What do you get when you cross Steam Next Fest with the Launch of a Kickstarter campaign?
We’re still figuring this one out, but here’s what we’ve discovered so far:
For the last few months, we have been putting together the Fractured Library Demo to show off in the October 25 Steam Next fest. Getting that finished itself was a massive achievement in itself! You might have already read about some of the challenges Lee faced in the Unity side of development here.
Meanwhile, I’ve been working behind the scenes to make sure everything was ready for out Kickstarter launch, doing everything I could to give us the best possible shot at hitting out funding goal.
For anyone unfamiliar with Kickstarter: it’s an all-or-nothing crowdfunding platform. That means if you don’t meet your goal, you get nothing. It’s actually a great model for both backers and creators, because it ensures no one is stuck trying to make a project with too little funding to do it justice.
Side story: during my research, I started to feel a little uncertain about our potential for success on Kickstarter… until I stumbled upon a campaign for literal rocks you hold in your hands that had raised over two million dollars. So if rocks can raise $2M, maybe, just maybe we can reach $10,000.
Our plan was to launch the Kickstarter the same day Next Fest began—and it went off with a bang!
The pledges climbed, wishlists skyrocketed, and we had the joy of watching some truly lovely people play the demo for the first time.
Then, a couple of days before Next Fest ended, something incredible happened: traffic and pledges suddenly exploded. I hadn’t checked wishlists for two days, and when I finally did, we’d jumped from 800 to 4,500.
After a little bit of detective work (and a lot of confused refreshing), one of our Discord members mentioned that Fractured Library had been featured in a GamingBible article and it all started to make sense.
It just goes to show that all our hard work was worth it—and sometimes, that tiny random spark of luck decides to show up in the most spectacular way.
Because I love data (and I know some of you do too), here are a few numbers from Steam as of today:
Downloads for the demo:
Wishlists for the full game: look at that SPIKE on October 20!
Thank you all for being part of this wild ride- some of you from the very beginning of this whole thing!
We appreciate you all so so very much, and look forward to celebrating our next huge win with you (hopefully it’s reaching 100% of our funding goal on Kickstarter 🤞)
A few links to save you looking elsewhere for them:
Kickstarter – Play the demo – Wishlist on Steam – GamingBible article – Lee’s last article
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