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KickStarter The Iron Oath - turn-based strategy RPG with awesome pixel art

Sarissofoi

Arbiter
Joined
Mar 24, 2017
Messages
761
Damn. I missed it. Anyway congratulations.

What you show look impressive. I like the art and music.
What you said about world simulation is what get me interested - hope you deliver, not like Overnerf folks. But seeing that you want to do it right from the start it looks like you can actually do it.
Its look like mix of DD and BB done right. Very interesting.
Damn. I get to late to buy into closed beta. Damn shame.
 

Zombra

An iron rock in the river of blood and evil
Patron
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Make the Codex Great Again! RPG Wokedex Strap Yourselves In Codex Year of the Donut Codex+ Now Streaming! Serpent in the Staglands Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 BattleTech Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire Pathfinder: Kingmaker Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag. I'm very into cock and ball torture I helped put crap in Monomyth
Our plan has been to issue a monthly update on Kickstarter. Any more frequently than that would take away too much time from development(each update thus far has taken me a couple hours to write). We'll have more frequent posts on Twitter if people want to see what we are working on during the time in-between :)
Twitter is fine. Spectacular, meaty Kickstarter updates are nice, but they're not really important. The important thing is that the project has a persistent, visible pulse. Don't let us start thinking it's dead on the table.

Silence is the surest way for a ks to draw negative attention (and refund demands) post-campaign. Don't be those guys who have to start every update with an apology.

:mob:
 

Quantomas

Savant
Joined
Jun 9, 2017
Messages
260
Congrats for running a successful campaign!

Here is a breakdown of what convinced me to back the game:

First, good that you had the guts to go against common Kickstarter wisdom and created a trailer that foregoes the hello and welcome monologue. Gameplay rules! Unless you have a PR genius like Swen Vincke, of course.

My initial impression was that the trailer ended a bit abruptly, but this invites the visitors to read your campaign description.

And what you created there truly rocks! It's an equally concise and comprehensive (I know these attributes are normally exclusive) tour of features, that one by one, build a vision of a game that goes from strength to strength.

Stretch goals like violent deaths or additional classes don't matter to me. It's more important that the base game gets done right. But the guild council, expanding the economy and logistics with sea travel, and allowing for a second base on a ship show that you know what makes the game tick.

Now, that you are virtually an unknown developer, all the points above merely convinced me that this Kickstarter is worth my attention. :cool:

The first thing that did more than piquing my interest was your concept art for the lore. You see, a creative vision backed up by good concept art is powerful. It convinced me that there is a lore, setting and story that is worth exploring. A lot of other Kickstarters and recent games failed that test for me.

The concept art is more than a visual representation, its the link between the creative vision and the game. The maps are a good example. Both your world map and the region maps are appealing in the sense that they demonstrate there is an enticing game to be had.

That alone is obviously not enough to back a game, because a brilliant creative vision doesn't translate automatically to a good game. :obviously:

Here it becomes important that you structured and laid out your campaign so neatly. Going over all the topics it became apparent that you have a knack to build a game from mechanics that add to each other. It's clear that you know how to get this right, that the characters, guild, exploration and combat reinforce each other, and that these are embedded into a world which factions and economies and story makes your effort worthwhile. I know what I am talking about here, as I am working on something similar, although in a different genre that is much more dependent on a good AI.

Still, passing these two checks was not sufficient for me to back the Iron Oath, because the true question is whether a small team of two can pull this off. :M

I am not particular to a specific artstyle, it's more a question whether it's done right and consistent. But with your choice of pixel art you did something else as well. You completely sidestepped the issue of choosing an engine and all the overheads that come with it, for example the inefficiency of Unity. With the trailer you demonstrated that you can build the game. Moreover, with a small and neat core engine, you can focus on building the game mechanics and all the interactions that are necessary for the story and game to be rich and rewarding.

Well done! :salute:
 

Iznaliu

Arbiter
Joined
Apr 28, 2016
Messages
3,686
That alone is obviously not enough to back a game, because a brilliant creative vision doesn't translate automatically to a good game. :obviously:

We have seen the pain of this many times in the past, and will probably many times in the future.
 

sennin

Curious Panda Games
Developer
Joined
Jan 9, 2017
Messages
48
Ya sorry about that, I had taken the week off while Chris was out of commission due to the hurricane, I needed a break from the campaign :) I was going to include it with yesterday's update but I decided there would be too many things being covered. As mentioned in that update the new date for it is this Thursday.
 

sennin

Curious Panda Games
Developer
Joined
Jan 9, 2017
Messages
48
Alright here it is. It's not a whole lot different than whats already been shared, but I've added a bit more.

Update #23: Overworld Simulation: Houses, Events, Encounters and Missions

Hey folks! Today we’re going to dig into the overworld simulation aspect, touching on how ruling houses operate, events, encounters, and missions.

Each region within the game’s world is comprised of a Royal House and a few Major Houses. Royal Houses rule over the entire region in which they are situated. They hold ownership of the region’s capital city and sometimes other cities as well. The Major Houses are Vassals of the Royal House. If the Royal House ever gets involved in a war or other situation where assistance is required, the vassals are obliged to answer their King or Queen’s call. Major Houses can also rule and own multiple cities, and it’s even possible for them to have a greater wealth and military strength than that of their liege.

Each ruling House has their own set of goals and principles(or ethos). Their ethos can differ slightly from generation to generation, but extreme changes in a short time period are unlikely(like going from peaceful to warmongering over a span of a few years). Each city also its own ethos, which at the beginning will be quite similar to that of others within the region(since they generally are the same race, have the same practices etc). A city’s ethos is less subject to change over time, but it will slowly be influenced by the ethos of its ruler. Each city has some stats that are tracked that help drive the logic of its ruling House:

Wealth: Used to buy resources, hire mercenaries and fund their army Military Strength: Having a strong military means they are less likely to shy away from conflict Resources: Are they able to feed citizens? Do they need to trade for wood or stone? Each region has some predetermined resource nodes, but new ones will also appear during the course of the game. Population Happiness: How happy are the citizens with their ruler

The other stat tracked would be each rulers standing with one another and other factions of the world. Those with a high standing would be allies, those with low would be enemies. Generally, a vassal will be in good standing with their Liege, but it’s possible for it to drop low enough that they may choose to rebel against him or her.

The ethos and stats will all determine how a ruler reacts to different situations and world events that occur. Events occur all the time in the game and help make each playthrough unique. A single event can vary in complexity and impact on the world. They can be either triggered upon certain criteria being met, or completely random. Some examples of random events are:
  • Plagues
  • Droughts
  • Floods
  • New resource nodes
  • Blighted attacks
  • Void breaches(the release of spirits & demons into the world).
Some conditional events would be:
  • A bandit raid on a city, with the condition being that the city has a low military presence. A city’s military numbers could be lowered for various reasons, such as conflict or simply a lack of funds.
  • Revolt of a city, if citizen happiness remains low for a long period of time, the citizens may trigger a revolt and regime change.
  • A vassal may rebel against his King or Queen if their ethos’ greatly differ and their relationship weakens. Other factors that are taken into account would be the ruler's ambition and military strength that he or she commands.
Both types of events would have a type of mission or encounter generated alongside each, and you could come across them providing you’re in the right region(for an encounter) or hub(for a mission). Depending on the mission or encounter, you’ll have the chance to influence the world in varying degrees, either by completing it or by choosing not to.

Let’s say come spring time in a region, there’s an event that triggers, stating that the wolf population in the region is getting out of hand this year. This would generate a few missions and possible encounters specific to that event. While traveling in the region you may get an encounter that describes a group of travelers fending off a pack of wolves. You can choose to assist them or ignore their plight, either choice would affect your reputation and could have an impact on your game either immediately or down the line(especially if it is eventually revealed that the travelers were noteworthy citizens).

A variety of quests would be generated from this event as well. A city may issue a bounty on wolf heads, a hunter may have tried to tackle the problem himself and has gone missing, or you can undertake a mission to drive the wolves out of their nearby den. Without your assistance, the problem may escalate, and could even require a city to divert some of their military force to resolve the situation.

One of the biggest ways to influence the world would be to assassinate a ruler(these types of missions would obviously be incredibly difficult). An ally of yours may send you a letter, asking for your help in his plot to kill his liege who he has grown to dislike. A few choices present themselves to you right away:
  • You can refuse his request and he may drop his plot, or attempt it anyway
  • You can reveal his scheme. Likely earning yourself a reward from the liege, but also sentencing your ally to death and potentially having all of his House’s holdings revoked.
  • You can accept the mission and attempt to complete it.
If you accept and manage to complete the mission, the liege will be replaced by their heir. If they are without an heir, the most well-liked Major House of that region will ascend to the throne. However if there is any amount of dislike between the Houses, a war for the throne is likely to occur.

This type of outcome would also spawn some more missions for you, and you could choose a side and help them win the crown by completing various tasks: capturing a watchtower, disrupting enemy supply lines, or fending off some invaders from within a structure. As of now, you won’t be able to fully partake in a large scale battle(though it’s something we’d like to do eventually, but probably not until after release), your assistance would instead come through the completion of various small scale skirmishes that assist the war-effort of your ally.

That about covers each aspect, hopefully you like the direction and ideas we have for the game’s world. Our next content update will talk a bit more about the world itself: some lore, regions, factions, and some information on the void and its inhabitants. As mentioned last time, we’re planning to send out the surveys this Saturday, however we need the Kickstarter funds to come through first so we can make our payment to BackerKit. Hopefully it comes through today or tomorrow, if not the survey will likely be delayed until next week.
 
Last edited by a moderator:

Sarissofoi

Arbiter
Joined
Mar 24, 2017
Messages
761
Alright here it is. It's not a whole lot different than whats already been shared, but I've added a bit more.

What's new? I'm not really seeing it.

New is that they not cutting promised features. Yet.
Disclaimer: Just joking.
But seriously some more screenshot with actual stuff that happen ingame like some regions map, relations screen, events, contracts, other stuff would have much more effect that some wall of text that is just repeat of what was said before.
If you want people talk about it give some pictures.
 

The Wall

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New Kickstarter update about world & lore has been posted. Shape of the continent reminds me somewhat of Tamriel in ES. Maybe devs are fans of ES lore Kirkbride's ES lore. It's only basics and foundation to be built upon for now. Blighted=Ghouls from Fallout?

Are there different non-human races living on this continent? I recall devs saying they'd like to do them but animating them would be too costly. Or perhaps they're simply going for more grounded approach with less sentient fantastical humanoids.

#Update 25

Oct 6 2017

Lore and World Details (+Survey Reminder)

Hey everyone. Today we’re going to reveal a bit more information about the world and its lore from the perspective of what an average citizen would know. We’ll be keeping the full lore and history under lock and key for now, but throughout the game you’ll be able to piece together the full story through exploration, discoveries, conversations and the completion of the main storyline.

The World


The game takes place on a landmass known as ‘Caelum’ to its inhabitants. Caelum is surrounded by vast oceans that remain uncharted, fueling debate among citizens over the existence of other lands. Caelum itself is comprised of 9 regions:

  • Lithus: A small and sunny coastal region
  • Godsvale: A lush region full of large valleys, rivers and forests.
  • The Redlands: A vast desert region with most inhabitants residing on its coasts
  • Midland: A temperate region, once home to the capital of the Kingdom of Caelum
  • The Steppe: A region of grass-filled plains that can experience harsh winters
  • Winter’s Reign: A frigid region surrounded by the sea and a vast mountain range
  • Highland Reach: A mountainous region that is home to one the largest port cities in Caelum
  • Dragate: A small region that is largely uninhabitable due to its rocky mountain formations
  • Daybreak Isles: A small tropical island known for its sunny and warm weather
e41f1c2da09787f8e5f052de2fb6d877_original.png


The regions of Caelum were once united under one Kingdom and a lineage of rulers that remained unbroken for centuries. However, a plague swept through Caelum and put an end to the line and the lives of many other citizens. Following this event, a power struggle ensued with each Major House vying for power and staking their claim for the vacant throne. The ‘War of Dissolution’ lasted for decades, with regional and civil wars alike all ending with a tentative peace between the major powers of Caelum, and the formation of many independent Kingdoms.

Notable Factions

The Blighted: The Blighted are a savage faction that were once human. Men and women who are afflicted by the dragon’s blight slowly lose their minds and turn into aggressive abominations. It takes years for those affected to become fully Blighted, and there exists a moral dilemma among Caelum’s citizens on how to deal with them. Blighted can be found in all corners of the world, roaming above ground or in the darkest depths of the land. You will encounter many Blighted, both fully-turned and some who yet retain a fragment of their minds and sanity.

b643a8424b7337187e087f57e83a0025_original.png


The Vanguard Order: The Vanguard are an ancient order that was formed under the first King of Caelum and tasked with defending the realm from humanity’s greatest threats. Once considered a prestigious order, they have somewhat fallen out of favor with the general public, mainly due to their employ of those afflicted with the Blight, and their failure to effectively protect humanity against the dragon.

The Overseers: The Overseers were formed shortly after magic was born into the world and were initially tasked with hunting down rogue mages who practiced forbidden arts. After the arrival of the dragon they also became responsible for tracking and killing the Blighted who had fled from the public. Due to the Vanguard’s employ of Blighted, the Overseers also share in the dislike for their order, and they often end up hunting Blighted who run from their duty within the Vanguard.

Basic Lore

Caelum’s history is split up into four ages, the First Age, the Age of Gods, the Age of Man and the Age of Heroes. The average citizen knows very little or nothing at all of the first two ages, and most stories that do exist are nothing more than myth and speculation. It is said that humanity was left to its own devices in the First Age until the Gods descended to the mortal realm to shepherd their development, thus beginning the Age of Gods.

Nobody knows how long The Age of Gods lasted, but few remnants of its time can still be found in the form of ruined cities and structures, including various shrines to the Gods that were once worshipped. A great host of invaders brought an end to the Age of Gods, bringing humanity to near-extinction and reducing its cities to dust. Humanity endured however and the Age of Man began, while both the invaders and Gods seemed to vanish from all accounts. Humanity’s shattered civilization was rebuilt under a single Kingdom which flourished for centuries, enjoying peace and prosperity until the ‘War of Dissolution’ began.

Years later saw the emergence of the dragon, a great being of death and disease that some proclaimed as a new God, sent to punish humanity for its sins. The dragon’s curse saw men and women slowly transform into abominations, who became known as the Blighted. Humanity observed the effects of the Blight and those who showed signs were outcast from society in the best of cases(though some tolerant cities built prisons to hold them), but most were burned alive as the people began to fear the Blight and those who bore it. This fear and distrust extended to the Vanguard, who had allowed the Blighted to join their ranks and spend their final days in service of the realm.

Every few decades, the dragon would emerge from the Void and wreak havoc within the mortal realm. This become an accepted fate among the citizens of Caelum and they could see no way to escape it. Though the dragon’s stay was always brief, the host of demons and spirits it left in its wake would pour into the surrounding areas and require the Vanguard and other heroes to take up arms in defense. This began the Age of Heroes, and these men and women became renowned for their deeds. Some citizens proclaimed that the heroes were immune to both death and the Blight, and others began to believe it true. Eventually however, these heroes that guarded the mortal realm for so long would fade into memory and myth. A few rumored sightings would spring up over the years, which never amounted to anything more than hearsay. Presently, many believe that the Age of Heroes has drawn to an end, but others still retain hope that they’ll one day return.

The Void

d402d7943a0a55ea1b67e1281eea5859_original.png


The Void is an endless and dark realm of existence where the souls of the dead linger for eternity. It is home to many foul creatures, demons, spirits, and most notably the dragon. The Void is the source of all dark and blood magic within the world, and those who practice such arts are relentlessly pursued by the Overseers. The Void has a large role to play in the game and a variety of missions and storylines will frequently take you there.

---

Surveys

There are still a few hundred backers who have yet to fill out their surveys, although there is no rush it’s helpful to us if you could fill it out sooner rather than later. Upon completion of the survey you can claim the Welcome Pack reward and the Discord invitation of you’re eligible. If you haven’t yet received the email, you can request it to be re-sent here:

https://theironoath.backerkit.com

If you’ve already done the above and still haven’t received an email please shoot us a message here on Kickstarter and we’ll send you a direct link to your survey.

Hope you all have a great weekend, and I’d like to wish my fellow Canadians a happy Thanksgiving in advance :)
 

Iznaliu

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Messages
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Caelum is surrounded by vast oceans that remain uncharted, fueling debate among citizens over the existence of other lands

This sounds like an interesting move; I wonder if this will change by the end of the game?
 

The Wall

Dumbfuck!
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Caelum is surrounded by vast oceans that remain uncharted, fueling debate among citizens over the existence of other lands

This sounds like an interesting move; I wonder if this will change by the end of the game?

It also leaves room and place for later on introducing more fantastical races and exotic cultures which right now are outside game's budget and scope. Also since seafaring made it in it could be later on used to reach these uncharted territories.

But let's slow down for now. Devs should focus on core game, core lore and core gameplay and if it's good foundation to be built upon and fans recognize it by purchasing game en mass, all aforementioned things can be expanded upon via dlc, expansion or next game in due time.
 

Zombra

An iron rock in the river of blood and evil
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Make the Codex Great Again! RPG Wokedex Strap Yourselves In Codex Year of the Donut Codex+ Now Streaming! Serpent in the Staglands Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 BattleTech Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire Pathfinder: Kingmaker Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag. I'm very into cock and ball torture I helped put crap in Monomyth
Yep!

Update #26

Nov 13 2017

November Update

Hello backers! Over the last month we’ve settled into a nice development groove. I(Nik) have mostly been focusing on character sprites while Chris has been tackling various tasks and he’ll tell you about it later in this update. We’re currently working towards a demo build that will be playable at the Otronicon Expo in Orlando on January 12th.

My most recent task has been finalizing the design and animations of the first 4 classes. Each class has undergone some minor visual changes such as the Pyrolancer’s head and the Valkyrie’s weapon. I didn’t change too much overall and mostly just wanted to clean things up a bit by improving the lighting/shading and getting rid of stray pixels. Here’s a before and after of each design.

8b05b942dcf44d17552ed15ba89c2dea_original.png

One thing that was mentioned frequently during the campaign was the “asthmatic” look of the idle animations when characters weren’t in combat. I decided to get rid of the breathing animations entirely(as I wasn’t a huge fan of it myself) and rework the idles to be a lot less distracting(mostly limited to some cloth/hair sway). I may revisit the breathing animations later on and see if I can make it look more natural and less like they’re constantly gasping for air, but for now I don’t want to spend too much time fiddling with it.

The next animation that I completely redid was each characters “ready state” animation. The previous animation was basically the same as each character’s idle with some bobbing added in, which some voiced their dislike over. While I haven’t completely gotten rid of the bobbing motions, I’ve given each class a unique ready stance that makes the bobbing look more natural. Here’s a look at both the idle and ready animations, including the transition back and forth.

9fb7cc7d432b05e9b2ee40608af5906f_original.gif

The newest addition to the game is a run animation for each class. We’re not entirely sure at this point whether or not we should use it during the exploration phase(either replacing the walk, or having it alongside as a toggle), but it became apparent to us that it was needed for combat. As one backer pointed out, it looked a little odd having your characters casually walk up to the enemies prior to attacking them. The run animation adds a sense of urgency to your heroes, and as a bonus speeds up the movement phase which is always a plus.

Video link https://ksr-video.imgix.net/assets/019/203/662/4c6a3de67d201c99ebe4c8204f1d36d3_h264_high.mp4

Speaking of speed, we have also added the ability to increase the speed of combat by holding spacebar, with the multiplier being customizable in the options menu. This was another feature that many were vocal about, and we understand that not everyone wants to sit through a lengthy turn phase. Here is a comparison video that shows off the feature:

Video link https://ksr-video.imgix.net/assets/019/203/669/6c8390dc847f4187fceb77cbb49538c9_h264_high.mp4

I’m just about done with the first 4 classes and am currently finishing up some new ability animations. Afterwards I’ll be moving on to some enemy animations and dungeon design. At some point I’ll have to craft some more UI graphics to go along with the work that Chris has been doing, but for now he’s making do with programmer art ;) I’m also in the midst of finishing up our Kickstarter Postmortem and am planning to publish that this coming Thursday, so keep an eye on our Twitter/Facebook if that’s something you’re interested in seeing!

----

Hey, Chris here. I have been tackling a lot of small tasks since the Kickstarter, focusing on polishing things that got left to the wayside in the wake of getting the Kickstarter up and running. Much of that dealing with the flow of combat and bugs. The biggest task I delved into was the start of implementing the logic that governs how the world plays out as time advances forward. I prototyped how the different Houses in game will have children, choose heirs, vie for the throne, manage their resources, etc. There is still much work left to do on that front but it is coming along nicely.

As Nik mentioned, the focus now is getting a build ready (primarily combat focused) for Otronicon in January. Otronicon isn't really a purely gaming focused event but it's a local show I wanted to participate in along with the rest of the indie game scene in Orlando, FL. We have a couple phases of builds we're working towards with each one getting us closer to our beta build that will be sent to backers late next year.

Some other tasks I worked on included:
  • implementing keys for locked doors/chests
  • updated internal tools for creating dynamic events and dialogue
  • updated character abilities to be more inline with their designs
  • tweaking general pace of combat (an ongoing process)
  • worked on equipping gear and looting from chests
  • added consumable items (e.g. health potions)
  • implemented stores to purchase items from various vendors
  • skinned/implemented some pre-mission UI screens
  • various bug fixing
----

Crowdfunding Shout-out




To wrap this up, we would just like to give a quick shoutout to our friends working on a tactical RPG called Summoner’s Fate. Their Kickstarter campaign has 3 days remaining and they’ve just passed their goal, be sure to give them a look here!
 

Abu Antar

Turn-based Poster
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Enjoy the Revolution! Another revolution around the sun that is. Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire Pathfinder: Wrath I'm very into cock and ball torture I helped put crap in Monomyth
Don't know if people care about these things. For me, it's interesting to see what developers have to say about this stuff.
https://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/Nik..._Kickstarter_postmortem_for_The_Iron_Oath.php

A Kickstarter postmortem for The Iron Oath
by Nik Mueller on 11/17/17 09:31:00 am
The following blog post, unless otherwise noted, was written by a member of Gamasutra’s community.
The thoughts and opinions expressed are those of the writer and not Gamasutra or its parent company.


Hi! My name is Nik Mueller and I’m a pixel artist with Curious Panda Games. Back in August we launched our Kickstarter campaign for our turn based tactical RPG The Iron Oath. The campaign successfully concluded in September, and we more than doubled our goal of $45k, garnering $94,524 from 3835 backers. Though part of it was just good fortune, we put in a lot of work that helped us get noticed and ultimately funded, and I’m going to try and lay our entire process out for you.

fundingSuccess.png


Building an audience:
One thing we see a lot is that some devs wait until their game is nearly done(or is done) before they go public. Unfortunately if you wait that long, chances are that it’s already too late and you’re going to have a tough time gaining an audience. This is something we were guilty of with our first game, and with so many indie titles being released every day, it’s not a mistake you can afford to make.

When we started work on The Iron Oath, we knew that we ultimately wanted to take it to Kickstarter, and nearly a year in advance of our campaign's launch we went public with our game to start building a following. This was no easy task, our Twitter accounts between the 2 of us had maybe 100 followers at the time, and our newly created Facebook and Tumblr pages took a while to get going. Here’s an outline for what worked for us on social media:
  • Post early and often: As soon as you have something for your game that you think is interesting enough to show off, do it. It’s almost never too early to start building interest. Posting daily isn’t a must but it certainly helps.

  • GIFs are king: Without looking it up, I would say 90% of our tweets pertaining to our game contained a gif, either of an animation I whipped up in Aseprite or of something in-game. From our experience, gifs are by far the most effective way to gain impressions and followers.

  • Find the best time for your posts: We found out that our posts performed best after 10PM EST for every day of the week. This may not be true for you, so pay attention and maybe keep track of your results for a month or two.

  • Use the appropriate hashtags and participate in #screenshotsaturday: Most devs know this by now, but it’s important to tag your tweets appropriately. In our case they were almost always accompanied by #pixelart #gamedev #indiedev #indiegame, and of course #screenshotsaturday when Saturday rolled around(which we usually planned ahead and saved our best gif for).

  • Go easy on the Twitter follow button: It quickly became apparent to us that there were a lot of accounts that would play the follow/unfollow game(trying to get you to follow back). We weren’t too fond of that tactic and from the start we only followed people who we were genuinely interested in, and didn’t care whether or not they followed us in return. If you go around following hundreds of accounts per day under the premise of hoping they follow you back, you’re building an inflated audience that doesn’t necessarily reflect the actual interest in your game. Of course, this is just our opinion, and since we didn’t try the other method we can’t say for sure what works best, but we do feel that we grew a more organic audience by handling it the way we did.

  • Post on relevant subreddits and forums: There were a few forum threads on our game that we discovered(it’s good to google your title every once in awhile!), and it gave us the chance to engage in some great discussion with those communities. We also frequently posted some of our work on subreddits such as r/pixelart and r/Unity2D. It’s also a good idea to start a devlog on TIGSource to get some extra eyes on your game and to talk with some other developers.
By the time our campaign started in August we had a combined 3500 Twitter followers, 2300 Tumblr followers and 100 Facebook likes. Our YouTube channel had also gained 1600 subscribers from the pixel art timelapses I had been uploading, and our newsletter had 300 subscribers(we have a signup widget on our website and Tumblr). Not groundbreaking numbers by any means, but we were quite happy with the progress we made throughout the year. We’ll get into how each social media platform contributed to our campaign a little bit later.

Campaign Page Preparation:
The first thing I should say is that you need to give yourself plenty of time(months if possible!) to prepare your campaign page as it’s a lot more work than you might think. We gave ourselves a few weeks and we were still tweaking the page just minutes prior to launching. Before launching you need to:
  • Choose your funding target carefully: We went with $45K, which was what we calculated to be the absolute minimum needed to get the game done by our estimated release(March 2019). Be sure to account for taxes, the Kickstarter fee and some inevitable failed payments(we had about $1500 worth).

  • Prepare your page description: Lead with the most important and exciting parts of your game. We didn’t expect most people to read much past the Introduction, Features and Gameplay categories, so we made sure to get down to the point of why our game would interest them. This is another part where you need lots of gifs(it helps if they’re tied to what you’re describing) as they help sell your game a lot better than a still image can. Don’t lead with the story or lore of your game, as most will simply not care until they’re sold on the gameplay itself.
DplLKdk.gif

  • Choose your rewards and plan some add-ons for later in the campaign: Considering that we’re a 2-man team, dealing with physical reward fulfillment for potentially thousands of backers seemed like a nightmare that we wanted to avoid. For this reason all of our rewards were entirely digital, but still enticing enough that our backers felt that a higher tier was worth it. Allowing add-ons is another good practice that lets people increase their pledge for a higher tier reward. In the last few days we had a lot of people add-on to get beta access or just grab a second copy for a friend.

  • Create a to-the-point trailer: Try to grab the viewer’s attention right away and skip the long introductions and logo fades; a length of 2 minutes seems to be the sweet spot. If you insist on talking in your video, save it for after your actual trailer, but honestly the gameplay footage should be able to speak for itself. The timing of the audio is also pretty important and Chris spent a lot of time making sure what you were seeing in the trailer matched with what you were hearing. For the final shot of the trailer, you want to leave the viewer with a good impression. In our case, we went a huge mysterious creature that revealed itself to the characters, followed by a quick fadeout synched to the music.


  • Think about your stretch goals: We would recommend holding off on revealing your stretch goals until you’re a little closer to being funded. We had a pretty big wish list to draw from, and by doing this we had the chance to adjust our goals based on what the community wanted(though in our case we pretty much stuck to the initial plan). It’s important to not get carried away and remain realistic here. We ended up going with some stretch goals that expanded on the core functionality of our game such as ‘Sea Travel and Encounters’. While a console stretch goal would be nice, it wasn’t something we could realistically do on our own.

  • Consider doing social goals: This is a relatively new thing that campaigns have started doing, giving small rewards for various milestones achieved on social media(such has 100 retweets). It’s a fairly simple thing to do that gives your backers an incentive to get involved in spreading the word.

  • Pick the date and time you launch: We launched on a Wednesday at 11am EST. We found that many recently successful campaigns had started on a Tuesday or Wednesday, and so we followed suit. It’s also good to consider your end date, which is something we simply overlooked. Our campaign ended early on a Friday, so we didn’t get to reap the benefit of the coming weekend(for obvious reasons, weekends are where you’ll gain the most backers). If we had to do it over again, I would definitely choose to start on a Friday, and end on a Sunday.
I would recommend checking out some successful Kickstarter campaigns to get some ideas on how to format your page, especially those of a similar genre as you’ll likely share an audience. A few campaigns that we looked at were Pixel Princess Blitz, Fort Triumph, Blasphemous andDarkest Dungeon.

Launching Your Campaign:
The first 48 hours of your campaign are the most important and you need to do everything you can to get off to a good start. Hopefully the following you’ve built to this point will be enough to do so, but there’s some extra things you can do too:
  • Use Thunderclap: This requires a fee, but you’ll definitely make it back through pledges. Our Thunderclap had a reach just shy of 700k people and it went out the moment our Kickstarter was live. In the weeks prior to our launch, we tweeted a daily countdown and linked our Thunderclap to try and get as many supporters as possible. It doesn’t hurt to reach out to some indie-friendly Twitter accounts such as @HeinyReimes, @ComputerFiguur, @ProjectMQ and @screenshotsaturbot

  • Utilize your social media accounts: Post your best gif and make sure all your followers know that your campaign is live. It’s also a good idea to add a call to action on your banners/headers(such as ‘Back us now on Kickstarter!’) along with placing a link in each of your profiles(use bit.ly to shorten into a kck.st link).

  • Send out a blast to your newsletter subscribers: In terms of percentages, your newsletter subscribers are probably going to be among the highest for conversions so be sure to let them know!

  • Post on relevant subreddits: Be sure to check out and follow each subs rules, but most smaller ones will allow you to post once at the start and once at the end. Bigger subreddits such as r/gaming are worth a shot but we couldn’t gain any traction there.

  • Upload your media to YouTube: We immediately uploaded our trailer on YouTube and our composer Alex did the same on his channel. He also uploaded the game’s first few tracks over the next couple of days which helped us a lot.

  • Make an album post on Imgur: We didn’t do this until day 3 of our campaign, which worked well since it was a Friday. Our post ended up making the frontpage for several hours, and the community there was overwhelmingly supportive of what we had to show off. We had the most success posting around noon EST.
All in all, our first 48 hours went pretty good, but we were still at a point where we felt the campaign could go either way. Fortunately our Imgur post on day 3 went better than we could have hoped and helped propel us to nearly 50% after day 4.

During the Campaign:
Managing a live campaign requires a lot of time and work. However don’t go crazy and deprive yourself of food and sleep. You don’t want to burn out, and taking a break every once in awhile helps keep you sane! The beginning and end of your campaign are going to be the most active periods in terms of backers. It’s inevitable for every campaign to die down during the middle stretch but don’t get discouraged! As you can see from the image below, we certainly experienced it ourselves.

kicktraq.png


Here’s what we did to help combat the lull:
  • Communicate with backers: You need to show your backers that you care. For us we felt compelled to thank everyone who left a comment, whether it was on the campaign page itself or on social media. We were also happy and quick to discuss various features of the game when someone posed a question. We received a lot of positive feedback for being open and communicative and it’s definitely the way to go.

  • Post frequent updates: We posted 20 campaign updates during our 30 day run, with most of them being content updates that went in-depth on certain features of the game. We have a lot of passion for our game and we had a lot to talk about, and in turn our backers really appreciated the effort. It’s a good idea to plan out a few updates ahead of time before launching your campaign as you’re guaranteed to be busy! Each update usually took me a few hours to put together.

  • Respond to constructive criticism, ignore the trolls: We received a good amount of constructive criticism and appreciated those who took the time to let us know what they thought. Fortunately we didn’t get many hateful or purely negative comments, and we simply ignored the few that we did receive. Getting into an argument with a troll is simply a waste of time and energy that should be spent elsewhere.

  • Cross-promote with other campaigns: This is one of the best things to do during the middle stages of your campaign. A single cross-promotion won’t account for much, but they all add up in the end. In total, we ended up running 12 cross-promotions. It’s a good idea to stay within the realm of video games, but we also ended up cross-promoting with a board game RPG as we felt we shared a similar audience. Don’t cross-promote with everyone that approaches you. We only did so when we felt it was mutually beneficial, meaning if you have 2000 backers and they have 50, it’s not going to help you much.

  • Be active on social media and forums: We made sure to post at least one gif per day across our Twitter, Facebook and Tumblr accounts. We found a couple more forum threads where our game was mentioned so we went and introduced ourselves and engaged in discussion with some potential backers.

  • Utilize Reddit and Imgur: Going viral on either Reddit or Imgur can make a huge difference for your campaign. We ended up making two more album posts on Imgur (1 | 2) that both briefly reached the front page. I also posted frequently in the pixelart subreddit and one of them managed to become the second most upvoted piece of all time which was pretty darn cool.

  • Don’t be afraid to ask for help: We reached out to a few well known RPG companies that had run successful campaigns in the past. In doing so, we ended up getting shoutouts from the wonderful folks at inXile(makers of Bards Tale) and Owlcat(makers of Pathfinder: Kingmaker). Their support made a huge difference in our campaign and we can’t thank them enough!
Marketing and Advertising:

Most of our marketing was done through social media in the methods described above. Beyond that, we also emailed over 100 websites and youtubers. Overall the response rate was pretty low, but we’re thankful to the few who did respond and either posted an article or a video. In general, reaching out to press is worthwhile, but it’s not something you should be depending on for success. Your experience may be different, but we were pretty much told to expect this going in.

We tried to run some ads on our own through Facebook and Reddit but we barely managed to break even. We were approached by a lot of advertising agencies throughout the course of the campaign, but most came across as spammy and we ended up ignoring nearly all of them. That’s not to say all ad agencies are bad however, there’s definitely some good ones out there, but you need to do your homework.

We had heard good things about Jellop and we ended up working together for the final week of our campaign. Jellop specializes in Facebook ads, and they were very professional and wonderful to work with. In the end, backers from their ads accounted for around 17% of our total funding. If you’re going to be running a campaign I would definitely encourage you to reach out to them. I can’t say you’ll have the same results as us, only that in our case it was absolutely worth it.

The Results:
kschart.png


Fortunately for us, nearly everything went according to plan. As mentioned before, we got off to a pretty good start, and by day 5 I would consider it a very good start. From there things started to slow down and it was rare for us to get over $1000 in a single day. On September 1st we reached our funding goal, and following that things started to snowball. A culmination of shout-outs, social media posts, and Jellop advertising gave us an extremely strong finish.

sources.png


Some takeaways from our referral graphic:
  • Kickstarter was the biggest single source of backers at 32%, followed by Jellop at 17%. Imgur came in around 15%, but we don’t have anything concrete for that and it’s just an estimate(we think a lot fell into the “Direct traffic no referrer” tag).

  • We were very pleased with our numbers from Twitter, Facebook and Youtube - a combined 9%

  • The RPG forums we were involved in accounted for around 2% combined, which we think was a pretty great result.

  • Despite our Tumblr following being fairly high, it didn’t translate as well into backers, but still accounted for about 0.5% on its own.

  • The 48 hour reminder email is huge. A lot of backers will lurk around until the end of your campaign and there’s always going to be a late surge from that.

  • We did a poor job of using referral links for the most part. For things such as our newsletter and Thunderclap we actually have no idea how they performed, but we still consider them important.

  • The only thing that didn’t really go according to plan for us was Reddit. Not that it did poorly(50 backers is nothing to sneeze at!), but from our research we were expecting a lot more.

Quick recap and closing thoughts:

  • Build an audience well in advance of your campaign to ensure you have a good start

  • Give yourself plenty of time to set up your campaign page, I would recommend at least 1-2 months.

  • Be active with updates and interact with your community!

  • Don’t be afraid to ask for a shout-out or cross-promotion from another game

  • Consider an advertising agency such as Jellop, but it’s not a must

  • Have a press kit available somewhere on your main page, and make sure your social media accounts are clearly visible

  • Gifs - gifs everywhere!

  • BackerKit is a very useful service for handling everything after your Kickstarter

  • Don’t forget to eat and sleep :)
Thank you for reading, and we hope you’ve learned a few things from this write-up! We’d also like to thank our amazing backers for their support, as we literally couldn’t have done it without them. If you'd like to follow us or learn more about The Iron Oath, you can check out the links below:

@TheIronOath
Steam
BackerKit Pre-Order
 

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