(but I’m telling you anyway)
I started researching Kickstarter two rentals ago (that’s how I measure time now). I was sitting in a drafty, spidery but peaceful room that was entirely mine. It might have even been before Raguthra had a solid name, that’s how early we’re talking in our game dev journey.
The advice out there was… conflicting. Wildly so.
Everything from “Kickstarter is dead, no one backs games anymore” to “I raised a million dollars and only spent $10k on marketing!”.
But between all the extremes, I found a handful of genuinely helpful insights — and I’m convinced they played a big role in why our campaign succeeded.
As with most things, the biggest wins weren’t flashy, glamorous, or easy. They were the boring, consistent bits of work that no one sees. Whether or not you ever plan to run a Kickstarter, I hope there’s something in here for you.
(Disclaimer: This is based purely on our campaign. Your mileage may vary, your spiders may differ.)
Truth 1. People are probably 50% backing your product and 50% backing you.
Let me take you back to that first spidery room. It smelled like paint. A small black cat was throwing up on my rug. I was watching a Kickstarter advice video on the “big screens” (that means I was Serious About Learning™).
The first takeaway that hit me was this:
Kickstarters with a video featuring the creators are MUCH more likely to succeed.
Not a montage. Not just gameplay. You.
And I hated that.
At the time, being perceived online felt like sticking my head inside a beehive. So I shelved the idea and decided Kickstarter was “too hard.”
Fast-forward to a couple of months ago: after two days of filming and only one mental breakdown*, we had a video. Imperfect, human, full of personality and probably refreshing to see in an internet era drowning in AI voiceovers.
Beyond the video, the second half of this “people back people” truth came from TikTok. Somehow, in the chaos of posting 2–3 times a day, we stumbled into a pocket of TikTok that genuinely cared about us. They shared our posts. They rooted for us. They stuck around.
And somewhere along the way, I realised I didn’t just want to succeed for us, I wanted to succeed because they believed in us.
That connection carried me through the stress of launch week, and it absolutely carried our campaign.
*I think it was more like 1 and a half mental breakdowns. Don’t ask Lee to confirm, he doesn’t know what he’s talking about.
Truth 2. Your audience size does NOT limit your reach, but timing is everything
A lot of the more recent Kickstarter advice focuses on mailing lists, pre-launch followers, and leads. All excellent points. Having a big audience makes things easier.
But it’s also the reason many devs never hit “launch.”
We almost didn’t launch because we had only 30 people on our mailing list and 60 pre-launch followers. It felt embarrassingly small.
Lee talked me off the ledge.
Here’s what we did have:
Steam Next Fest.
We timed our launch with Next Fest because we knew it would put eyes on the game. We’d learned that from the Spaceship Down demo back in July. What surprised me was how dramatically it paid off.
I knew it was working not by the wishlists or downloads, but by the moment when typing “Frac” into the Steam search bar autofilled “Fractured Library.”
Anyone who’s searched for an obscure indie knows how absurd that is.
We were religious with tracking codes, and Steam ended up being our biggest external referrer by a landslide.
People really do read the updates.
Truth 3. Like it or not, luck plays a huge role in your campaign
Three days before the end of Next Fest, our stats exploded. Wishlists shot up. Kickstarter backers started rolling in every few minutes. And none of my tracking parameters caught it which infuriated me.
The cause?
Someone new joined our Discord and casually mentioned that Fractured Library was featured on GamingBible. (A gaming news website for anyone unfamiliar.) They called it a mash-up of Stardew Valley and Hogwarts Legacy. Keyword salad anyone?
There was zero way we could have predicted that. And absolutely no organic way to replicate it without a PR company.
Would we still have hit our goal without it?
Maybe.
But it would’ve been tight.
Luck, whether we like it or not, is part of the equation.
So here I am: still a bit shocked that researching, working hard, and showing up as ourselves actually paid off.
People still back games on Kickstarter.
And we truly can’t wait to bring Fractured Library to your screens.
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