KickstarterForum.org

[Zizka]

Hello everyone and thank you for you checking out this thread.

My name is Etienne and I'm a 34 years-old Canadian. For years I've told myself that I couldn't pull a ks campaign off while having it there, at the back of my mind, as a dream.

So I decided to go ahead with it. I am very afraid, I won't lie. I'm afraid the campaign will fail. This is something I don't want to fail at. I don't this to go wrong so I'm reading everything I can about the campaign and putting in the hours to make the campaign a success. If I work hard enough, I think it can succeed. I just need to do things right.

So I tried to find forums on the net where people could provide criticism about the game I'm working on. I could find only this one so I decided to register in order to get feedback from more people more experienced than myself.

The current presentation is, of course, in complete. I will update it regularly based on the comments I will hopefully get to make it better. I'd be happy to provide feedback in return of course for your own KS campaigns in any.

The various sections missing are: the art and the music. I will add those later on.

Feel free to be as honest as possible, I'm want this to succeed, not get my ego stroked (although encouragements are always nice to read )!


Super Toaster Guy is a single player platforming adventure game for Windows, reminiscent of Mega Man, Castlevania and Bionic Commando.

In the game, you take control of Pan, a sentient slice of bread and his powerful toaster suit on a quest to rescue the members of the Breasistance from the nefarious Doctor Dough.

[insert trailer here]


The game presentation is essentially pixel art, the medium used in games Etienne grew up with which kept him company long into the darkest nights.

His love of cartoon eventually influenced him to specialize in animation which, he hopes, will greatly enhance the game’s presentation. Size does matter when it comes to graphics, even with something as small as pixels.

Here’s a sample of his work:







Are you the type of person who enjoys dancing next to their computer when playing a game? Well, you might very well do that while listening to the tasty tracks composed by Trevor Black!

[insert song sample here]
[insert song sample no 2 here]



Art & Extras - 30% [$3000]. This covers all of the sprite work, animation, level backgrounds, and other art assets. This fund also covers any unplanned extra expenses.

Income Tax - 29% [$2851]. The evaluated amount I’ll have to pay the Canadian Government in taxes.

Kickstarter & Amazon - 10% [1000$]: This represents the amount which goes to Kickstarter and Amazon (5% each of the target amount).

Programming - 10% [$1000]. The costs of coding Super Toaster Guy by Greg. This includes fixing bugs as they come up.

Reward - 9% [849$]. This budget is to cover the fees for the backer’s rewards.

Music - 7% [$700]. The money required to finish the OST of Super Toaster Guy by Trevor.

Game Maker License - 6% [600$]: This is the fee for the Game Maker License.





From left to right:



Team Toaster:

Team toaster is an alliance of bread lover [strike]from the four corners of the world[/strike] united over the internet to conquer the world or make an indie game. We settled for making a game.

The (humble) Master Mind: Etienne Zizka

One of those so called French Canadian, Etienne has always been in love with pixel art and constantly have those wacky game ideas keeping him awake at night. Decided a game about a toaster would be cool and went ahead with it. Among his various neurosis, being a perfectionist is his best one.

The Bard: Trevor Black
[to be added here]

The h4ck3r: Greg Hibberd
As an avid young British tech enthusiast, Greg is never one to back down from a challenge and what better a challenge than bringing life to a slice of bread? His adept programming knowledge is just what Pan needs to help defeat The Dough.

The Builder: Goulven Clech
While not occupied with training as a fire fighter Goulven is working on the assembly of all the bits and pieces created by his team mates to combine into an architecturally playable level… while getting intoxicated on lemon syrup.



[insert reward description here]

[giftsandcoupons]

I don't really understand what you did? You're providing us with a draft? But who's going to look through it with you?

I think you should get potential backers and just go for it!

[Zizka]

I don't really understand what you did? You're providing us with a draft? But who's going to look through it with you?

I'm not sure what it is you don't understand . Let me rephrase what I'm looking for:

This is a draft for my presentation of my upcoming campaign. I created this topic in order to get feedback for the presentation. In other words, what I'm looking for people to tell me what they think I should change to make it better.

Who's going to look through it with me? I am baffled about this question and I therefore have no answer.

I think you should get potential backers and just go for it!

Well thank you but that's not what I'm looking for here . If I just wanted to go for it I wouldn't create a thread in order to improve the presentation you see?

I hope the objective is clearer now.

[giftsandcoupons]

as a guy on here who runs a site with Crowdfunding listings, I write articles about Crowdfunding plus with a couple of hundred listings on this board, I hope I know what I'm writing about...but I understand your points.

You've basically created a permanent post which details what the writeup should be. My suggestion is to look at the most successful campaigns, develop your text and share it "offline" with others to get it right.

My initial thoughts on your text is that you've used a bunch of kid-style graphics throughout. I'm not sure if it shows you're serious about the project in that backers want to see - numbers, value, how it benefits them, real photos of people involved or of the project itself.

Hope this helps!

[Zizka]

My suggestion is to look at the most successful campaigns, develop your text and share it "offline" with others to get it right.

Well, I don't think that will do. Why offline ? Could you enlighten me here because I really don't understand the strategy here. Why not take advantage of people who know about KS around the world instead of limiting myself to offline people who don't know anything about it? It just doesn't make sense to me. Maybe it's because I don't have experience but limiting myself only to offline feedback is about the last thing I would ever consider doing.

My initial thoughts on your text is that you've used a bunch of kid-style graphics throughout. I'm not sure if it shows you're serious about the project in that backers want to see - numbers, value, how it benefits them, real photos of people involved or of the project itself.

There you go, that's feedback. You were wondering who would do it, turns out you just did!

It's pretty much the norm in video game KS to have graphics or characters from the game to show up in the presentation.

For example:
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/schellgames/orion-trail

So I don't think that's an issue. People who follow the video game industry won't be put off by the absence of real photos (what is there to take picture of anyway, it's all fictional a stuff, I mean, a toaster shooting robots ). Pictures of the real people behind the game, that's a sound advice however, I can see how that adds up.

So yes, the advice about putting real pictures of the staff did help. Thank you.

[giftsandcoupons]

Ok...I actually gave feedback in my first post.

So, just to confirm you think it's better to copy and paste your campaign and share it online with everyone, rather than just test it out yourself in your own niche group, with family and friends or others who know about your project? This is what I was referring to.

I've seen ALOT of KS campaigns with video games, sorry the ones that made it didn't have little characters all over the place.

The photos I was referring to were the big width graphics of the video game in action (or drawings/whatever you have already).

I probably spent a good 30 mins total, checking out your campaign and replying to you...I *think* you appreciated it, but the way in which you're replying makes me wonder if I should of bothered.

That said, good luck with it.

[Cristina]

This post has been moved to the General Chat + Introduce Yourself section.