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[Moghjubar]

Looks pretty awesome. But those E's instead of $'s on the donation page are scaring me...

Alas, thats a big problem for a lot of Americans, in more ways than one (a lot of times, bank cards will auto block payments with currency conversions and its just one more hassle to go thru).  Combine that with general laziness/apathy and sales get lost (and of course I already said that kickstarter is a lot more popular too).

Really? That's unfortunate and we didn't even know about such a problem. Both Indiegogo and € was used to make bureaucratic stuff easier for us, but we didn't think that it might cause real problems for US-supporters. I hope it's still not too big a deal for most people.

About the study... at this point I think it's obvious that it is much easier to get a successful campaign running on Kickstarter, both because of the reputation and some convenience issues Indiegogo has. The only big disadvantage of Kickstarter is it's lack of PayPal-Support.

Most campaigns also run a paypal buy in to the side on their own website.  Sure, it doesn't necessarily count to the goal itself, but you estimate 5% of sales from it and shoot for the moon from there.

[Felcis]

Most campaigns also run a paypal buy in to the side on their own website.  Sure, it doesn't necessarily count to the goal itself, but you estimate 5% of sales from it and shoot for the moon from there.

Of course that's always a good idea, but only after your normal crowdfunding campaign has been finished. First you gotta reach your goal to actually get the money and afterwards you can think about a other long-term ways of income through those means.

On a sidenote, 40k of 80k€ have been reached, shortly before the end of the original running time. Let's push through to reach the other 50% in the remaining 31~days!

[Folly]

Sadly, less than two weeks remaining and they've scarcely progressed from the halfway mark they were at two weeks ago. This is all the more distressing because the game looks even more amazing with each news update.

Has anyone found any commentary from the developers regarding their plans when they fail to reach their goal by the deadline? Another extension? Or will they try a different method to gain funding? I feel it's unlikely that a game so far along would be abandoned at this stage.

[Felcis]

Sadly, less than two weeks remaining and they've scarcely progressed from the halfway mark they were at two weeks ago. This is all the more distressing because the game looks even more amazing with each news update.

Has anyone found any commentary from the developers regarding their plans when they fail to reach their goal by the deadline? Another extension? Or will they try a different method to gain funding? I feel it's unlikely that a game so far along would be abandoned at this stage.

It's in the final week now and thankfully the campaign has picked up steam again. It might reach it's goal after all, anything can happen on the last days.

The project will indeed not be abandoned after all the work, even if we don't reach our goal in this campaign. The development will continue, but the release will most likely be delayed because many of us won't be able to work fulltime right away and we gotta spend more time preparing an alternative way of financing the development.
More information can be found on the DevBlog and in recent Indiegogo-updates.

[Moghjubar]

If you dont make it, find some way to put it on kickstarter in a few months and I'll back again.

[Felcis]

If you dont make it, find some way to put it on kickstarter in a few months and I'll back again.

We'll most likely set up something similiar much earlier than that to still profit from the marketing that we've done in the last months and minimize the risk of losing supporters.
We'll definitely keep everyone updated about it!

[Folly]

Wow, several big 4-digit contributions in the last 24 hours.

[Folly]

Less than 5k E's to go with 30 hours left, it seems inevitable that they will meet their goal now. This can be credited in part to their 'Last Minute Heroes' campaign, offering contributors a chance to have their name in game as well as a chance to become an NPC or statue with custom text, for the price of 13 E's.

[Felcis]

Hehe, yeah that special event might help us a lot. For something just born and quickly thrown together yesterday from a spontaneous idea it worked really well!
But we also got a lot more contributions for perks big and small that also helped a lot. Crowdfunding campaigns really do pick up a lot of steam during their last days.

You've already talked about it, but I'm still gonna post the special announcement here:
Our Indiegogo campaign is nearing it's last day and has reached over 95%, so it's actually looking not too bad right now!
But to give the last day a bit more spice we decided to start a special event for all of you:

Introducing: THE LAST MINUTE HEROES

They are an old guild in CrossWorlds that is big and notorious for arriving just in the nick of time - to save the day!
And you can become a member of this guild and get your name in the game by donating exactly 13€ to our Indiegogo campaign! What's more, you can also win one of several special roles in the game in a raffle that we'll hold at some point after the campaign (next weekend most likely). You can also have said special roles in addition to the advanced perks that you already have!

Best look at the latest campaign update or the blogpost for more details!

And that's it for now. I hope some of you are into that sort of event and can give us a bit more support for that last stretch.

[Folly]

100% funded. Congrats Code Crossers!

[Felcis]

Thank you! I knew that the final days usually give a large boost, but I didn't expect the effect to be this strong.
We might very well even reach the first stretch goal if this goes on, which was unthinkable about 3 days ago. We are extremely grateful to our supporters!

Anyway, we are having another developer stream right now. It's mainly celebration, questions and some relaxed spriting today.

[Aoi]

Three years later, this has officially launched. And it's bloody fantastic. (Steam link.)

For those of us just joining now... it plays like an SNES-era ARPG (think Secret of Mana) with some modern conveniences (Save anywhere; die in a battle? Restart the room automatically; automatic healing out of combat, so no need to run back to town every time, etc.)

Gameplay itself consists of romping around the world, dealing with far-too-complex maps to figure out where that last remaining treasure chest is and how to jump across a dozen chasms to reach it, and combat. You've got a melee attack and a mouse-targeted projectile, with it automatically switching based on how far your targeting reticle is from your character. You've got your default attacks and (presumably) four elemental variants with the usual differences between them. In addition, they feature prominently in pretty complex puzzles that range from precision, timing, to foresight. (For example, one dungeon features water orbs... you can use normal to position them, ice to turn them into frozen blocks that you can knock into lava to form platforms, or fire to make them burst into steam and activate turbines.)

The art is beautiful and I find I derive far too much amusement from watching the emotions on the dialogue portraits (especially our protagonist, Lea, who, for various reasons, is mostly mute... so her portraits are particularly important).

The opening of the plot is kind of a face-palmer for people familiar with the genre, but it carries itself well, though it's tough to explain without going too spoilery: Our protagonist is mute, has amnesia, and is trapped in a pseudo-VRMMO where, instead of being purely digital, you're actually controlling a semi-physical body romping around on the moon of some planet. (It's kind of hard to tell what's 'real' and what's 'game', which is part of the point, I suppose.) It gets meta pretty fast, and becomes all the more fascinating for it.

You do actually end up grouping with AI, who are actually useful to some degree, and their chatter is fairly entertaining. I particularly enjoy the meta commentary-- "There's an underground river. Again. And we're right under a lake." "So?" "The water pressure would be insane. This makes no sense at all." "Whatever, it's a game." "We're still on a moon somewhere; the laws of physics still apply!" (And: Oh. My. The mechanics of instanced dungeons...  )

Edit: So love the dialogue. "The place was filled with ovens and hot coals! How could you call it the Cold Dungeon?" "I got the cold element and got to punch things to make it cold in the Cold Dungeon." LOGIC

Can't decide who my favorite random NPC party is... it's a tossup between the one with the girl who keeps sitting on the table, or the one with the guy afraid of heights.

Also: It's just beautiful how often my expression coincides perfectly with Lea's. Particularly at the end of Henry's quest chain.

[Nighthawk]

Can attest, game is awesome. I've only played around 10 hours since 1.0 release, but the characters are entertaining and the combat... the combat is just glorious. It's fast-paced, slick, and simple on the surface, but the abilities you unlock as you level add a lot of options and a fair bit of depth to combat.

As a very basic example: some of the first enemies in the game are these hedgehogs that charge up a rolling attack and fly straight at you after a second or two. You can A) get the heck out of their range to avoid it, B) dodge at the last second, C) hold up guard until the attack glances off your shield for minimal damage, D) guard at the last second to knock them down and render them vulnerable, or, SECRET ANSWER E) you can use the combat art "First Cut" which you have the option of acquiring very early, to dash through them, dealing a large amount of damage and staggering them out of their charge-up animation.

Almost every enemy in the game has a vulnerable "break" state, and all of them enter this state in different ways, which adds a layer of micro-puzzle on top of the combat. You can effectively tie down one or two lesser enemies by melee-infini-staggering them, but when there are several more, or they resist stagger, the combat really gets interesting. You'll be dashing around the field, switching between melee and range as is convenient, trying to avoid projectiles and other attack patterns while choosing which enemies you should focus down first and trying to exploit openings to inflict the break state... it sounds kinda like a lot, but once you get into the swing of it, it's loads of fun.

Anyone who's at all curious should just try the demo and see how it feels. The devs clearly poured their hearts into this game, and it shows.

[Aoi]

Almost every enemy in the game has a vulnerable "break" state, and all of them enter this state in different ways, which adds a layer of micro-puzzle on top of the combat.

Oh, and it gets more complex than that. In the second region, for example, there's an HP-sponge of a monster that's fairly easy to push into the break state... but once you do, it gets hasted and its attacks start exploding. The upshot is that it's very easy to kill once it does, but it'll put you through pain if you carelessly trigger it on multiple mobs at once. In the Vermillion area, there's one monster with an even more annoying break state... until it's broken, you do almost no damage. I never figured out exactly how to trigger it, though I've managed to get it to break in most battles... eventually. For a few required fights, I just had to park myself outside of aggro range and range-attack it into oblivion over a minute or two.

[Moghjubar]

Oh hey, this old thread. 

Yep, game is out, and yep, its pretty fun, and the story is even half decent to go with it (with good dialogue).

Decently makes fun of a few MMO tropes too.

Combat starts out fair but gets challenging quickly: eventually you'll just get wrecked if you try to spam attack on things - gotta learn patterns, weaknesses, plan attacks to take out dangerous opponents or clear areas for a breather, etc.  Combat can get really fun, though can be frustrating in a few instances while you are learning or on a challenge.