KickstarterForum.org

Hello!
This is my Kickstarter project; https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/93 ... agnificent

My website: http://www.keiththemagnificent.com

The game is about a lonely wizard named Keith, who is also a brilliant engineer and dabbles in science. However, Keith has no friends, and no one shows up to his parties he throws in his flying castle. This leads to him being very sad, and drinking all the alcohol he had bought for a party of hundreds, himself, over the course of a few weeks, while hoping someone would show up. They do not.
Keith then decides the world would be better without him.
Just before he is going to leave, as he says, he gets an idea of how he can have friends, how he can feel value. His solution is to rob a graveyard of every single corpse, reanimate them and turn them into zombies to suit his very specific need of friends such as butlers. And fireplaces.
You can try the first two levels, which covers the beginning of Keith's journey, and the rest of the game will be about how Keith deals with having these friends, who he has forced to be his friends, and how he might eventually be happy. The demo can be downloaded from my website!

This is a project made entirely by my self! I started working on it close to a year ago during my MA final project, and have been working on it part time since. I got really engaged in creating this, learning new things and really wanted to tell the story of the game, and while I tried to fund it once before during my MA - I severely underestimated kickstarter, and tried doing too much at the same time. I have spent time since then working on my kickstarter, being more prepared, improving the game massively and simply being more mentally prepared for it.

I am very happy with where the game is, and believe this is an important story that I can tell, using my strange art style and fairly morbid humour. I am quite happy with the kickstarter so far, having raised 11% in the first day, even if the goal is not too high. I would love any comments, feedbacks and tips on how to reach more people!

Thank you, and yes that is where I am currently putting the majority of my effort at the moment, getting out to blogs, youtubers, and forums!

I'm liking the concept, slightly morbid but fun. Personally I'd perhaps lose the part about him deciding to kill himself, that's maybe a bit too close to the bone for some people and could go against your project in terms of PR. You could still have him as a lonely wizard who decides to make zombie friends, that would still keep a good amount of humour to it.

Seriously well done though for putting in so much work all by yourself, that's a very impressive feat right there! Best of luck with this, I'll be showing the link off to a couple of my games reviewer buddies.

I did consider removing that part, but it is quite important to the story and I decided to keep it in. It does hit quite close to myself, and the point of the game is having him try to climb himself up from the very bottom point of his life - being so lonely and desperate that he wants to kill himself, at that point, underlines that quite well I think. Essentially the point I want to tell is that doing a thing like that is never a solution, and that there's always a way out from it - even if its a bit strange and odd, people have to find what works for them to keep on living.

If I remove that part (Which is never said outright as killing himself in the game, he just says "he wants to leave this place, be gone forever" and similar. And he builds a stabbing machine.) the counterpoint at the end of the game where he is (spoiler) content with his life and excited about the future, Going from a bit miffed that his friends didnt show up to a party, to content and excited is not as large a counterpoint or as strong a story as going from an obviously self destructive and suicidal mindset, towards a productive and excited one that has hope that life might be worth it afterall, and that is essentially the story I want to tell. I know it might be a bit morbid, a bit too close for some people, but I have always be and will always be a person that does thing all out, and this is the type of games I really want to spend the rest of my life making - games that tell stories that I believe are important, that might be slightly taboo, but are in the end things that (With the exceptions of magic and zombie cyborgs) might resonate with some people in real life, and are based on the less romantic and happy things that happens in life. Its something that people have done forever in books, films and other media - I just think games need this kind of angle aswell. Using morbid humour and fantastical setting is my way of trying to counterbalance the dark themes, and is the way I deal with similar situations in real life, laughter always lightens the mood and is a good way to talk about dark things.

This is why I am trying to fund it on kickstarter though, I am very aware that a large publisher and investors most likely would never go for something where within the very first 10 minutes of the game touches on such dark subject matter, no matter how important I might think the matter is.

Thank you so much for your kind words, and yes it is an incredible amount of work but I love every minute of it! And I really appreciate you showing it to reviewers! I firmly believe the game is strong and stands on its own, but as the market is quite niche getting word out in any way is my major struggle! If they do write about it, if you could let me know that would be brilliant!

Thought I would post a little update here! Kickstarter is going amazingly well and after my first week up I am 42% funded! Its been an amazing experience so far, and I'm appreciating more and more how much of a community Kickstarter really is and how important the community building of it is:D

Wow! You're in a very good position considering 21 days left if you keep hustlin'

Yes - the community building aspect is crucial!

And its funded with 17 days left! Thanks for alot of tips from this website, and people i found here! Got my stretchgoals ready to go up soon and everything!

Awesome!! Congrats!! Which tips did you find to be most helpful in reaching your goal?

If I had to pick one I would say it would be anything that suggest you show you being active and engaged! I have gotten several backers, as well as people increasing their pledges simply on the basis that I am active, communicate and engage with my backers! Seems to really matter to people (which is understandable) and answering questions, chatting with people in comment section and (Something I thought of myself, but I'm sure other people have done as well) doing 4-8 hour long live streams of me producing artwork for the game at least 3 days a week has been a massive help.

Basically I think all the other tips and suggestion I've gotten brought some people to my campaign. Me engaging and chatting and being seen being active (It doesn't really matter if you work 15 hours a day on the campaign, if no one knows! People think you're just inactive about it) has gotten the backers invested, have helped form a connection and essentially created a (very small) fanbase, and when someone doesn't just like something but are a fan of it, spend hours a day chatting with the creator, gets to engage with the creator and similar that is when they try and bring their friends into it aswell with conviction, instead of just giving it a share and saying "my mate made this" which can get some backers, but isn't as helpful.

So if anyones reading this is starting a campaign, my biggest tip would be spend the majority of your time during the campaign chatting to your backers! Engage, give them oppurtinities to see your work and interact with it, its so much fun, they become more invested, and you might get great feedback! Its a win-win really!