outlaw is doing well. It just needs to endure the mid-campaign trough period.

About the campaign's performance:

Here are updated graphs:
http://i.imgur.com/NvSYET6.png

The $12 tier is now seeing activity after the $10 tier reached its cap.

The average pledge continues to have around $21 to $22 per backer.

Kicktraq shows a trend to $37,502 (133%). BackerTracker shows a trend to $31,164 (111.3%). SideKick shows a 64% chance of success.

About outside Kickstarter:

PCGamesN, GameTraderUSA and Indie Mag mentioned the project.

Episode 49 of the Tuesday Knight Podcast had an interview with a bunch of sailing terminology.

Twitter continues to see activity for Hypnospace Outlaw.

The external environment isn't too busy right now.

Tokyo Games Show 2016 is over. Persona 5 is selling well in Japan.

Clustertruck announced a September 27th release date.

About inside Kickstarter:

Strong projects continue to launch. Code: HARDCORE, Blubber Busters and Dragon Date were cool surprises. Competition within the category remains high.

Waveland had an amazing final surge.
http://i.imgur.com/d6uePQR.png

Hypnospace Outlaw is holding the 10th rank in popularity. Many other projects are having a much harder time maintaining a good ranking. I'm surprised how some high-quality projects were buried out of sight.

[Capntastic]

I backed it gimme a glittering coin

[Jay Tholen]

[LobsterSundew]

I occasionally listen to the "Hypnospace is cool" song on loop.

Less than 10 days to go. 906 backers have currently pledged $19,871 (70.97% of the $28,000 goal).

About campaign performance:

Here are updated graphs:
http://i.imgur.com/W3wOMCu.png

September 24th saw a burst in backer activity.

The $12 tier has doing well since the $10 early-bird tier filled up. Unallocated funds remain about the same. There isn't really anything I see that needs fixing, so I don't have much to talk about for the graphs. The $20 tier for the soundtrack is doing well.

$8,129 to go until 100% funded. At an average of $22 per backer it would take 370 additional backers to reach it. That is very doable.

Kicktraq shows a trend to $29,284 (104%), while BackerTracker shows $32,522 (116.1%).

With the current pace the campaign could potentially be 100% funded by October 1st. If not, it could be funded soon after since the last 48 hours reminder emails are scheduled to go out at 6:00pm PDT on October 2nd. Getting a large amount of press could get the project 100% funded sooner.

It looks like reaching stretch goals will depend upon the last 48 hours.

About within Kickstarter:

Hypno Space keeps hovering around 6th to 8th in popularity. It continues to be good by staying in the top 20. There are some strong campaigns around. Over the last few days there has been a wave of generally low-effort projects launching with a few gems.

Voyage of Fortune's Star is from the co-creator of Vampire: The Masquerade. It has been doing well. Blubber Busters is popular, but it has a $340,000 goal to reach. Rad Rogers should reach its goal by the end. Tiny Metal is a game inspired by Advance Wars that has exploded in popularity since some strong Reddit threads. It had a slow start.

Many campaigns that launched in late August are ending now.

Ruin of the Reckless had a good final day.
http://i.imgur.com/cq49RjJ.png
I was surprised Russian Subway Dogs didn't see more of a final surge.
http://i.imgur.com/NaUw1lt.png
I'm also surprised Vulpine missed its goal by $8,820. It also didn't see much of a final surge.
http://i.imgur.com/jwb4t5R.png
The campaign for the Astro Boy game Suda 51 was working on was canceled. I hope Japan-based developers don't think Kickstarter won't work for them because lately the projects from Japan have been doing terribly due to poor management.
http://i.imgur.com/x3TY9ov.png

The viking-themed game Iron Tides launches on September 28th.

When a new months starts, Kickstarter sees a wave of new projects launching. Antraxx is a mecha game scheduled to launch on Kickstarter for October 1st. With Code: Hardcore already attracting many mecha fans to Kickstarter it could become a popular campaign.

Something to note is that October 1st this year is a Saturday and Saturdays are terrible days to launch. Back on August 1st 2015 I remember good quality projects nerfing their launches on that Saturday.

About outside Kickstarter:

Shantae: Half-Genie Hero delayed is release by 6 weeks, so it won't be releasing in September.

The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild released a new trailer.

Blizzard is reworking its classic multiplayer matchmaking service.

Let's Play channels keep talking about YouTube's questionable policy decisions.

Mafia III doesn't release until October 7th. The release of Playstation VR happens October 13th. After that the big games in October like Gears of War 4, Battlefield 1 and Civilization VI. There isn't much for AAA releases in Hypnospace Outlaw's way since it ends on October 4th.

[DireLogomachist]

You got featured on Kotaku!

http://kotaku.com/https-youtu-be-b2s-bwzwbdo-if-abandoned-90s-angelfir-1787083353

[LobsterSundew]

1,196 backers have currently pledged $25,525 (91.12% of $28,000). $2,475 to go until 100% funded. 5 days remain. The campaign is about to go into its last weekend.

Here are updated graphs:
http://i.imgur.com/9aCpYQl.png

There was an increase in activity after the Kotaku article. The shape of the $12 tier is good.

I also have data specifically for September 28th, but not much noteworthy happened besides the Twitch stream.
http://i.imgur.com/gS40bqC.png

Kicktraq shows a trend to $31,075 (110%). BackerTrackers hows $35,472 (126.7%).

Hypnospace Outlaw is currently 4th in the popularity rankings for the category. This is very good. With the start of October there should be a wave of fresh new projects helping to generate traffic to the platform. If Hypnospace Outlaw continues to hold a good ranking it may have a great final 48 hours.

[Jay Tholen]

Thanks! I'm pretty excited! :D

I made a few videos about the game here:









We just broke 26k, which means we've only got 2k left to raise before we hit our goal! :0)

[Jay Tholen]

Hypnospace is 100% Funded, wooo!  
Link: kickstarter.com/projects/jaytholen/hypnospace-outlaw

We're still shooting for stretch goals. The first is to get Hot Dad on to do music. The second, which I'll announce on Saturday, will involve some returning art/animation personnel from Dropsy for desktop pets. :0)

[Chris Pavia]

Congrats!

[LobsterSundew]

1,353 backers are currently pledging $29,443 (105.15%).

Less than 70 hours remaining in the campaign.

Campaign performance:

Here are updated graphs.
http://i.imgur.com/3c0G5xp.png

The $20 soundtrack tier's contribution towards the total is doing very well. The $12 tier is also contributing about as much as the filled $10 early-bird tier.

While there was a net increase in backers, funding progress went backwards on October 1st. The data I have shows a backer pulled out right after project update #9 was sent out. It resulted in a $12 drop. Then another backer downgraded his/her large pledge about an hour after update #9. There was a $380 drop.
http://i.imgur.com/Cp4hvtX.png
Downgrading of pledges does occasionally happen soon after project updates. When a campaign is finally over 100% funded, a project update can remind a backer to get around to eventually decreasing a pledge to a more comfortable amount since the campaign is doing well.

Kicktraq shows a trend to $31,709 (113%). BackerTracker shows $34,096 (121.8%).

About within Kickstarter:

Hypnospace is currently 6th in the popularity rankings.

Cattle and Crops is a farm simulation game in 1st. Rad Rogers is 2nd. Dual Universe is 3rd. ICU is 4th. Project Automata is 5th.

A fresh wave projects are launching for October. Beard Blade has a protagonist that kind-off looks like Jay on its project thumbnail. ANTRAXX is a pixel-art mech battle game. Dwarrows is a town-sim. There were many more low-effort projects launching.

Woven now unusually has 146 backers at its €1 reward tier. It is currently 23rd in the popularity rankings. I wonder if it will make its goal.

About outside Kickstarter:

Video gaming news remains generally slow right now. Battlefield 1 is still doing its marketing. Big video game review sites have started to receive Playstation VR kits ahead of the public release of Playstation VR on October 13th.

Twitter continues to be where I see most activity about Hypnospace Outlaw. There was a post on a Korean forum. A Japanese site posted about the game. Episode 258 of the Video Game Hot Dog podcast mentioned the game. Neon Dystopia's subreddit has a post. The Pixel Tail Games forum had an off-topic thread mention the game. Episode 188 of the Eight And A Half Bit podcast had a segment.

[LobsterSundew]

Congratulations. 1,664 backers pledged $35,994 (129%). For comparison, Dropsy's campaign in October 2013 had 1,281 backers pledge $24,921.

Hypnospace Outlaw was ranked 2nd on the final day of its campaign. There was a RockPaperShotgun article. Twitter activity continued to do well.

Here are the final graphs:
http://i.imgur.com/qlatTDC.png

About 23% of backers were from the first 2 days. Around 17% of backers were from the last 2 days of the campaign.

[BeautifulGlitch]

LS, thanks for all the useful info. I followed your campaign and it has been fairly interesting. Also all the documentation you provide is great. We're launching a KS soon and I'm a bit stressed about it. I put some thoughts I have about throwing a KS. I'd love to get some feedback from you! Not looking to drive traffic to my devlog. Feel free of answering me here if you want. It'd be most helpful! (:

Here the thoughts: https://forums.tigsource.com/index.php?topic=51528.260

[LobsterSundew]

LS, thanks for all the useful info. I followed your campaign and it has been fairly interesting. Also all the documentation you provide is great. We're launching a KS soon and I'm a bit stressed about it. I put some thoughts I have about throwing a KS. I'd love to get some feedback from you! Not looking to drive traffic to my devlog. Feel free of answering me here if you want. It'd be most helpful! (:

Jay already had the experiences of 3 Kickstarter campaigns for Dropsy and music project campaigns before then. There wasn't much feedback I could add to Hypnospace Outlaw's campaign that Jay wasn't already doing right. I was less involved than usual.

The local-multiplayer dating sim is an interesting approach. Project update 19 for Indie G Zine mentioned it was competitive and cooperative with 1 to 4 players. A cooperative visual novel is an interesting idea. It could work well with Let's Play channels that have team commentaries instead of solo commentaries in their videos.

There is not enough time remaining before you launch for me to do an adequate critique of the project preview or optimize the rewards structure. Canadian Thanksgiving is October 10th and I'll be driving across a province. Even if Thanksgiving wasn't an obstacle, there still wouldn't be enough time to take a proper look. I've messaged you with a draft of my Kickstarter guide in case it will help.

[PetterBergmar]

I'm so glad you got funded! Looking forward to playing this.

[Armageddon]

Your speaking cadence reminds me of Mr. Rogers.

[Jay Tholen]

That's pretty much the highest compliment one could give me.

Going to start making more updates here again. Lots has been finished! The page builder is 90% finished. Will post a big blurb tonight. For now, here's a mockup for the sequencer I've been working on:

[swordofkings128]

Lookin' good! One thing I like about all the utilities to make things with is they don't use default window boxes or graphics. It really makes it seem like the page builder and the sequencer aren't just tools to make content with but really an extension of the Hypnospace experience.