Important Update
Hello everyone,
This is Martin, the creator of Try to Fall Asleep. I wanted to give you guys a brief update on everything regarding the Kickstarter campaign as well as share some short and long-term plans for the game.
So, let's just jump in and start with Kickstarter.
First off all, I wanted to thank each and everyone one of you who pledged their support to the campaign. Even though we weren’t able to reach the goal, I’m still very grateful for the support that you guys were ready to give for the game. The humbling messages and comments that we received along the way were really motivating too, so thank you for those as well.
Overall, I think we had a pretty good run, but unfortunately it just didn’t pan out the way we hoped it would. I don’t want to spend too much time analyzing and reviewing the campaign, what we could've done better and so on. In short though, looking at the Kickstarter’s statistics, I believe we had a pretty good conversion rate and only one of the 39 supporters canceled their pledge. Basically, the campaign itself was doing its job really well, but we just couldn't get enough traction to our page in order to make it succeed.
[h3]Special Prezentation[/h3]
On November 8th I plan to host a presentation about the overall journey of the game as well as take a deep dive into our Kickstarter. So if it sounds interesting to you, we invite you to tune in to Latvia’s Game Developer Association YouTube channel, where they will be livestreaming my presentation live. You'll also get a chance to ask me some questions live.
So overall, even though we didn’t reach our goal, I’m still glad that we were able to give it a good shot and try out some really cool ideas. On the bright side, this campaign was able to do much better than the first one (: And of course, this still was a great learning experience and we'll be able to share our knowledge with other indie developers on November 8th.
So, what are our short and long term plans?
[h2]Short term plans[/h2]
[h3]Items from the Kickstarter[/h3]
First of all, we’d like to make the physical items from our Kickstarter available outside of the campaign. We still need to figure out the best way to do it, as there are some logistics that need to be sorted out in order to make it happen. I’m not ready to give any concrete dates yet, but we do hope to make it happen around the end of this October. So if you really liked our physical items from the campaign, we’ll try to figure out how to make them available as soon as we can, so stay tuned for further updates on that.
[h3]Next game patch[/h3]
As for the game - we plan to launch one more patch tomorrow with some nice fixes, adjustments and overall improvements.
[h3]A small break[/h3]
It took a lot of effort to make the Kickstarter happen - the page itself, the LUC1D livestreams, all the physical items and rewards, logistics and marketing etc. We even were releasing patches for the game along with conducting the Kickstarter as well. It all has been putting a lot of stress, strain and pressure on me and my team for the past few months. So, till the end of this year, we would really like to take a bit of a break.
The break will give us some time to rest, reflect on our journey, recuperate and head into the new year refreshed and ready to continue our work on the game. It will also give us some much needed time to thoroughly rethink our strategy and re-evaluate our plans for the last 2 nights.
[h2]Long term plans[/h2]
Of course, the biggest challenge is going to be the game’s development budget.
Without the extra funding that Kickstarter would’ve provided to the game, we’ll need to downscale a few things and find the right compromises, so that we can fit in our budget and still deliver a great closure for the game and its story.
I personally will be getting an extra job somewhere in the project management realm. I'll be able to dedicate some portion of my salary to the game’s budget if necessary. And IF we set up a permanent store for the Kickstarter items, that'll be another potential way to support the budget of the game.
And as to when we could expect to see the full release - unfortunately, I don't have the answers for that at the moment. Once we've had our break and had some time to rethink things, we hope to have a better estimate in the new year.
[h2]Some closing words...[/h2]
Even though things didn't work out with the Kickstarter, it's not gonna stop us from finishing the game. We've come so far that it would be just stupid to give up right now... So we won't - we'll find a way to move forward, towards the completion of our game. Some compromises will need to be made, but we'll make sure that we release a damn good game for the full release. We hope to see you around when that happens. Until then, thank you for your support and stay tuned for news from us in the future :))
Sincerely,
Martin
[TWITTER/X] ~ [YOUTUBE] ~ [DISCORD] ~ [WEBSITE]
This is Martin, the creator of Try to Fall Asleep. I wanted to give you guys a brief update on everything regarding the Kickstarter campaign as well as share some short and long-term plans for the game.
So, let's just jump in and start with Kickstarter.
Thank you for your support!
First off all, I wanted to thank each and everyone one of you who pledged their support to the campaign. Even though we weren’t able to reach the goal, I’m still very grateful for the support that you guys were ready to give for the game. The humbling messages and comments that we received along the way were really motivating too, so thank you for those as well.
Overall, I think we had a pretty good run, but unfortunately it just didn’t pan out the way we hoped it would. I don’t want to spend too much time analyzing and reviewing the campaign, what we could've done better and so on. In short though, looking at the Kickstarter’s statistics, I believe we had a pretty good conversion rate and only one of the 39 supporters canceled their pledge. Basically, the campaign itself was doing its job really well, but we just couldn't get enough traction to our page in order to make it succeed.
[h3]Special Prezentation[/h3]
On November 8th I plan to host a presentation about the overall journey of the game as well as take a deep dive into our Kickstarter. So if it sounds interesting to you, we invite you to tune in to Latvia’s Game Developer Association YouTube channel, where they will be livestreaming my presentation live. You'll also get a chance to ask me some questions live.
So overall, even though we didn’t reach our goal, I’m still glad that we were able to give it a good shot and try out some really cool ideas. On the bright side, this campaign was able to do much better than the first one (: And of course, this still was a great learning experience and we'll be able to share our knowledge with other indie developers on November 8th.
So, what are our short and long term plans?
[h2]Short term plans[/h2]
[h3]Items from the Kickstarter[/h3]
First of all, we’d like to make the physical items from our Kickstarter available outside of the campaign. We still need to figure out the best way to do it, as there are some logistics that need to be sorted out in order to make it happen. I’m not ready to give any concrete dates yet, but we do hope to make it happen around the end of this October. So if you really liked our physical items from the campaign, we’ll try to figure out how to make them available as soon as we can, so stay tuned for further updates on that.
[h3]Next game patch[/h3]
As for the game - we plan to launch one more patch tomorrow with some nice fixes, adjustments and overall improvements.
[h3]A small break[/h3]
It took a lot of effort to make the Kickstarter happen - the page itself, the LUC1D livestreams, all the physical items and rewards, logistics and marketing etc. We even were releasing patches for the game along with conducting the Kickstarter as well. It all has been putting a lot of stress, strain and pressure on me and my team for the past few months. So, till the end of this year, we would really like to take a bit of a break.
The break will give us some time to rest, reflect on our journey, recuperate and head into the new year refreshed and ready to continue our work on the game. It will also give us some much needed time to thoroughly rethink our strategy and re-evaluate our plans for the last 2 nights.
[h2]Long term plans[/h2]
Of course, the biggest challenge is going to be the game’s development budget.
Without the extra funding that Kickstarter would’ve provided to the game, we’ll need to downscale a few things and find the right compromises, so that we can fit in our budget and still deliver a great closure for the game and its story.
I personally will be getting an extra job somewhere in the project management realm. I'll be able to dedicate some portion of my salary to the game’s budget if necessary. And IF we set up a permanent store for the Kickstarter items, that'll be another potential way to support the budget of the game.
And as to when we could expect to see the full release - unfortunately, I don't have the answers for that at the moment. Once we've had our break and had some time to rethink things, we hope to have a better estimate in the new year.
[h2]Some closing words...[/h2]
Even though things didn't work out with the Kickstarter, it's not gonna stop us from finishing the game. We've come so far that it would be just stupid to give up right now... So we won't - we'll find a way to move forward, towards the completion of our game. Some compromises will need to be made, but we'll make sure that we release a damn good game for the full release. We hope to see you around when that happens. Until then, thank you for your support and stay tuned for news from us in the future :))
Sincerely,
Martin
[TWITTER/X] ~ [YOUTUBE] ~ [DISCORD] ~ [WEBSITE]