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KickStarter First Wonder

Lucky

Arcane
Joined
Apr 28, 2015
Messages
672
It's finally here. Former Shiny and Planet Moon devs making new game.

b590c305c4e40bd00d1bd73c644d2aab_original.jpg


In a nutshell, First Wonder is...
  • A spiritual successor to Co-Founder Nick Bruty’s previous games MDK & Giants: Citizen Kabuto.
  • Explore and Discover fantastic environments in a 3rd person action adventure
  • Soar over the islands as the scrappy jetpack-toting Cargonauts, utilizing all kinds of crazy sci-fi gear that gives them their abilities.

e47e64afe7aa2f18d47281eef739d8b9_original.gif


  • Crush your puny enemies beneath your feet as the huge and agile creature, Monstro.
  • Story based campaign that reveals the mystery of Monstro’s prophecy while playing as both Monstro & Cargonaut, with hilarious cutscenes reminiscent of the ones in Giants.
  • Asymmetric Multiplayer with players able to play as either the Cargonauts or Monstro in goal-based matches.
df30d4915f73882d02237b2527ed774a_original.gif


  • Currently planned for release in late 2016 on PC on Steam and DRM-free on GoG or The Humble Store, with PS4 & Xbox One as stretch goals (other platforms may come up later).
  • Will be made with and for gamers like you! We want you involved!



The target is 500,000.

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/roguerocket/first-wonder
 
Joined
Mar 24, 2015
Messages
242
Location
Ziniguistan
Don't look like they're going to make

A shame considering how so much shit got funded lately

Anything related to Giants desserves at least a chance
 

sser

Arcane
Developer
Joined
Mar 10, 2011
Messages
1,866,661
Giants: Citizen Kabuto is one of the most interesting and unique games ever, but I don't think it nor MDK was popular enough to rake in that fat nostalgia KS money.
 

Lucky

Arcane
Joined
Apr 28, 2015
Messages
672

Didn't show up on the search, but good to see I'm not alone in following this. :salute: They've honestly not done very well in spreading the word before the kickstarter, since I had to randomly stumble across it myself and didn't see it discussed anywhere outside heir own website. The website has been up for months now and not a peep. Nothing like a countdown for the kickstarter, either.

Also, first update:
TwitchCon Wrap up, gameplay footage, and a new official sponsor!

TwitchCon Wrap up
Hello friends of First Wonder! We're back after a whirlwind adventure at the first ever TwitchCon! Nobody knew what to expect, but we had some really fun and interesting characters come by and visit, and had a good number of people back us live there! We were happy to also raffle off some First Wonder related prizes on both days, and connected with a bunch of friendly Twitch streamers who thought the game was really cool and wanted to get involved with streaming it ASAP! We came away from the weekend with some incredibly generous high level backers at the $10,000, $2500, and $1000 levels. Thank you guys so much for your support!

PS. We didn't manage to snap a pic of all our wonderful onsite backers, so if you're one of them and would like to share a pic of yourself, please contact us through the Kickstarter or on social media! We'd love to feature you here!

f22fdb678fa1914ab880d938298f0b23_original.jpg

These guys are the best! So fun to talk to you guys!
Gameplay footage added
If you missed us streaming all day at TwitchCon, we added a saved Twitch stream video we did earlier in the week for a small number of press that shows the demo we brought to TwitchCon. It was recorded live, and we answer questions that the press had during the stream. Check it out if you want to see the game demo in action!



It was a particularly fun moment for us when we realized it is probably possible to drop a jetpack and catch it with another Cargonaut flying underneath! These emergent moments of fun are exactly what we're looking for to organically discover new and awesome gameplay.

Now officially sponsored by CybertronPC!
af37f46e1a35ff62426a3027e59b5e62_original.jpg

We're happy to announce that First Wonder is officially sponsored by CybertronPC! They provided us with demo machines for PAXPrime and TwitchCon, but today we were given the OK to provide 2 super limited edition custom skinned gaming rigs, signed by the team, in the new "Big Rig Edition" backer level! CybertronPC's demo rigs have been amazing and reliable, so we're grateful for their support in making these available as backer rewards!

e3cd7b528b77261ebfc9644a8f232ca4_original.jpg

Check out the full specs on the main Kickstarter page!

New friends from TwitchCon
In addition to some awesome new supporters, we also made new friends with our Indie Game Garage booth neighbors, Larian Studios, responsible for the epic and ambitious RPG Divinity: Original Sin 2, which is just finishing up their Kickstarter in the next few days! They are incredibly nice and generous, and found First Wonder worth a shout out in their latest update, which we are incredibly grateful for! Thanks guys! Please check out their Kickstarter and back them in their final days, you won't be disappointed. There's literally no chance of Divinity 2 of not being awesome.

7dc3e49982530a689424b1704a1f51fe_original.jpg

More updates coming soon, thanks, and keep on shouting First Wonder from the rooftops!
Now that the wild ride that is convention-going is done, we'll be better able to keep you updated, and we have a bunch of new stuff we're excited to share with you, including new ideas that came from chatting with cool people at TwitchCon.

We're just at the very beginning. The fight to reach all of the gamers out there who remember and love Giants and MDK, as well as new gamers who don't even know what they've been missing is still an essential mission! You're all part of the team now, and we need you out there, enthusiastically shouting about how excited this game makes you and for others to come check it out. Thanks so much for your support so far!

Let's do this, team!


I've yet to see a kickstarter with a bad start succeed without drastic outside intervention. Hopefully the game will still get made even if it does not meet its target. There has already been an RPS article and that didn't seem to make a difference
 

Lucky

Arcane
Joined
Apr 28, 2015
Messages
672
Kickstarter failed, but they haven't given up yet.


Update 8: The Future of First Wonder

Hello, noble supporters of First Wonder. Today we come to you with a somber update. We’ve come to the decision to cancel the Kickstarter for First Wonder. But before I say more, we want to tell you that THIS STORY IS NOT OVER.

With only a week and change of time left to go, it will be impossible to reach the goal we initially set. First Wonder finds new supporters every day, new gamers like yourselves who like what you see and want to help it see the light. We just aren’t finding you fast enough. We’ll get into why that is in a moment.

First of all, we’re committed to continuing to work on First Wonder, finding a way to build it up over time to hit our aspirations for what we wanted to accomplish . This probably means getting it done in a different way than we intended: perhaps creating a small multiplayer version of the game first and delivering that as an Early Access game. Maybe sign with an interested publisher; or possibly even return to Kickstarter or another crowdfunding platform with a different strategy. But the important thing is you haven’t heard the last of First Wonder, you can be sure of that!

In the interest of continued openness and honesty, let’s cover some of what we’ve learned in our first Kickstarter, and what we feel are some of the reasons this effort needed to be cut short. But let’s start on a positive note and cover what great things came of this journey.

Greenlit on Steam in just under 2 weeks
The combined effort of our fans got us Greenlit on Steam, with hundreds of supportive comments and shares. Not only does this add to our growing list of supporters, but it gives us access to a unified and reliable source of distribution, making a lot of new approaches possible!

We met a lot of great new people
Not only do we now have a lot of new friends of the project made through the campaign,we also met and got to know a ton of awesome people who are too numerous to list here, who have been very generous with their time and support. There are a number of really generous and entertaining Twitch streamers as well that gave us support. As a result, we learned about Twitch and how that community works.

Learned a LOT about a lot of new things
Not the least of which is running convention presences on a small budget, but also how to reach out to a community, and all the current technologies related to that effort. We learned about crowdfunding, which has a huge learning curve and a unique set of challenges to overcome. It’s not worth listing it all here, but we’ll be taking away a TON of valuable lessons.

On the “what went wrong” side...

It was way, way, way, way, way harder than we thought to build awareness
And it wasn’t for a lack of trying. We had gotten started quite a long time before the campaign launched. This included:

  • Retaining a PR team for event and press relationships
  • Hiring a community manager to manage social activity
  • Partnering with Innervate to create a really nice community site, and being active in it
  • Creating an up to date website
  • Buying impressions through Facebook, Twitter, Google Ads, and other means.
  • Working with Twitch streamers to engage their audiences
The most surprising for us was the press’ lack of interest in covering First Wonder’s Kickstarter. This wasn’t limited to us as it turns out; the press appears to have largely turned against Kickstarter stories, with many top tier outlets outright having an internal policy NOT to cover Kickstarter games at all. A lot of our supporters didn’t understand why they didn’t learn about the project on their favorite gaming sites. This isn’t a knock on the press, it just shows a change in the prevailing winds about what the press (and theoretically what their readers) want to hear about.

To be fair, we did end up getting a bit of great coverage before and after we launched, with some notable sites such as PC Gamer, Rock Paper Shotgun, and PCGamesN covering us after TwitchCon, which we are grateful for. They helped us produce some solid traffic and backers did come from those places, but despite these and some smaller outlets covering us, it just wasn’t enough.

On the other hand, by the metrics, once people get to the Kickstarter page, a very respectable percentage of visitors became backers. So, while certainly not every element of the campaign was perfect, it was nowhere near the biggest problem. We just couldn’t get anywhere nearly enough visitors.

Over focused on MDK, Giants, etc.
When it worked, it worked REALLY well. I would say the majority of you reading this probably fall in this category. In a couple of scenarios, focusing on this actually connected us with a few people who had access to very important influencers. But unfortunately, despite their best efforts, few of them were able to execute on it. We’re very grateful for their efforts, regardless.

But we relied a bit too much on an understanding of the old games as a shorthand crafted for the existing fanbase to understand the new one. One related problem that came up more than we expected was the comparisons to Evolve. Jetpacks vs Giant is something Nick investigated way back in 2001 with Giants, but of course, millions of people have become gamers and don’t know any of this, and we didn’t do a good job communicating how it’s not at all the same up front if they don’t know the previous games.

We asked for too much as our target
This error was simultaneously naive and not naive. We identified some model Kickstarters to assess, which included many asking for $500k. We analyzed their existing social followings. We looked at their success rates. We compared them to the message we were trying to convey. It looked like it was possible.

And then HBS launched their BattleTech campaign. I realized that while Jordan had given us a lot of good advice, that I still was very naive. I immediately saw at least 10 different things we had done wrong. The budget and development strategy first and foremost.

We rushed the launch
This is totally on us. We knew that early awareness was a problem, so after consulting with a variety of people we felt that it was important for us to launch the Kickstarter during a major gaming event. So we hung our hats on TwitchCon. We were up until the early hours of the morning finalizing the original Kickstarter video, but we simply ran out of time to get it into the place it should have been.

That leads us to:

TwitchCon was not the droid we were looking for.
The event itself was more or less fine, but foot traffic was pretty low for the game booths. Most people were in the 3-4 hour long merch line instead. Oops. So while we envisioned an exciting event with a crowd of people cheering, the reality was much more modest.

So what now?
Like I said, this ain’t over. We’re going to keep building on this little demo until it’s something we can start sharing. Being Greenlit on Steam allows us to share it in a controlled way to people until it’s ready for a broader release. And even in its early, rough form, people are having fun playing it. Our recent attempts to drum up awareness with Twitch streamers has generally resulted in some pretty fun streams. Thanks to each of them for getting involved! They’ve each been very supportive and expressed their excitement to see what happens with First Wonder.

To each of you who backed us on this Kickstarter, THANK YOU! Looking back, the amount we got in comparison to the average Kickstarter is not that bad. And that’s thanks to you guys and gals who believe in the game and in us. We would love for you each to keep in touch and stay involved in what comes next. We can’t get your contact info from an incomplete Kickstarter because they do a great job there of protecting your privacy, so please reach out to us through Kickstarter messages so we can make sure to involve you in whatever comes next.

We also would like you to be on the first wave of people who get access to test builds when we make them more widely available. We’ll be keeping the campaign live for another day or two to give you all a chance to reach us directly before we cancel the campaign.

Or, if you’d just rather stay in the know more simply, please sign up for our mailing list on www.First-Wonder.com, follow us on Twitter @Rogue_Rocket and Facebook.

Thanks again. While it’s an end of one chapter, it’s a beginning of a new one for First Wonder, and we’d love for each of you to come along!

ce4e931c1cc8587e864050851ea2d4ae_original.jpg


Interesting to read that a lot of websites now outright refuse to cover kickstarter projects. It reminds me of how RPS used to have a column that kept up with all the kickstarters that were going on, but now only the notable ones get coverage.
 

Lucky

Arcane
Joined
Apr 28, 2015
Messages
672
Fuck.

Dear First wonder Supporters, Friends,

I’m writing with the sad news that we are suspending the development of First Wonder. I know, right! Bugger it!

After the kickstarter failed we looked for other opportunities and partnerships to keep the development going. While your donations helped we were still self-funding 95% of the project directly out of pocket. The amount of investment needed to get the game to the next stage was too large for us to handle by ourselves.

We had some interesting conversations but regardless of how excited some were for the project it came down to numbers and risk. For publishers, the kickstarter showed we just didn’t have or couldn’t find the audience.

Rich posted his breakdown of what went right and wrong with the campaign but the crux of it was not being able to connect with enough of our previous fans and our demo was aimed too strongly at Giants fans to attract new ones.

We’re very proud of what we achieved in the 4 months of development. We were light years ahead of Giants development in the same time frame. Oh what we could have done with a full team, a real budget and Unreal 4.

Even though this time we didn’t succeed I’m still greatly encouraged by the strength of your support and the sheer bloody passion you guys had. We loved hearing about your early experiences with Giants and MDK. From all over the world! It was awesome.

But all that aside for the moment. We have some stuff to work out. You guys gave us some cold hard cash and we need to work out what to do about that. We’ve got a couple of options for you.

1. Full Refund

OR

1. Steam keys for the First Wonder demo and one of our previous releases Gunpowder. This would be the equivalent of a $15 value. If you paid more than $15 then you will be refunded the rest.

Reply directly to this email with your choice and we’ll take it from there. Remember not to reply all!

For those seeking a full refund please be patient. We have incoming funds dedicated to this but can only do so much per month. If everyone opts for a refund it will take us a little while to pay back everyone but we will get there. This is very important to us.

Whats next, will we ever, ever, ever, see a game like this?

For now Rogue Rocket is going dormant. Rich and I need to focus on other projects and jobs. I’m keeping my claws sharp contracting as an Art Director on an external title while I plot my next move and Rich has taken another Job in the games industry.

I’m still very passionate about making games like these. I always will be. They are unique and therefore rather hard to sell but once we get a foot hold I think they’ll be here to stay. I remain undeterred but it’s clearly been too many years since Giants and MDK and If I want to build games like First Wonder then I have to start off much smaller, simpler and grow a new audience. I have such a game in mind.

Thanks so much for your support.
 

Lucky

Arcane
Joined
Apr 28, 2015
Messages
672
Consider this the kickstarter thread, though it's not like it matters anyway now that the game is dead. This just a swan song from a backer who's been following this for nearly two years now. :salute:
 
Last edited:

Quatlo

Arcane
Joined
Nov 15, 2013
Messages
941
Consider this the kickstarter thread, though it's not like it matters anyway now that the game is dead. This just a swan song from a backer who's been following this for nearly two years now. :salute:
I'm with you bro. I miss Shiny/Planet Moon games so fucking much.

Also:
Still, the news are purely :decline:
It's probably also a sign of how games have changed/degenerated lately.
Their games were already niche as hell when they relased, I'd say not much has changed.
 

Lucky

Arcane
Joined
Apr 28, 2015
Messages
672
I'm with you bro. I miss Shiny/Planet Moon games so fucking much.

Also:

Their games were already niche as hell when they relased, I'd say not much has changed.

They were great, weren't they. Made some quirky games that didn't forget that they needed to be fun to play, too. So many games now lack that grounding.
New Logic Factory, Ice-Pick Lodge and Shiny games were all I ever wanted from the kickstarter craze: a Sacrifice 2 or an Ascendancy 2, or fuck it, something completely unrelated and different. Instead, the only game that might have come close failed miserably and now there's a good chance that their new studio is dead at birth.
At least Ice-Pick Lodge succeeded in getting a remake and Knock Knock, but they didn't get the funding they deserved either.
 

DramaticPopcorn

Guest
It's a wonder these people still go to kickstarter.
 

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