Our Kickstarter was a huge Success!

Thank you!

With the help of 2,501 backers, we’ve now raised a total of $167,386 (USD)! This is almost three times the amount of money we hoped to raise through Kickstarter. Truly, your support means the world to us and we are extremely grateful. We will do everything in our power to make sure every single backer feels satisfied with their pledge. We’ve got some big, long-term plans and those won’t be possible if we don’t release an amazing first game!

Late Pledges and Stretch Goals

We have enabled late pledges with a 10% price increase across the board. This is the Kickstarter recommended approach. It feels like a fair way to reward the backers who pledged now with a cheaper price without overly punishing future backers who simply never heard about the campaign.

We’ve got one final stretch goal for New Game+ set at $170,000. If this funding goal is reached with the help of late pledges, we will absolutely be adding that feature!

Kickstarter Stats

We thought it might be fun to give a little peak behind the curtain and include some stats from the Kickstarter campaign.

Funding Progress

They say Kickstarter campaigns can be roughly broken down into thirds:

33% of funding in the first 3 days
33% of funding in the last 3 days
33% of funding in the entire rest of the campaign

Here was our funding breakdown:

$63,954 (38%), 686 backers (first 3 days)
$29,527 (18%), 535 backers (last 3 days)
$73,453 (44%), 1,264 backers (middle 24 days)

I think we had a stronger than typical mid-campaign which possibly points to our advertising being effective. We ran ads on Facebook, Instagram and Reddit. The lower than typical final push I interpret to mean most people didn’t feel the need to wait to pledge.

Video Plays

Kickstarter highly recommends that every campaign should include a video. Interestingly, we have an almost one to one ratio for the number of people who watched the entire trailer (2,341) to the number of pledges (2,485).

Reward Popularity

This is a breakdown of what reward tier each backer selected by pledge count. I’ll list the stats matching the order of columns shown in the graph.

No Reward: 38 backers (2%), $1,203 pledged (1%)
$30 Mercenary Digital: 1,154 backers (46%), $35,576 pledged (21%)
$45 Mercenary Elite Digital: 528 backers (21%), $24,220 pledged (15%)
$50 Mercenary Physical: 365 backers (15%), $22,394 pledged (13%)
$85 Mercenary Elite Physical: 150 backers (6%), $13,859 pledged (8%)
$150 Mercenary Captain: 212 backers (9%), $34,185 pledged (21%)
$300 Critter Designer: 20 backers (1%), $6,060 pledged (4%)
$750 Town NPC Designer: 10 backers (<1%), $7,637 pledged (5%)
$1500 Monster Designer: 3 backers (<1%), $4,500 pledged (3%)
$3000 Side Quest Designer: 2 backers (<1%), $6,000 pledged (4%)
$4000 Combat Encounter Designer: 0 backers (0%), $0 pledged (0%)
$5000 Story NPC Designer: 2 backers (<1%), $10,000 pledged (6%)

We had an average pledge of $67.07 per backer.

The totals above include the money raised from add-ons. Here’s the breakdown of all the add-ons backers could select.

$10 Beta access: 99 backers
$15 Softcover game manual: 132 backers
$50 Hardcover artbook: 22 backers
$12 Soundtrack on CD: 44 backers
$15 Soundtrack on cassette tape: 16 backers
$35 Soundtrack on vinyl: 33 backers
$25 Additional digital copy of the game: 44 backers
$45 Additional physical copy of the game: 30 backers

Backers by Engagement Level

Our project was most popular with frequent Kickstarter users. People who back multiple projects a year accounted for 85% of all backers. For some reason this data is only available during the Kickstarter campaign. It was hard for me to find any data from other projects to compare this against.

Moving Forward

If you pledged to the Kickstarter, you can already claim your Discord role! Our special Grom bot helper will set you up instantly, but you will need your Kickstarter email address and backer number for the project.

https://discord.com/invite/TGD8Wm5my9

If your pledge included alpha access, we are planning to have the first round of alpha testing begin in the next month or two!

With the overwhelming support from all of you, full production of Alarial’s Blessing has officially begun! We’re soooo excited to share this journey!