Insane Off Road - KickStarter Campaign

Hey Unity Community!

I'm part of a development team working on an awesome off-road racing game called Insane Off-Road! We just debuted a KickStarter project, with a demo we made at the Global Game Jam 2015! We have so much planned, and in store for this game but we need your help.

Please donate to our KickStarter campaign

$1.00 gets you a pre-ordered copy of the game.
We offer a variety of other rewards as well so check it out!

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1410044836/insane-off-road

Also check out the demo at http://globalgamejam.org/2015/games/insane-road-global-game-jam-edition

 

Please show some video and screenshots here to knock our socks off

 

Question - Please explain your plan to release on all platforms "Android, Windows, and IOS, as well as PS3/4, Xbox 360/One" when your kickstarter is only asking for twelve hundred dollars? And any additional funding above the initial goal is going to go towards hiring additional designers/developers.

 

We just need a small boost to get this finished. 1200 is the right number for us to reach our goal. Thanks to Microsoft and Sony we can release cost free on these platforms. Expenses have been building and I can't afford to lose my artist, so with this we can finish and release on march 20th.

If we get more, we will have to hire additional workers to make the game bigger and still hit our release date.

More videos coming soon!

 

Cool!
Nice physics on the buggy.
Please update when you lock down a final release date.

Good luck!

 

I don't want to be the negative guy, but clearly your Kickstarter is struggling, and I think I can provide some input as to why.

• Title/Exposure - Doing a search for your game, all I could find other than your Kickstarter was stuff for an existing off road racing game with the same title as yours. A) This is probably confusing for any potentially interested customers, and B) If they can't find it, they can't fund it. You should be driving people to your campaign from every place possible.
• Professional Appearance - I get that it's just the two of you guys, and it's tough to market your game AND develop it, but you need to polish your company presence and any content presenting your game. Your website is a mess. It sort of gives people the impression right away that you're not too focused on doing things cleanly, which either directly or subliminally suggests to them that your game will lack the same care and polish.
• Lack of Information - One of the things I have the biggest issue with is the lack of real information. You indicate you'll be coming out for all platforms, but you need $1200 to do so. What does that mean? How does that relatively small amount of money help you launch on 9-11 platforms? Are you approved ID@Xbox developers? If not, how are you going to publish on that system? So what platforms will it actually be launching on at the end of next month? And is that counting going through the approval process for those specific platforms? Not addressing these items suggests that you may in fact not fully understand these processes.
• Lack of Information (cont): Stretch Goals - You indicate that any funding above your modest goal will allow you to hire more people to create more content. Levels, editors, etc. But how much extra does that? If you beat your goal by $100, what does that equate to? This is the kind of information Kickstarter users are used to reading on a campaign, and not seeing that information is likely a red flag to anyone considering giving you their dollars.
• Weak rewards clarification - Do the shirts exist yet? If so, put a picture of them up. If not, I can tell you there's no way in hell you'd be able to get them produced and sent out by May. And at the $200 tier, getting cars unlocked doesn't seem like that big a deal. Can I not unlock these naturally by playing the game? And if not, that should kind of be spelled out so I understand the value in that, right? But if your game contains less than $200 worth of micro-transactions (Dear God, I hope it does), there's probably not a whole lot of value there, right?
• The Game Itself - Don't get me wrong... The game itself doesn't look terrible. But your video seems to show off some pretty poor frame rate that could use optimizing. If it runs like this on what I assume to be a decent PC, I can only imagine how it would suffer on mobile devices or older consoles. Take the time to polish the game as much as you can. Granted, it's a dollar, so no one's expecting the next MotoX. But if you're stating the game is basically done, it needs to look almost done.

If I can be perfectly blunt, it doesn't feel like there's a real need for your Kickstarter campaign to exist. Your release date seems pretty solidly set at a month after your Kickstarter finishes, so it sounds like you'll be finished regardless of whether or not you get funded. And since $1200 isn't even enough for 2 people to live off of for that period of time, and it's not clear what that money is really going to (other than the $75 for the month of Unity Pro), my assumption is that while you don't NEED the money, you're trying to get some early purchases through a different sales tactic. I'm not accusing you of this, mind you, this is just the impression I'm getting from the conditions of your campaign.

I never want to see anyone fail (except total jerks, which I don't think you are), but I'd be lying if I thought your campaign had a chance for success. Here's what I suggest instead:

• Forget new levels, cars, and features. Spend any remaining time before you launch cleaning and optimizing the game, getting that performance up to a nice solid 30FPS.
• Focus your target platform for launch. Go for PC/Mac/Linux first. Then one mobile platform at a time. Make sure each version is as good as it can be in its current state.
• Promote the game better. Create a Twitter account and build followers. Post in EVERY indie game forum you can. And market towards other demographics as well, like racing fans.
• If you really want to do new content, features, and game consoles, sit down and plan things out. Research what is required to get your game launched on those systems, and ensure you're doing everything you can to meet that criteria. And again, focus on one at a time.

I do sincerely wish you success, and the game you've put together so far is coming along nicely. But I think you need to regroup and get things together a bit more before pushing forward much further. Good luck!

 

Schneider21, I sincerely appreciate your input and I think you are probably right that it is more a presentation/lack of information problem than anything.

You hit the nail on the bone when you said " I get that it's just the two of you guys, and it's tough to market your game AND develop it" - well that's just it. If I had the time I could bring a better presentation, but we have to release due to money issues. Just trying to see if there is any fuel from the community to make this possible on all platforms.

Quality is our main concern, the majority of the duration of the kickstarter will be spent refining this to a point that it COULD be published sooner. The purpose of the kickstarter and the 1200 is really just to test the water, see if the community is interested in pushing this further. While 1,200 may not seem like much it would pay the bills and buy us more time. -- you would be suprised what we can accomplish given an extra 30 days. If we could hire more people level designers, etc, it would be very beneficial at this point. I think I will take your advice and make the goals a little more clear.

Perhaps you are right, and we may need to regroup - I suppose the kickstarter will foretell this.

If someone could recommend video software that doesn't have terrible framerate I'd appreciate it!

 

@Schneider21 It's like you were in my brain detailing what I was thinking but couldn't put into words. Have you ever considered moonlighting as a Marketing Consultant?

I agree 100% with Schneider21. Having limited experience on KS campaigns - I know the campaigns themselves should be treated as a full-time job, 100% focus and attention including what Schneider21 detailed above, cross promotional material on every social, communication avenue available, starting no less than a month before the campaign begins and continuing through the entire campaign. And even then it isn't a guarantee of success.
#1 best advice "polish your company presence and any content presenting your game". Quality over quantity.

 

@mr_rayskinner Gotcha. The fact that you're open to criticism and recognize some of your weak areas tells me you'll eventually succeed. Don't give up!

@theANMATOR2b I'm a web developer for a healthcare provider by day currently, but I've worked for a couple marketing agencies prior to this. Oddly, I never thought to apply that experience towards my passion for games. You may have just opened up a whole new life opportunity for me.

 

@Schneider21 thanks for all the advice, I will do my best to turn this ks around if possible. I'll post my updates/changes.

@theANIMATOR2b ..I hadn't thought of the kickstarter being a full time job, but it makes sense now.

 

Weird timing, but @SullyTheStrange just posted his Kickstarter campaign as well. Theirs is very well put together. Study it and see what you can learn, and apply that type of thinking to your campaign.

 

Wow @SullyTheStrange knows their stuff! Man that made me want to contribute and this is the first I've heard of it!

Very nice example @Schneider21, it has been well noted. Again thanks for your help!

I've got some work to do

 

Thanks for the compliments guys! It definitely takes a ton of work to put together a solid Kickstarter page, but one of the best things you can do is find several good examples and study them like your life depends on it. Look at the page structure, where they put certain sections, how they use pictures (both game screenshots and things like section headers, charts, graphs, etc), how much text they use, and so on and so on. It takes a ton of thought! And the way the page looks is only one factor of many.