Announcing A Kickstarter Campaign for Alliance of the Sacred Suns!
As many of you know, I/we have been working on Alliance of the Sacred Suns in some capacity for more than 6 years now. At this point, the game is essentially feature complete, and is now in the polishing phase, meaning a UX/UI second pass, bug fixing, balancing, and adding additional content (events, bills, ship art, etc). After we ran an extensive public technical alpha, and obtaining some excellent feedback to improve the game, we estimate the amount of work needed to bring the game up to a high quality Early Access product to be an additional 6-7 months, which is more than what was initially budgeted for the game when we were financially backed last year.
So we were faced with a choice: bring the game to Early Access now, with the risk that the additional work it needs could cause poor initial reviews, leading to a negative long-term horizon for the game sales, or secure additional funding to bring the game to a standard we are proud of and happy with prior to Early Access, with full disclosure about the status of the game. Thus, we have decided to attempt to secure additional funding through a Kickstarter campaign, set to launch early December.
This was not an easy decision - AotSS in its current state is certainly a full product, and many indie developers use Early Access as a development funding source. It would be safer in some respects to simply release the game in Early Access, gradually improve the game over the next several months, and hope that we sell enough copies to get the game to the quality level it deserves. But that’s always a risk with a small indie company: many games don’t get finished because they can’t get the funding needed, so they either get dumped on Steam Early Access to try to recoup some losses or they simply never get released, which is a loss for us all.
So we’ve asked very little of our community up to this point, but in just a few days, we will need your help. Thousands of you are part of our community, whether through Twitter, Facebook, Steam, Discord, or YouTube, and you’ve been a great support for us as we near the finish line. And now we need you more than ever.
If you can pledge to the campaign, please do so. If you can’t, please tell others who might be interested. If you are interested but can’t contribute, and haven’t wishlisted AotSS, that would really help us. And if you’re a streamer or influencer/reviewer and believe in our project and the potential of the game, please reach out to us. We need people to know about AotSS, because we believe it will change 4X and Grand Strategy in a positive way and influence future games in these genres for years to come.
Hear our call. Help us finish this labor of love. And thank you for anything you can do for us. May the Suns of the Celestial Alliance shine brightly next year!
So we were faced with a choice: bring the game to Early Access now, with the risk that the additional work it needs could cause poor initial reviews, leading to a negative long-term horizon for the game sales, or secure additional funding to bring the game to a standard we are proud of and happy with prior to Early Access, with full disclosure about the status of the game. Thus, we have decided to attempt to secure additional funding through a Kickstarter campaign, set to launch early December.
This was not an easy decision - AotSS in its current state is certainly a full product, and many indie developers use Early Access as a development funding source. It would be safer in some respects to simply release the game in Early Access, gradually improve the game over the next several months, and hope that we sell enough copies to get the game to the quality level it deserves. But that’s always a risk with a small indie company: many games don’t get finished because they can’t get the funding needed, so they either get dumped on Steam Early Access to try to recoup some losses or they simply never get released, which is a loss for us all.
So we’ve asked very little of our community up to this point, but in just a few days, we will need your help. Thousands of you are part of our community, whether through Twitter, Facebook, Steam, Discord, or YouTube, and you’ve been a great support for us as we near the finish line. And now we need you more than ever.
If you can pledge to the campaign, please do so. If you can’t, please tell others who might be interested. If you are interested but can’t contribute, and haven’t wishlisted AotSS, that would really help us. And if you’re a streamer or influencer/reviewer and believe in our project and the potential of the game, please reach out to us. We need people to know about AotSS, because we believe it will change 4X and Grand Strategy in a positive way and influence future games in these genres for years to come.
Hear our call. Help us finish this labor of love. And thank you for anything you can do for us. May the Suns of the Celestial Alliance shine brightly next year!