Nathan Low took some time out of his game making and imminent baby preparation schedule to talk about the history behind his game Regeria Hope, a Phoenix Wright style over-the-top courtroom drama set in a future where justice happens despite the justice system not as a consequence of it. We talk about where it all began, how he ran a successful crowdfunding campaign, and what’s next.
Tell me a bit about the history of Regeria Hope. How did you come to make this game, and what is the history of the project before the Kickstarter?
I’ve been working on Regeria Hope since 2009 at least. After playing through the first (Phoenix Wright Ace Attorney) trilogy and the Apollo Justice series, I wanted more, so I figured a great way to start that was to make my own game. After playing around with XNA in my spare time, I was able to get some animation and text boxes working, but writing an entire story in XML wasn’t going to work.
Then I found Ren’Py, which makes writing visual novels much, much easier. After writing out the script for the first episode in 2012, I was really able to make a lot of head way when I found an amazing artist (Janelle) in late 2013, and work has been much faster ever since! After bringing on a wonderful background artist (Sendo) and the extremely talented Zack Parrish in February, the quality of the game has been much improved. It’s significantly sped up production time as well, since I can focus on the story rather than how I’m going to get everything done.
I released the first version of the first episode in December 2014, and saw that a fair amount of people were playing it, so I decided to keep improving it to make it better and see if people would want to see more episodes. The only real way I can currently see how people view the game is through download numbers and reviews on Google Play and Game Jolt, where they seem to be trending positively.
Another big chance meeting was meeting with you at the Boston Festival of Indie Games. The big push to make the Kickstarter campaign really came from knowing that we would be working together on setting the campaign up. Having someone that knows about marketing really makes setting up a Kickstarter much easier.
At what point in development did you know that Regeria Hope should be episodic? At what point did you decide on Kickstarter to fund the remaining episodes and what led to that decision?
I knew that I wanted to put one episode out, just to see if there would be interest in more episodes or any interest in my characters. I’m glad to say that there is. I knew that I’d likely be using money from the first few episodes to make future ones better, and feedback from the episodes will lead to changes in the gameplay.
I decided to use Kickstarter to fund the remaining episodes because I wanted to know if people wanted more episodes, and basically if trying to juggle a new baby and a new side gig would be worth it to the world. Since the answer has been a definite ‘YES’, it’s made it an easy choice to invest more in it to make it better.
What had you done before the Kickstarter to start getting the word out about the game? Looking back, which of those were most effective?
Having the first episode of the game out was a great way to get feedback and see how interested people were in seeing further episodes. Once the first episode was picked up on Silliconera, I saw a huge spike in downloads, and having the first episode be free meant that I could send it to places that promote free games as well, which was a nice way to get onto Rock, Paper, Shotgun.
That all started when Chris Priestman found the game in my posts on the Lemmasoft forums (I’m guessing), so that was a big part of getting started. If you can find a forum where you game will be appreciated, it’s a great place to start your advertising. So I guess, looking back, that was what started the snowball rolling, and probably the most effective way of getting the word out.
Let’s plays were also a pretty good way of getting the word out. They are also extremely good ways to get user feedback from a game. I can basically see where the player is having issues with a game or GUI and fix those, so I recommend at least watching some let’s plays of your game when they come up.
What sort of planning went into the Kickstarter campaign? How long did preparing for the campaign take?
I almost think you might know more about the answer to this question than me! I knew that I wanted to release information as the Kickstarter went along, to get people that had backed it interested in what I was doing and to show that I was committed to the project. I thought that the jury members, information about further cases, and information on backer rewards would be interesting to show to the backers as the Kickstarter went along, and might make them want to pledge more.
Gosh, I feel like I spent 3 months of prep work after full time work to get everything set up, mostly assembling the team, planning out how the demo will look for the Kickstarter, and getting new voices and music ready. I also purposely left some hints into what was happening in the next episode for the eagle eyed to pick up, which made some fans very happy.
Out of everything you did before the campaign (both planning the campaign and otherwise), what things would you say are absolutely necessary to tip the odds in your favor when trying to crowdfund?
I think the most important thing to get the odds in your favor are a strong pitch video, and a story with lots of pictures and gifs. It seems like Kickstarter Staff Picks are very much about the idea itself and the pitch video. Making the video so that it can create a link between the person making the video and watching the video is very important.
Having the demo out there was an extremely big help, and players that made it all the way to the end were given a special message from me, which has led to receiving a fair amount of emails and feedback, and hopefully some pledges.
I was also able to get in touch with the people that wrote about the first episode previously and they were nice enough to write more articles. I’d recommend writing a reddit post as well, as long as you have been around on a sub-reddit for a while.
Where did most of your backers come from? Were they people you had already developed relationships with, people who found you on Kickstarter, or people who found you by other means? Does that answer change if we look at the most money pledged rather than number of backers?
That’s a good question. Within the first few weeks, the biggest backers were people I already knew and family, along with those who just saw it on Kickstarter and liked it.
Based on what I’ve read about Kickstarter, it seems producing and shipping physical rewards can be a huge gotcha for campaigns in which the item being funded is primarily digital. What was your approach to offering physical rewards? Have you begun fulfilling any of these, and, if so, is that working out as you had hoped?
This one is tough to cover. I purposely kept the physical rewards to a minimum, because I knew that would slap me in the face. I did go with one physical reward though, the mouse pad. I didn’t want to go with posters because packaging for posters is expensive for what the pledger gets. With mouse pads, they are very durable, so postage damage won’t happen, and it feels like users are getting something collectable for what they pay, especially in this case where some pledgers will be able to customize their own mouse pad.
What’s the number one thing you will do differently the next time you run a Kickstarter campaign?
Bump my “complete game” pledge price up. I’ve noticed that most people will pay the minimum amount to get the game, so make that the amount you want you feel the game is worth. I also noticed that the average Kickstarter “game” pledge was about $15-$20, even among visual novels.
The early bird level is interesting as well. It’s great to get early backers, but you will get people that hold out and wait for the early backers to cancel their pledge until they back. I would have kept it if I was going to do it again, but if I knew that there were going to be a lot of backers regardless, I would have removed it to keep the pledge train going, instead of having people wait to see if early backers would cancel.
What’s the thing you did over the course of the campaign that brought the most unexpected success? Define “success” however you’d like.
I think sending an email to the creators of “Aviary Attorney” saying how much I love their game and how I’m looking forward to playing it definitely brought me the most success halfway through the Kickstarter. Jeremy and Mandy are extremely nice people, and advertised Regeria Hope to their backers, which gave the Kickstarter a much needed boost in the middle of the campaign.
Making a “Thank you” video on the 3rd last day brought me the most extra hits, along with a new $15 “extra card game” pledge level to get people that were at the $12 level to up it to $15.
Do you have any other advice you would give to creators thinking of crowdfunding a current or future project?
Cross-advertising with other people doing Kickstarters is an excellent way of getting your game out there for free, and a great way to meet other developers and their awesome games as well. Make as polished a Kickstarter video as you can, and have lots of quality pictures in your Kickstarter page. Setting an achievable amount is very important as well. I was aiming to have about 10% of people that played the game at the time to have put $12 each in (500 * 12). Not sure if that’s a good level to expect, but I was hoping for it.
Another thing is make sure your first section of the Kickstarter “story” includes something to get the reader hooked, or at least some of the pledge rewards, beceause that’s what the pledger will care about.
I’m sure you’re working hard on completing episode two. Once all the rewards have been delivered, what’s next for you and Golden Game Barn?
That’s an interesting question as well. I know I’m going to have my hands full with working on Regeria Hope — making sure the rewards get out in time — and the new baby, but I work on board games as well. There might be some news about that around the next Boston Festival of Indie Games, but there’s a lot of work before that. I’d like it if people liked the first five episodes of Regeria Hope enough to make more episodes, so that’s all I can really say for now.
Nathan Low makes video games and board games through his studio Golden Game Barn. Support him by voting for Regeria Hope on Steam Greenlight.