nesdev.com

At this point though, I think #1 counts for a lot with a kickstarter, too. People are sick of paying full price for a game that they may or may not get in 8 years.

There's loads of things that made me an instant backer of Micro Mages:

* I've been missing any good 4-player game for the NES. I know it's due to the risk of them being a flicker-fest, and the beautiful graphics work around that very cleverly
* Really well done trailer
* Previous track record with Super Bat Puncher demo, which is still one of the most fun NES homebrews I've played
* Knowing it's a finished game, as others have mentioned (though it's one of the minor points TBH)
* The game just looks like damn good fun to play... especially with friends

Things that made me only back Nebs 'n'Debs as a digital download:
* I did try the demo, and while it was a really high-quality competition entry it just was a bit too much of a "generic platformer" for me to really go back to. And the Kickstarter trailer didn't seem to advertise enough to change that overall feeling.
* The shipping to anywhere outside the US being so expensive. It really adds to the cost, and knowing that I'll also be punished by customs made me more reluctant to hit that backing button.
* While the graphics are really nice and well-done, all in all I couldn't help thinking it still feels like an NROM game with compromises, which maybe should have gone bigger and gotten more content - especially given how much the CIB+shipping adds up to for non-US residents. In contrast, Micro Mages felt a lot less minimalistic and more complete - despite its miniature sprites.

I usually back homebrews for the NES as CIB, so it was a close one with Nebs'n'Debs. Had the shipping been a bit more fair I probably would have gone for the CIB, just for the usual support-all-decent-NES-homebrews instinct

On a third note, a NES:ish kickstarter that seems to be struggling to reach it's basic goal is this one
Besides having a really awful trailer (no, your friends going on about how much they like your game is NOT good trailer material, no matter who gave you that idea)... the fact that it's just a NES version of a PC party game really gives me the feeling that I'm backing a cheapened-down HK demake of a game -and I'd much rather back a NES game where the author puts their heart and soul into making the NES game *the* definite version to play.

Seriously though. Who ever even watched through an entire Kickstarter trailer?
These are always super long, and completely fail the idea behind an elevator pitch (which is essentially what a Kickstarter is).
Of course, you can make them as long as you want them, but you gotta hook your audience within the first 15 seconds or you might as well not.
Don't start out with some geeky developer sitting in his mom's basement muttering to a handheld camera. Start out with gameplay right off the bat, as the very first thing. Then talk about how much you care about the game afterwards. And get a good camera and a good mic.

Sorry, forgot to post a followup here.

M_Tee summed up the contributing factors pretty well, I think.


I'd like to expand on what happened with our video "How we fit an NES game into 40KB" in the hope it might be interesting to some of you.

There are a few channels uploading similar content that have been gaining popularity:
- GameHut
- Retro Game Mechanics Explained

Can't remember the others, but either way, people seem to love these kinds of tech videos. I certainly enjoy them a lot, so I approached Nicolas with the wish to create something in similar spirit for Micro Mages.

One week before the end of the campaign we were at a pace where we thought we may barely hit € 100k if we're lucky, the usual bump in pledges towards the end of a campaign was accounted for in our calculations. Then, apparently, the video got enough views for the Youtube algorithm to start recommending it to people on the homepage and that's when things exploded (250k views on the last day of the campaign).

Needless to say, now we're incredibly glad Nicolas suffered through all those hours of video editing and PC crashes. It paid off to go the extra mile and that's probably something you're absolutely required to do if you want to stand out on Kickstarter.

NROM means nothing to normal folks, we knew we needed to make clear why exactly it's a small big thing. Actually, it's more about communicating why developing a game on the NES is special in the first place. That's the thing other homebrew Kickstarters haven't been capitalizing on enough, I think. Everyone here knows it's completely unlike modern game development, but to our audience, the game may have just been yet another indie platformer without the extra insight.

Ironically, Micro Mages was conceived as a project to test crowdfunding waters, something that wouldn't cost us years of our life to make, where we wouldn't feel compelled to go all-out and instead could allow ourselves to relax, make mistakes and learn from them.