Step 2: Draw the rest of the owl
about 3 years ago – Thu, Mar 02, 2023 at 04:32:37 PM

Recap of yesterday

Neat! We're sitting at just about a cool 300%! Everything besides the final stretch goal has been unlocked (we'll get to that in a moment). Highlights from yesterday & status updates on each tier:

• I projected needing somewhere between 430-460 backers to reach our 100%; we made it with only 361 people! That's an average pledge of $55, which is absurd given that most of the Kickstarter campaigns I researched have an average of $38-$48.
• This is mostly due to the stickers and Drink Deep and Descend coins being extremely popular; we've run out of both the Elite and Squad tiers twice now; both the initial limit was reached and then after I doubled them. I will likely be increasing the limits again, but first need to make sure that we can handle the logistics of the increased quantities. Keep your ear open.
• The Ultra tier to hang out with me and make a map also emptied very quickly, which skewed the average pledge event even further upwards. These limits will not increase; congrats to those who nabbed them!
• The Spacer and Vehicle tiers to commission custom pilot/mech art are almost all gone. These limits may increase after I have some conversations with the artists.
• All four LL12 HMG Asura Everest 360 Noscope have been claimed. Simply incredible. I am not currently planning on increasing this limit.
•  Xiong Xiaoli is still available, which honestly I'm glad about. Let's all stew on what we'd like to see ;)

If you're curious, here's the spreadsheet I used to try and predict the shape of the project. I need to update it with the real proportions of how popular each tier has been, but it highlights just how unexpected y'alls obsession with shiny things has been.

To summarize the campaign description, that means Mark and I are now on the hook to deliver:

• As the base goal, the bones of the game: finish adapting the tabletop rules into the core engine (mech fight mechanics, downtime/character creation), implement basic content (~2 frames per manufacturer and easy-to-implement talents, cbs, npcs), and an instant action mode to set up fights.
• From the stretch goals, we have a map editor with a total of three biomes: terraformed grassy hills, industrial slaglands, and the chromite-sand velds.
• We'll also have two campaign modules: shortish missions + downtimes in an anthology-style story mode with custom character portraits for the npcs.

The bones of the game have a deadline of September 2024, while the stretch goals will come sometime after that.

Final stretch goal

So: all the funding up to this first $50k is earmarked to pay contractors for the assets that will make the above features possible, fulfill backer rewards, and fees + taxes. Mark and I both have part-time jobs which support us well enough to be able to do this on the side. We have been extremely careful about the scope of the game because, while this split-time work is what allows us to run a Kickstarter without paying ourselves, means that we have to compromise on how much time we can put in.

If we wanted to increase the scope of the game by, say, aiming to port all the core game's frames, talents, and core bonuses, that fundamental day-job // game-dev split would have to change. We'd have to raise enough money to actually pay ourselves enough to not work outside of the game.

Which is why the final stretch goal is such a doozy.

That's an additional $100,000 from the last stretch goal.

That's 750% of our original base goal.  

There will be no more stretchies after this; it's the absolute limit of what I'm comfortable scoping. I honestly don't know if we'll reach it (that's why we call them stretch goals), and to be frank I will be perfectly content if we don't; I already consider this campaign to be an unqualified success, and my primary job for the remainder is to ensure that it does not grow out of control and become undeliverable.

This amount will be enough for Mark and I to focus on this project as our primary job and an extra $30k as a safety buffer* ("oh, yeah, let's just throw in a safety buffer 150% the size of the original goal, no biggie"). It will allow us to work for a full year on it, aiming for a 100% content port.** I will add the caveat that if we are NOT able to reach that 100% in that year, I will consider us to have given it our best effort and release ourselves from the obligation of living the rest of our lives chained to that aim. That's the risk of Kickstarter projects, baybee! I just need everyone to come into this with their eyes open that success is not guaranteed.

Also: the exact timing of that year, should we reach it, is TBD as we figure out how it can best fit into our lives and the development process. It might be up-front, it might be after we deliver the rest of the goals as currently planned, it might be somehow spread throughout.

*I suspect this safety buffer to mostly go to taxes, but haven't had a meeting with my CPA about it yet.

** EDIT: To clarify, this is only talking about 100% of the CORE BOOK; Long Rim and KTB not (necessarily) included.

Closing thoughts

The last 36 hours has been a trip. Working with an existing community who is hungry for what you're serving is a completely different animal than what I'm used to — for Crescent Loom, I spent the full campaign being as loud as I could to reach what this game got in the first handful of hours. Thank you everyone for your patience and understanding as we chart these waters. They're choppy, but I feel safe (if exhausted).

Shout-outs: Amelia (@am_ridz_music) of the excellent Bring Your Own Mech lancer podcast for hanging out for so much of the launch stream, Eld (@dunyakat) and the rest of the mods on the PilotNET server for being so supportive and cultivating such a safe space (seriously, being able make a game in an existing active discord where the vibes are good is an infinite treasure), and Massif Press for making this entire endeavor possible by creating the game and universe and then trusting their players enough to open it up with their third-party license.

 🌺 Olive

Storytime
about 3 years ago – Wed, Mar 01, 2023 at 03:42:49 PM

Incredible. We've reached all three bonus art pack stretch goals. This game is going to look incredible.

The next two goals are very special: we have two stories for campaign mode. We're structuring Lancer Tactics' narrative as a sort of anthology; loosely-connected missions in the setting of Verdevilla // Viridian. These will consist of a handful of battles and downtimes that develop a situation and characters — about the scale of a short Lancer module. 

We're using this anthology structure to try and keep the scope of this game manageable. We ain't promising some sort of LL0-12 epic arc where you defeat the Barony and eject them from the planet — it's much more realistic for us to just aim for a few short self-contained stories and leave the door open for more work later. To quote the third party license: "even if they don’t save the galaxy, liberating the city is good work enough."

Campaign Module #1 at $42,000 is going to be written by Elliot Herriman (@elliotherriman); a games writer and designer who has a penchant for writing queer horror and sci-fi. She's previously worked on games from Ubisoft and Team17.

The writer for Campaign Module #2 at $50,000 is TBA because honestly I thought we'd have more time to get that duck in a row before we got here. Thanks, friends. We're doing great.

Olive  🌺

stretch goals for the stretch goal gods
about 3 years ago – Wed, Mar 01, 2023 at 01:19:28 PM

> "OK posting the map editor bought us some time, let's get the next stretch goal ready ASAP"

> community proceeds to blow past it before we're even able to say what it is

Well if that's how it's gonna be, here's the next three stretch goals. We have the map editor, now it's time to commission a bunch more art to give our maps varied environments.

Stretch goal #2: Slaglands biome, $26,500. The landscape of Viridian has been drastically altered by the Barony's terraforming process, and that process produced a lot of toxic by-products. These are dumped outside of the walls of the designated terraform zones and now ring the edges of Barony-controlled land.

Stretch goal #3: Veld biome, $29,000. Before the Barony showed up, Viridian's color came from the hazardous green chromite sands that made up the terrain of its vast velds. Beyond the walls, beyond the slaglands, there is still land that has not been marked by the terraform industrial complex. Folk live out here by cultivating microbiota in rock sappers which slowly convert the chromite sands into clean water and power.

Stretch goal #4: Custom character portraits, $34,000. We've been using asset packs for the pilots — no longer! Let's get some amazing custom pilots drawn.

All this art will be drawn by the talented Martina Brodehl, @TinyArtJarStudios.

UPDATE: y'all have blown past the second unannounced goal in the time it took me to write this, cool cool cool, no time to find a graphic for this post, gotta publish before it's obsolete lol

100% in three hours!
about 3 years ago – Wed, Mar 01, 2023 at 11:12:04 AM

Hot dang! We like big robots, huh?

This morning has been a ride! The biggest surprise has been that I had projected that we would need about 430 backers to hit 100%; we've done it with almost a hundred fewer people than that.

This in large part is due to me underestimating how much folks ✨REALLY LIKE SHINY THINGS✨; the sticker tier is actually MORE popular than the base game, and we are already sold out of the 40 Drink Deep and Descend coins. I was absolutely not expecting those to be as popular as they've been.

We'll be releasing more Elite slots this morning for those who you are thirsty to Drink Deep with this coin and missed the initial 40 slots. There are also more Squad slots available to get the coin if you can manage to wrangle two friends to pool with you.

Hitting 100% has unlocked our first stretch goal: if we reach $24,000 (in retrospect, lol yeah we're gonna get there no problem), we'll a map editor where you can set up your own sitrep and terrain.