Near-Mage's successful campaign
Near-Mage is a modern Kickstarter indie game success story.
Near-Mage is an upcoming narrative-driven, point-and-click adventure game about studying spell crafting at a magic school in Transylvania. The game features frame-by-frame animation, hand-drawn 2D environments, and a customizable spell crafting system where you can combine different types of magic (e.g. flame, seed, blood) for different effects that progress the story in different ways.
Stuck in Attic, the Transylvania-based developers of Near-Mage, previously developed Gibbous: A Cthulu Adventure. Gibbous, released in 2019, is a point-and-click adventure game that combines the two disparate elements of comedy and cosmic horror that went on to become a commercial as well as critical success. The Stuck in Attic team took what they learned about Kickstarter promotion from the success of their last game, and replicated that in Near-Mage with refined messaging and a broader scope.
When theNear-Mage Kickstarter campaign launched in August 2021, it beat its funding goals by 500 percent and knocked its €25,250 (approx. $28,600) target out of the park. That's a monumental achievement, especially considering that the average success rate of a Kickstarter campaign is closer to 39 percent.
Game Developer sat down with Liviu Boar, the Creative Director at Stuck in Attic, to talk about what worked in Gibbous that they built on with the Near-Mage Kickstarter, and what else they threw into the mix. Liviu has written blogs for Game Developer himself and has posted on topics ranging from Kickstarter preparation to Steam page optimization.
Game Developer: Walk me through the months leading up to the Near-Mage Kickstarter campaign.
Boar: I have to admit it was more of a
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