April has come to a close, time for a monthly update!

Kickstarter

The Raygun Gadabout Kickstarter launched at the beginning of the month, I cancelled it after 2 weeks. Time for a post mortem.

What went wrong?

Or at least what I think went wrong:

Launching on a tuesday after a long weekend.

Launching the week before PAX East.

Not nearly enough marketing prep.

Need a bigger following.

I think the third point is really key. You can’t hope in this day and age when Indie games and Kickstarters are a dime a dozen for your campaign to get noticed by accident. The media does’t really care about Kickstarters either, gone are the early days of crowdfunding when you could be stumbled upon. You really need to build up a following, over months and probably years. Fans and people who believe in your game who will be there on day one. That first 48 hours on Kickstarter are really as important as they say.

What went right?

I’d say that within the first 48 hours I sensed the thing was doomed. But what was really great was getting to finally have hundreds of people try the game demo out. Lots of great feedback, bugs were found. Was fun and nerve wracking to watch Let’s Plays and see people react to stuff you created. The game has lots of new followers on Twitter/Game Jolt/Itch and people wishlisting on Steam.

These are the people who might buy your game some day, and who will help spread the word as well as give you important feedback and critique. Their importance cannot be understated.

If we create games it’s because we probably love games, and often make the game we would want to play ourselves, we also want others to play and enjoy our creations as well. And they are out there, you just have to find them. It is a huge motivational boost when someone is excited about your game and can’t wait for more.

In Conclusion

I’ll admit that I initially took the failure pretty hard. It’s never easy to put so much effort into something and have it not suceed. All you can do is try your best to learn what you can and take that forward, that’s what I intend to do.

Would I Kickstart again? I’m not sure. It’s a ton of work, so much so that I had to halt a lot of work on the game proper in order to do it. I’m really enjoying having my hands back in the dough. Time will tell.

Now on to the goodies!

Airdodge

Most of the basic abilities/attacks in the game can be upgraded during your adventure. Here’s an example. The Directional Air Dodge!

You can dodge once in the air, but if you hit one of those “nodes” you can reset the dodge and keep going. I’m also working on “nodes” that propel you forward or slow time temporarily.

You’ll also notice a new “ghost” effect when you dodge roll.

Melee Hangtime

This is one I really like. Simple yet satisfying!

A slight hangtime when you do melee attacks in mid air. For people who like to use the Y Button to do melee (currently you can use Y or RB, i prefer Y myself) It makes it easier to attack in the air.

You can also do some pretty nifty acrobatics when combining it with the directional air dodge.

New Level

Now that the Kickstarter is over I can get back to fleshing out more of the game. Here’s a new level that is being built. It is what will be the actual first level of the game.

In the above GIF you can see an alternate route you could take later in the game when you’ve unlocked some abilities.

I want to avoid having to do any “boring” backtracking. If you do return to an area later in the game it’s more interesting if you can find/use shortcuts or take some alternate routes that weren’t possible before.

Thanks for stopping by

I appreciate your taking the time to read this post. Feel free to leave a comment, and of course you’re welcome to pop by the Discord channel and say hello discord.gg/SVsNQ7u

Till next time!

-M.