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[excadedecadedecada]

Hi all, long time lurker and first time poster!

Our studio, Multithreaded Games, has been working on a 3D turn-based, tactical RPG called Bevontule for the past few years and we're gearing up to launch a Kickstarter campaign on January 29th--actually a week from now. (!!) I'd say that Bevontule is something of a fusion of Japanese, Western and 'open-world' RPGs, with its primary emphases being on tactical combat, story/lore and customization, with respect to skills, equipment, crafting and battle formations/strategies. Basically, it's an amalgam of the games we played as teenagers in the mid to late 90s and beyond (Final Fantasies, Xenogears, Suikodens, Shadow Heartses, et cetera) but has a markedly more prominent tactical slant.

We recently recorded a teaser trailer in lieu of making our Kickstarter preview page public (we'll probably do that tomorrow or the next day.) Mainly I'm just looking for any kind of generalized feedback: is this something you'd play? Something that reminds you of any particular game? Strengths/weaknesses? Anything, really. Death threats even.





Multithreaded Games is a two-man team comprised of just programmers (although admittedly, we've outsourced music and some art) and we have almost all of the fundamental systems in place. Combat's in a very solid, stable place right now. Skill systems, UI, saving/loading, inventory, enemy behaviors, graphical optimizations/considerations--it's all there. (in Unity, for better or worse ) We've received a lot of feedback already and have released 5 free pre-alpha demos and will release a sixth one to coincide with our Kickstarter launch.

At this point in development, we're mainly looking for funding to bring on more art/SFX outsourcing (the things we suck at.) Original OST is taken care of already by the very talented Mimi Page, who has worked on Fallout 4, among many other things. Our primary focus after the Kickstarter will be content, content, content, and we have a lot of custom tools/utilities in-place already to expedite this process, provided everything goes well.

Anyhow, thanks for reading and I'll be more than happy to answer any questions, chat, or deftly deflect any criticism. (Just kidding!)

[breakfastbat]

Honestly, I find myself nitpicking to offer constructive criticism here, so that's a good thing! You're in a really good starting place if there aren't any major issues for me to point out.

My initial impression is that you took entirely too long to get to any sort of action. I'm getting from the trailer that you're really proud of the art/modeling/animation. With the focus being on the art, it has to be -extraordinarily- good to convince people to pledge to it. Fortunately, I think it actually is, but it shouldn't take a full minute to get to some kind of actual gameplay. Also, have you made any games before this? Might not be worth it to take up the first several seconds with your logo if it won't mean anything to anybody.

I think if you're trying to lure people in by graphics alone (in the first minute) you also have to come up with some really outstanding videography / shot composition. Maybe faster transitions between clips so you can show a wider variety of interesting shots within the same timeframe. Get higher in the sky or closer to the ground, go up next to waterfalls and down in the grass, jump off a cliff, run really fast, have something jump in from offscreen, just do cool things with the shots! I feel like you kinda got started in that direction with the first two shots but the execution is not quite up to par imo.

Unfortunately with just a week left I don't think there's really time to give proper feedback such that you have time to act on it. Overall I wouldn't say it's bad, I probably wouldn't even say it's weak, but it could be improved.

What's your base price for the game and campaign goal? Just looking at the trailer alone I think this would do well in the $15 price bracket with a campaign goal in the $50,000USD range with <$30k being pretty easy and >$70k being extremely difficult. It also depends on other factors like your social reach, but I imagine your reach is pretty good if you've run so many demos at this point.

[excadedecadedecada]

Hey there, thanks for the amazing feedback! We're pretty much shooting exactly for 50k, so I'm glad you were able to discern that based on this teaser.

In terms of content, we have nearly 100 clips--way too many, really (always a good problem to have, right?) and we're still drafting the final trailer, and I'll definitely take your feedback into consideration. As for waiting too long to get to the action, this was done consciously in an effort to 'sync' more with the dynamism in the music. In retrospect, maybe not the best idea. Our official KS video uses a different track entirely and will certainly get to the action quicker. The point about waiting a bit too long to garner feedback is well taken--somewhat of a combination of wanting to get everything right while settling on a final date that may have been a little too soon. But alas, it is what it is.

We're still mulling over the actual base price--we're thinking $20 for roughly as many hours of gameplay, but nothing is set in stone yet--(the $20 KS pledge would include the game, credits, digital wallpaper--obviously the latter two aren't worth much) Thinking about having an early bird pledge at $15 that includes the same, but I'm not entirely sure. Have any thoughts about that?

All in all, really appreciate the feedback. If I can return the favor in any way, let me know.

[breakfastbat]

I think this game could succeed in the $20 tier, it's just a harder sell. A $15 early bird would match a $20 base price, I would limit the early birds to about 250 slots given your base price and your campaign goal. Early bird slots could go all the way up to 500 slots but you'd need a really big social reach to fill that many slots quickly, and it's all about urgency. If you put up too many early bird slots and don't fill them quickly then all sense of urgency is lost and people will be less likely to donate to your campaign. For that reason I think 200-300 would be a good amount of early bird slots for your project.

[excadedecadedecada]

Thanks again for chiming in. As an aside, saw another post where you referenced LobsterSundew (dude's prolific AF!), which is where we got a lot of our guidance from in the first place--and you seem to be quite knowledgeable as well, so we appreciate the feedback.

Funny enough, 250 is the exact number we've settled on, so... yeah, you're quite knowledgeable indeed.

[excadedecadedecada]

For any interested parties, here's a preview link to our Kickstarter. Please note that the final video isn't uploaded yet and that there are still a few loose ends to tie up--largely though, we're wanting to catch any obvious (and not-so-obvious) mistakes! Any feedback we receive would be greatly appreciated!

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/850696222/254726385?ref=372846&token=bd7af866

[excadedecadedecada]

Hi all! Just wanted to post a followup that we launched our Kickstarter campaign a few hours ago and it's going pretty well thus far! If anyone's interested in providing any further comments, feedback, or criticism, we'd love to hear it--above all else, our goal is to improve, so don't hold back! Thanks!

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/850696222/bevontule-altar-of-roots/

[breakfastbat]

It's looking really good, btw I really like your radial movement/action range UI, it's great! I'll be keeping an eye on this.

[excadedecadedecada]

Awesome to hear, glad you like it! Also have to thank you again for your initial feedback!

[excadedecadedecada]

New Kickstarter update is live. To be honest, I haven't seen much of this kinda thing done on video game Kickstarters before. Do you think this is something that is a good idea? Other considerations I maybe haven't thought of?

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/850696222/bevontule-altar-of-roots/posts/2101561

[breakfastbat]

Maybe it's just me but I don't think it really matters what your Kickstarter updates are about, just make sure you're introducing and talking about something new and reminding everyone you're still alive and kicking and maybe dropping in some calls to actions like asking people to tell their friends or telling them you have a new reward tier, etc. The main function of an update is to inject a surge of motivation to all of your backers and potential backers. In that respect I really don't think you need to overthink what kind of update you make. Just make about 2 per week or so to keep everyone involved.

[breakfastbat]

I don't know if anyone else is behind the scenes doing consultation for your guys' Kickstarter but there's a general rule of thumb that if you can reach 33% funded by the halfway point, you've got a really good chance of getting funded. You are at about 30% and you're coming up on your halfway point quickly. My gut feeling is that you're doing okay but not very well. I think you could succeed but it will be an intense struggle to cross the finish line. You'll really have to ramp up your outreach efforts to try and get press, but I do think you have a chance at succeeding.

Unfortunately you can't take it back now, but I think your most recent update was a very bad move. You should only reveal your first stretch goal when you're absolutely certain you're about to reach your initial goal. After that you should reveal one stretch goal at a time as you reach them. You even doubled down by revealing you have several more stretch goals (somewhat similar to a poker player announcing to the group that they have a really good hand). I assume you thought this would motivate people to donate more, but since you are so far away from your initial goal, and your stretch goals appear to be core content, the perception for backers is that even if you reach the $50k goal - which inexperienced backers may not think is possible at this point - then they won't even be getting the full game since you have all these stretch goals planned out for seemingly standard content like characters and areas and bosses. That is to say that if your stretch goal was something like "port to PS Vita" or "translate to Spanish" then it wouldn't seem like a big deal if that goal wasn't reached. Of course, by having really cool stretch goals like "new boss / character" you drastically increase the incentive to pledge, which would be a really good thing if your timing had been better (like if you reached $45k with 48 hours to go and THEN revealed your first stretch goal - Arcadian Atlas did this and it worked very well). I realize that by telling you this now I'm not really helping much, but I just want to see if I can help alleviate any future mistakes. Like absolutely do not reveal the next stretch goal unless you hit your $52.5k stretch goal and actually have enough time (6+ hours) to raise the funds required to close that funding gap.

Here's a video on it from someone way more experienced than I am:

(at 17:30 is the talk about stretch goals)

[excadedecadedecada]

Hey there, eidobunny, thanks for your very candid feedback. In my mind I had rationalized it in a few ways--one, I hoped it would give us a small bump in interest (and we did get a few press articles out of it) and two, there are many campaigns that reveal some of their stretch goals upfront and I figured this would be somewhat of a compromise. This is just my thought process and it is by no means correct.

I do appreciate the time you've taken to comment and analyze this particular update--in retrospect, I can certainly see why it was a mistake--on the other hand, it's certainly not the first or last and you've been incredibly insightful and kind in letting us know why it was so that we don't repeat such a mistake.

We're still optimistic and things are looking a little less bleak--we did manage to eke past the 33% funded point with about half the campaign left, thanks to a few surges: we were able to hit the front page of imgur (https://imgur.com/gallery/kgQ9e) and also had a higher-profile Youtuber release a video highlighting our pre-alpha demo's gameplay:





I think we can probably hit the front page again with another update and we have plenty of press/youtube contacts, so not all is lost! That being said, in an attempt to mitigate any future mistakes, we've already let on that the next stretch goal would be revealed at 50%. You're saying that we should just silently ignore that (alter the image, basically) and only reveal it when funded?

We've also added an 'add-on' section to the page, and we plan on highlighting that in an update tomorrow. I can't really think of anything wrong with this approach, but I wanted to make sure that I'm not forgetting something super obvious, if you had time to share your thoughts. To that end, we were also wanting to post a new banner image that simply contains the icons/logos of outlets that have previously given us press. Not worth the time investment?

And for anyone else following along, we also have a new update that focuses on our AI system (similar to what we posted on imgur and elsewhere): https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/850696222/bevontule-altar-of-roots/posts/2113413

[breakfastbat]

I think highlighting the add-ons is a great way to further develop the campaign. At the same time it's an opportunity to teach your inexperienced backers about how add-ons work! Good idea for an update IMO.

Nice get on the YouTuber! I followed a crowdfunding campaign that had only about $500 after two weeks, and the Jacksepticeye played it and that day it shot up to $2,000. The developer didn't capitalize on the opportunity though and so the campaign just ended up not getting any more money. I would suggest supporting any YouTuber (even the small ones) who help promote your campaign. A retweet or a share helps improve visibility for both of you, and earn you a more genuinely hardcore follower. A like / retweet / share / follow / shoutout can mean a lot more to someone than you might think.

I actually hadn't noticed that you snuck in that "revealed at 50%/80%" in that image until you pointed it out just now. Still, even though it was relatively low-key I don't think it's worth going back on your word. Personally I like to be an honest and trustworthy person at all costs so I would rather do what I promised rather than the "correct" thing. In other words, I think you should continue to reveal your stretch goals at 50% and 80% (unless you hit 50% in like the final 6 hours, then what's the point).

Personally, I'm not a huge fan of logos and "testimonials," but it's a really popular thing to do (and recommended by professionals) - it gives some types of backers a little more trust in your product. Spending the time to put those things on your page also falls in line with my thoughts about supporting YouTubers - when you value other people (or companies), they will continue to go out of their way to speak positively of you. Seems like a good time investment to me tbh.