RSS Feed Kickstarter diary number two : Days to come

Original Blog Post...
Hi folks!

We’ve spent the week getting back on our feet, after a pretty eventful weekend. Bascially, sending emails to dozens of people, answering hundreds upon hundreds of email, and deciding what we should do in the near future.
Speaking of which, we would like to take some time to answer a number of recurrent questions that have been popping in our inbox in large numbers.

I don’t have a credit card! How do I pledge? Can I pay with Paypal?

Unfortunately, we have no control over the way Kickstarter works. We’ve spent the last 4 months going through the complicated steps require to sign up for a Kickstarter, so we know what it feels like to deal with Amazon Payments.
But do not despair! We are currently working on a system that would allow people to donate via a widget on our own website! It’s pretty complicated to set up, especially if we want to distribute rewards similar to what we offer on Kickstarter, so don’t expect it to be online soon. But within a week, hopefully, everything should be ready to go.
If everything goes well, the widget should be super easy to use, allowing you to donate via Paypal and/or a large number of payment options!

I want a t-shirt AND a poster! Why don’t you have more reward tiers?

You’re absolutely right! We’ve decided there should be more reward options. So we’re now introducing 3 new reward tiers:
$30 – Get TWO COPIES OF THE BETA as well as two names in the game (yours and a second one of your choice)
This one is pretty self explanatory. For those of you who want to offer a copy of the game to a friend or significant other, this reward is for you!
$45 – Get TWO COPIES OF THE PROTOTYPE as well as TWO COPIES OF THE BETA. You also get two names in the game (yours and a second one of your choice)
Same principle as #1, but you get two copies of the prototype as well. Note that the prototype will NOT have multiplayer, so this reward tier isn’t meant to be a “team” pack.
$80 – Get one T-SHIRT of your choice, one POSTER of your choice as well as the PROTOTYPE, the BETA and your name in the game.
Finally! You can now get a t-shirt of your choice as well as one of the two posters! More choice is better right?
Regarding the other reward tiers, we’ve been getting a lot of comments about how badly formulated they are. Kickstarter does not allow rewards to be modified after launch, so there isn’t much we can do. This brings me to the next question:

The first reward is confusing! Do I have to pay for the game again when it goes out of Beta?

Dear god no! If you donated 15$ or more, you own the game when it comes out! We use the term Beta to say that you will be getting the game early, and we use the term pre-release price because once the game releases, it will likely cost more than 15$ for people who haven’t contributed to our Kickstarter.
As for the Prototype, remember that this is a limited demo version we will be sending out exclusively to our 25$-and-up Kickstarter backers. Once the Beta releases, there won’t be a point to keep the prototype because the Beta will likely be bigger and better in every way possible.

The reward tiers say estimated delivery date in August, does that mean the game is ready now?

Ok, let me be frank, we’re stuck with the reward descriptions we’ve written. We wrote August because technically, the Kickstarter ends on the 26th. But in all likelihood, it won’t be ready until September.
The huge size of our Kickstarter is putting significant strain on our small team. We’ve been getting so many email and requests, that we are having a hard time working on the actual game these days. We’re at 400% and will probably reach 500% by the end of the month, so this means that we are required to put 400% as much effort managing everything than we originally planned for and that will probably last until the very end of the Kickstarter. So as close as we are to releasing the prototype, the Kickstarter is also slowing us down considerably.
Our milestone (accounting for all possible delays) is to release something in time for the IGF submissions which is on October 17th. Ideally we would still release somethings earlier than that, but if anything happens, you are guaranteed some kind of release by that time.

Do you have any stretch goals?

This is a tricky question. What are stretch goals anyway? Some kind of scheme to motivate more people to donate?
I don’t really like the concept of promising more features on a whim. We’ve been working on that game for the last two years of our lives, often on the verge of starving, and constantly depending on parents and friends to support us. This game is our baby, we took many risks for it and we will push it as far as we can.
I don’t think there’s any feature we could promise that we don’t want to do already. We’re a small team, exploring a game idea that has never been tried before, so we will get as far as we humanly can.
There’s also the fact that the game is in the middle of development (opposed to a game that hasn’t been started yet), so the concept of adding features that late in development is really strange.
Anyway, I think it would be dishonest to hold back features we already wanted to do, in order to get more people to pledge. This is why we don’t have stretch goals, to us it feels just like day 1 DLC, and we don’t like that.


In conclusion

That’s it for now. This update is getting pretty long anyway. We’ll get back to you next week with some videos and some more pictures, so stay tuned!
Before we go, we’ve just updated the third t-shirt design, as well as creating a wallpaper for it.
Remember! Don’t dig too deep!




The Sauropod Team

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I love the shirt! Great update and thanks for staying in touch with the community. I am glad you were honest about the stretch goals and did not just include features you already had planned, as I feel this happens all too often.

That is the best shirt so far!!!

I really love the shirt designs. Nicely done.

MINESHAFT SUPPORT BEAMS CONFIRMED

loljk

Although I find it a little odd how at the $25 mark you get the Prototype, then at the $30 mark you lose it.

I almost threw up a rainbow when I saw that t-shirt/wallpaper. Genius.

Currently waiting for the report of the meeting for how PayPal is working out... Really want to know more about it... And I want to know until the date of the arrival, so that I know that I need to maintain my money until that day

Ah the hard choice of whether to choose this or mother island as a background, life can be truly hard.

Heuh! 504% pledged! Good going guys!

waiting for PayPal...

maybe there will be something about it tomorrow, according to the previous blog posts that are posted on friday...

DONT SPOIL STOEFF ): have you also tried to make a bridge to another island?

In the First Demonstration video, you can see a small bridge connecting 2 islands around the 9:00 mark.

serious o_o lemme get that video xd

lol... thats only a really small bridge... i meant a HUGE bridge

I know, it's tiny. It's all we've seen so far...