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Not really convincing on the sales pitch

1 is debatable if it is a good or a bad thing, some like the bigger scope some don't and Infinity is not a space opera to begin with.

2 your style seems to be inspires more or less from metal gear and other similar Japanese sci fi/ high tech works like Shirow's work so not manga inspired is again debatable.

3 Since you have no rules present there is no proof in that.

4 Is this a good thing? 2D maps sacrifice vertical 3D gameplay.

Now on actual feedback.

I am hoping the video is a placeholder, its a nice teaser, but bad for the campaign, shows nothing of the game, the models, fluff or scope for the campaign.

"Bloody 35mm cyberpunk, miniature game!" needs a better tagline.

How about fast tactical combat in a dystopian cyberpunk universe?

Some parts of the text are too... friendly? need a bit reworking to sound more profesional.

The scope of the campaign is odd "help us fund a mech and then more miniatures" who are not usable in most other game ranges and then a game, which seems to be an afterthought, since a game is involved the game should be the main course and presented as such or limit this campaign in miniatures only see how it goes and then introduce another campaign for the game itself.

The streach goals need better explanation, Infantry kit, hero kit means nothing and contents are not explained, are infantry kits a single posed miniature are there extra options, how one selects different poses are there different poses available? (the pictures say yes, the text says nothing) same with streachgoals "unlock infantry kit" how about unlock X different poses to chose from or better bundle them as a squad.

Rules
As kickstarter has become, if a game s involved backers want rules to be available from day 1 mantic got big flack in their walking dead for not including the rules from day 1 and they have good or bad delivered projects under them, other game projects are simply ignored.

Various observations
Shipping is way to generous, many projects got issues especially f they over-succeeded in that department, better double-check, Ulysses Sidewinder Test Cast looks badly cropped and in the worse light it could be presented, better retake the picture, Tape measure in the Alpha Strain box, most of your backers will be seasoned gamers and will have one, Ikea sells one for 99 cents it seems an unnecessary expense, better print one in the same paper the template is printed and bring down the production cost.

Overall, make it more exciting emphasize on the lore and artwork on the strachgoals and take care on the ala cart it creates a huge issue post campaign, kickstarter is notoriously bad on pledge manager and a lot of options will need a third party site to be effectively handled.

First off, your visuals are very heavily manga inspired. The head of the one mech is a direct rip of the EVA-02 from the Neon Genesis Evangelion manga. Your mech and suit designs are very much ripped off from Shirow's Appleseed / Ghost in the Shell manga. Though being fair, you're also ripping off a fair bit from Kojima's Metal Gear designs, tho those are more video games than manga per se. Nothing to be ashamed of, but do claim you're not using other's manga designs is disingenuous at best, and an outright lie at worst.

OK, you say that gameplay is not complicated, what do you mean by that? I've got tactical gameplay down to 2 pages, with another page for game setup/deployment and a page for pre-game -- KOG light's rules run 4 pages total. Are your rules published for backer review? I won't back any game without first reading the rulebook.

Actually, Psychotic Storm just reminded me about something. I would very, very highly recommend that you post a picture that shows one of your figures next to a ruler or tape measure so that backers can get a better sense of the figures' size. Even better if you include a Ulysses in that pic as well. Size comparisons in general would be good to have.

He should compare them with Infinity models directly, as that's what his game is a clone of.

I left feedback. It's confusing as is. I also feel non-pledge stuff should be linked to from the main page. Keep the main page as simple and clear as possible. A little background is fine but past a blurb, link to that as well.

I also made a suggestion. The cool forelimb attachment that adds the little grabby hands.. please make big load bearing arms to go with that replacing gunmounts for that build option. If you can't it's cool, I'll buy a cheap Zaku or something and do a conversion but the option would be nice.

Comparisons will always be made between two similar products in this situation it's a tabletop skirmish game.

I can assure you that the game itself wasn't an afterthought. It was actually designed before concept came to life.

I'm definitely not trying to get into the Shockwork Studio vs Corvus Belli. While we make a similar size game with respect to models and amount of models the gameplay mechanics, art style, concepts and overall content are very different from Infinity. I respect Corvis Belli and all of their products. I actually am a big fan of theirs.

I didn't say it is an afterthought, I said it looks like it.

And this is bad because it can give a wrong impression.

while I am at it, scientific terminology while good for hard sci fi credit, "Kessler syndrome" is something most reader will not understand and may get into wrong impressions instead of understanding that humanity is stranded in earth because of overwhelming swarms of orbiting debris.

Well huh. 4 armed ninja ladies are something I have a distinct lack of.

Always a fan of weird Metal Gear- esque cybernetic boss type characters (even though I'm not much of a MGS fan).

I agree with the sentiment that the KS preview page needs to have the simple easy pledge pictures up at the top, and all the crunchy details and info down towards the bottom.

I don't mind reading through all that, but I'm not the average Kickstarter backer either.

Oh even better Highlord Tamburlaine she has 6 arms.

I appreciate your input Psychotic Storm. As this game is aimed at a more mature crowd due to content like genocide, ethnic cleansing and population relocation I think real scientific terms are also appropriate.

I remember when you would give me advice on how to play Infinity when I first took it up long before you came to Dakka. You were always very helpful. I belive your presence in the Infinity community also landed you a model based on you. I thought that was an incredible thing by them to do for a very supportive fan. Really show their community support. It was inspiring and all game companies should be that in touch.
I know we will be.
We're listening. We have since we announced the project.

 ShockworkStudio_Shane wrote:
As this game is aimed at a more mature crowd due to content like genocide, ethnic cleansing and population relocation I think real scientific terms are also appropriate.

I just want to say I echo the statement that using Kessler Syndrome will make someone go "huh". It is fine in the storyline, in the books and website to state things that way but for a Kickstarter it is bad. You don't want to have to have someone look something up to figure out what something is or meant. At that point you've lost their interest if they have to 'look things up'. It has nothing to do with maturity as it has to do with target audience, not all gamers are hard scifi fans and this isn't a common terminology used. Ethnic cleansing and genocide are self explanatory by themselves but Kessler Syndome is not.

It is easy to remember KISS (Keep It Stupid Simple).

Just to give an example. One of our scifi games originally had Event Horizon in the title. It was named because of the definition for it. "A point of no return", a point at which the gravitational pull becomes so great as to make escape impossible. It was a representation of the universe environment that got stuck in the cycle of war, no matter the intentions there is no way to escape war because everyone has hundreds of years of death and fighting on their hands, hard set feelings of anger and resentment. It also ties in black holes, which is in part what is incorporated into the drive engines of the space ships allowing them to punch a hole through space and jump to another system. We thought it was smart, intelligent and aptly fit.

Do you know what happened? 90% of everyone who saw it, referred to it, came to learn about it could only tie it into one thing... a really bad horror movie. There was people who were hoping it was a licensed, dark horror themed game. And others who just didn't get the name.

Don't count on "mature" being a defining understanding or reason to do something... chances are you will find that audience is much smaller than you think. We thought it was scientific, people would understand it... and we were wrong. Not saying we're an expert on the matter but it was definitely an interesting lesson we learned.

That's OK. When I read "Black Rain", I was assuming this would be a Hiroshima / Nagasaki thing. Or at least some sort of Yakuza hunt a la Fury of Dracula. I wasn't aware it wouldn't have anything to do with either of those obvious references.

I backed HINT and it's a similar flavor of pudding. They won me over by having a nice balance and good art direction (I like it but there's a LOT of nitpickers).

I highly encourage you to use footnotes at the very least with annotations to direct readers to the definitions. I like science. I like science fiction. I'm moderately mature. I don't have an abundance of time for looking up terms in short stories these days though.

Hmm, yeah I must agree with you all. We'll just link backers to more detailed Lore parts and rewrite that part of KS.

I'm in the middle of working on another Draft, so wait for it with new comments. I hope it will be cleaner this time

Thanks I am glad to help.

Kessler Syndrome is a word thrown in the fluff that sounds impressive but does not explain why and how it affects the fluff of your world, I can understand its potential a planet stranded from the rest of the universe is faced with continuous reduced resources and no means to escape the death grasp a space expansion could provide.

Plus the issue of not having satellites and any workarounds that may be needed to overcome such a crippling problem.

If you indeed plan on having such a plot element central in your storyline you could introduce it with a fabricated ominous prediction either attributed to kessler (because he has not make any quote ominous enouph yet) or somebody else fictional expanding on his theory.

Always assume that your audience is completely ignorant of any term that has not entered common language or pop culture and introduce your term to them in a small and easy way.

 PsychoticStorm wrote:

Always assume that your audience is completely ignorant of any term that has not entered common language or pop culture and introduce your term to them in a small and easy way.

Yup.. This is a standard. For fiction the standards are lax but in any technical writing, when you introduce a term that is not common parlance, you're expected to provide a definition or reference at first usage.

I've been involved in a lot of instructional development and creation of learning materials and this was really big. The same stands for acronyms.

Looking forward to seeing the next draft! Any word on my suggestion about the load bearing arms?

It looks like the updated version is up now. There's certainly a clearer sense of what your pledge gets you. Except now there's an $85 pledge that gets you 5 figures. That seems like a lot, especially compared to the starter sets which give 8 figures and additional stuff for $65. What makes the $85 a better deal than the $65 starter? Will stretch goals be added to that? So far, it seems like a poor value, especially compared to the starter. Aside from that, the revision does look better.

 ShockworkStudio_Michael wrote:
Kickstarter Preview Link>> https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1466664258/18411891?token=22176548

The revised pledge tiers are MUCH CLEARER.

BTW, You should have a minimum of $10 or $20 for the a la carte thing. Force people to commit for more than a can of soda.

 JohnHwangDD wrote:

 ShockworkStudio_Michael wrote:
Kickstarter Preview Link>> https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1466664258/18411891?token=22176548

The revised pledge tiers are MUCH CLEARER.

BTW, You should have a minimum of $10 or $20 for the a la carte thing. Force people to commit for more than a can of soda.

Please don't do this. I have skipped kickstarters where I really didn't need much or anything but wanted to buy a model to show some support and a minimum buy-in premium on that one model threw it past MSRP before shipping was even involved.

$10 or $20 won't break you if your real intent is to support.

Just wanted to tell that this is not the latest version. I'm still working on it and you should like it even more. You just need to give me a couple of hours and I'll show you need rewards, strech goals, etc.

MLaw We really like the idea! It's something that we wanted to do anyway, but unfortunetely it's not something that will happen on this kicksterter :\ but if you have some reference pictures, or just a drawing of yours, send us that, please. We are definitely interested in doing something like that.

Btw. You asked on KS: why Ulysses over a TAG? First: material, we are using resin, second thing: multi-part. You can glue Ulysses in any pose you want (I'm gonna build a running one as soon as I'll have more time).

I'm getting all this fixed, so you all should be happy, and so you can grab onto models that you want as soon as possible, without taking too much risk by us.

Oh yeah, you don't need to show ALL of your Stretch Goals at once. 3 (or 4) is enough to start.

If you do cut down the revealed stretch goals, I would still keep a Zadruga one visible as an example of future unlocks.

 JohnHwangDD wrote:
$10 or $20 won't break you if your real intent is to support.

Yeah but it's not just $10 or $20 at that point.. then you add on the $12 mini plus $5-$10 in shipping and now you're in for close to my monthly gaming budget. In the instances where I couldn't buy the minis because of the buy-in I did toss them a couple of bucks. Which.. that passive aggressive implication that I was not being genuine is unnecessary. There's plenty of campaigns where I couldn't afford whatever but wanted to see them do well so toss in a fiver. I'm just not financially set to be able to turn over a ton of cash out of generosity.. and it's not like this is Wounded Warrior or Make A Wish Foundation or whatever..

BlackRain -
I understand where you're coming from. Just keep in mind I can hop on Miniature Market right now and grab a similar mech for $35 and it'll be here next week. I'm not saying that's where you should be just consider that these are things going on inside potential backers heads.
I got that alpha ruleset and will be throwing it together tonight. I have some TAGs and some other robots I can sub for yours and plenty of sci-fi humans (keep this in mind too ;P )

As to my suggestion for the arms.. Below is a picture of the Ghost in the Shell suit I'm talking about. While researching the current market for TAGs I did realize that CB has actually released a few of these types of things for Infinity. Appleseed has similar suits as well called the landmate.

Please use spoiler tags for images that aren't this company's products - thanks.

Great to see you guys giving so much feedback and BlackRain taking it on and adjusting the KS page. Looking forward to the launch!

 MLaw wrote:

 JohnHwangDD wrote:
$10 or $20 won't break you if your real intent is to support.

Yeah but it's not just $10 or $20 at that point.. then you add on the $12 mini plus $5-$10 in shipping and now you're in for close to my monthly gaming budget. In the instances where I couldn't buy the minis because of the buy-in I did toss them a couple of bucks. Which.. that passive aggressive implication that I was not being genuine is unnecessary. There's plenty of campaigns where I couldn't afford whatever but wanted to see them do well so toss in a fiver.

Dude, do you even Kickstarter? If your intent is to throw a buck in the jar, you can still do so for "No Reward", simple as that. The passive-aggressive implication that I'm casting aspersions on your lack of character is entirely on you, not me.

Newest draft: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1466664258/18411891?token=22176548

Thanks for all the feedback! I think that you should like this version way more. I only touched the written material on it, as I focused on actual strech goals and rewards.

MLaw Something like that...I think Bushmaster's front is the closest thing to what you would like to get.
And about that minimum pledge for add-ons. There won't be any 10 or 20$ minimum. I'm a gamer with a small budged myself, so I understand exactly your point.

Let us know what do you think about the latest Draft and I'll keep working on that. Thanks again for all the help!

 MLaw wrote:
As to my suggestion for the arms.. Below is a picture of the Ghost in the Shell suit I'm talking about. While researching the current market for TAGs I did realize that CB has actually released a few of these types of things for Infinity. Appleseed has similar suits as well called the landmate.

Keep in mind that GitS and landmates have pilots inside of them, which is why they have their actual arms (the small arms) and the larger hands mirror their movements.

Their mechs, at least these ones, do not have a pilot inside. They are a remote with some simple AI inside. I'm assuming that maybe the other one with arms can have a VR interface for grappling but it is there to allow them to move rubble, punch or do things that would require hands where the others can not. It would seem redundant to put robotic larger arms to replace the weapon mounts and another set of robotic arms.

I do not understand the distinction between the $170 tier and the $115 tier. They seem to be the same, so perhaps better to merge them?

 Dark Severance wrote:

 MLaw wrote:
As to my suggestion for the arms.. Below is a picture of the Ghost in the Shell suit I'm talking about. While researching the current market for TAGs I did realize that CB has actually released a few of these types of things for Infinity. Appleseed has similar suits as well called the landmate.

Keep in mind that GitS and landmates have pilots inside of them, which is why they have their actual arms (the small arms) and the larger hands mirror their movements.

Their mechs, at least these ones, do not have a pilot inside. They are a remote with some simple AI inside. I'm assuming that maybe the other one with arms can have a VR interface for grappling but it is there to allow them to move rubble, punch or do things that would require hands where the others can not. It would seem redundant to put robotic larger arms to replace the weapon mounts and another set of robotic arms.

My thought was that the smaller arms would be for more subtle manipulation like opening doors or operating machinery while larger arms would be for melee or heavy lifting.. or... for more rpg or campaign type play.. to have a hardpoint that is versatile.. So.. if it's a large pair of arms, you can put a large rifle, laser cannon, or other heavy equipment without having to actually change the hardpoint.



JohnHwangDD - Perhaps I'm touchy.. that aside.. No Reward is in fact what I did on those others where I tossed them a fiver (thought that was clear in my previous post). I just would like the idea of being able to pick up a souvenir as it were. Thankfully Shockwork understands where I'm coming from

 JohnHwangDD wrote:
I do not understand the distinction between the $170 tier and the $115 tier. They seem to be the same, so perhaps better to merge them?

Beat me to it.