Well, That Blew Up.

As I mentioned last week, this week we launched our mini-Kickstarter on Tuesday. It's for a few new ships for our FlickFleet fans and we hoped it would bring in a few more new backers through the magic of the Kickstarter machine.

We set a crazy-low target (we're just buying the bits for a pretty small run of a few ships, so we didn't need much), but even with that we were running the numbers of backers we would need in our head trying to work out if we would be successful. We'd look pretty stupid setting a £500 target and falling to reach it.

We needn't have worried. We funded in 15 minutes. Within 48 hours we'd blasted through all the Stretch Goals most of which we considered a real stretch.

As I wrote this post last night we were almost 1,400% funded and inches away from a sixth Stretch Goal that we had hastily added on later, and still not even halfway through the short campaign:

 That was totally unexpected!

We did several things that are strong advised against on this campaign: no video, no additional reviewers, no advertising, so it could have easily fallen flat. But it hasn't and we're delighted, surprised and delighted.

Considering how well it's doing, we have now started doing some Facebook advertising as well, and that's been surprisingly successful too.

Wonders never cease!

Mini-Kickstarter Coming Tomorrow

That assumes a few things (including Kickstarter’s review) go well, but all being well it’ll be live by the end of Tuesday. 

This mini-Kickstarter is for some new versions of existing ships (with new names plus a dreadnought and mine-layer for The Uprising). If you’re new to FlickFleet you’ll also be able to get a copy of the base game (the expansion will also be available in the pledge manager). 

It’s low key - no video, 14 day campaign, no new reviews or advertising - it’s mostly aimed at our fans who are asking for more stuff. There’s potentially 14 add-ons up for grabs though, which come with one or more ships, the dashboards and wooden pieces necessary. 

It’ll be interesting to see how well we do without any advertising and no video...

Kickstarter and Licensing

This week has mostly been about preparing for our mini Kickstarter. The finances on this one need to be carefully thought out as we usually discount shipping in the Kickstarter, but we’re making tiny rewards (individual ships in some cases) so the margin will be very tight - especially once Kickstarter and Stripe have taken their cut. It’ll be very interesting to see how this one goes. We’re not putting much effort in (no advertising, no video) and it’s mostly aimed at backers of our first two campaigns. We’re hoping we’ll pick up a few backers for the game too though and they will be able to get the expansion in the Pledge Manager, so who knows what will happen. The other interesting thing that happened this week is that we potentially have another publisher interested in localising FlickFleet. Very early days at this point, but if it does happen that’ll be a first for me - neither Reiver Games or Eurydice Games have managed that until now.

Changing Tack

I've been trying to get coalescence ready to submit for the Board Game Workshop competition (which was due to close last Friday, but now closes next Friday). The stumbling block has been finding time to record a video (which needs to be done after the kids go to sleep) and then to edit it as well.

Last week I had a crazy idea of doing a micro-Kickstarter for some exclusive FlickFleet content (extra ships with new names and possibly even a new ship type or two). I say micro-Kickstarter as I’m not intending to do a video, or to commission new reviews - so all that’s required is pricing up the new content and doing a basic Kickstarter page.

The goal of this would be two-fold: make some more ships for fans of the game, who would really like them and to use Kickstarter as a marketing platform to help us the sell off the leftover stock from the last Kickstarter that we can’t take to conventions and sell through that route.

This week I’ve decided that I’m best off focussing my very limited lockdown free time on the Kickstarter rather than the competition, so I’ve been working on that a bit in my evenings. We are lucky that we have a lot of the assets already in place, plus a load of great reviews so there isn’t a huge amount to do.

We’re hoping to run a short (7-14 day) campaign before the end of this month, so if you are interested in (more) FlickFleet, or you know someone who might be, please keep your eyes peeled or subscribe to our quarterly email newsletter to ensure you don’t miss out.

A Crazy Idea!

This week I've had a crazy idea: run a very small Kickstarter for extra FlickFleet ships. 

The motivation is that we had hoped to attend a convention or two to help us sell through our FlickFleet stock but all the conventions are cancelled, so we need some other way to bring FlickFleet to people's attention. 

 At this point (and I've only spoken to Paul very briefly about this!) I'm considering a small Kickstarter (KS Lite!) with a tiny goal and no advertising/video/little effort. The rewards would probably be a bunch of extra Kickstarter exclusive ships (FlickFleet: A Box of Space Fights? FlickFleet: Box of Tricks? FlickFleet: Box of Flicks?) that you would be able to pick and choose from and a pledge level for people who haven't got the game to get it. Control of exactly what you're after would be done through a pledge manager. 

What do you think? Crazy idea? Great idea? Let me know here: https://www.surveymonkey.co.uk/r/J5GWDLT