At 5:42 am Aug 8th the last day of our Kickstarter, we crossed the finish line and hit our goal!
It's been a long thirty days, but we did it. We kicked off the campaign not knowing what to expect and just crossed our fingers. When it became apparent that finger crossing doesn't get your game noticed, we started reaching out to the press, asking other Kickstarters to do cross-promotions, amping up our social media, scheduling interviews, redoing interviews, and - of course - badgering anyone and everyone for advice, feedback, suggestions, criticisms, and anything over or under the sun that might help us.
It took us twenty-six days to claw our way up to 62% of our $40K goal. With four days remaining to make up 38%, the outcome did not look good.
On Tuesday morning with two days to go we had $25K, and a somber 12 backers from the previous day; at the current rate we'd be lucky to get to $26K. The words used to describe our campaign went from "awesome game -- can't wait to play it" to "underfunded -- might not make it."
We had tried everything we could think of -- following up with press, posting to forums, reaching out to family and friends for the nth time, more hoping and finger crossing, but to little avail. It dawned on us that we had failed.
We started talking about contingency plans. What would we do now? Launch another Kickstarter? Talk with publishers? Try to borrow money? We knew we had to keep going but we were out of ideas, and to be honest we were out of energy. The constant struggle, very little sleep, and wild ups and downs were taking their toll. We were cracked out and exhausted and our remaining efforts were ultimately going to be a parade; a brave face for the fans.
Then something started happening on Tuesday. We're not quite sure what, but we imagine it has something to do with the cosmos aligning just to turn us into a good underdog story.
Some of the biggest events included a shout out from 5 Lives Studio on the Satellite Reign Kickstarter page, Damon's Reddit AMA, an article in Polygon and interviews in various other blogs and news sites, and a strong social media buzz from all our fans clamoring on our behalf. Slowly but surely, the words used to describe our campaign turned into "We're gonna make it!"
And then we did. We doubled our backer count in two days, contributing nearly half the $40K goal! Unbelievable!
We have many thanks to give and many of you fall into more than one category...
Thanks to our backers and fans! You gave as much as you could -- and then gave even more. Many of you doubled or even tripled your pledges. Our Twitter feed was constantly updated with tweets, retweets, and favorites. As of this post, the Kickstarter link has been shared on Facebook over 3,700 times. Your energy and excitement was amazing! It kept us motivated and made us push even harder.
Thanks to the press for covering our game and helping us reach a wider audience! We also appreciate that many of you posted your articles as soon as you could just to give us an extra boost.
Finally, thanks to our family and friends! You've put up with our constant pestering, and some of you paid money for a game you don't even want! On top of all this, you've supported and encouraged us every step of the way. A special super-thanks to all of you who put in massive pledges.
Now we can actually get back to finishing the game. We'll keep you updated with everything, but now it's time to catch up on some sleep.
Thanks again, everyone! We couldn't have asked for a better OP community!
