If you’ve been with is for awhile then you’ll notice that two of my coworkers have already covered Wartile before, and generally speaking the response has been positive, both among staff and other journalists at places such as Kotaku, PC Gamer, and Polygon. So you can imagine my surprise when I logged into Kickstarter and discovered that the campaign was cancelled three days before the Kickstarter was scheduled to end.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D-K52cOrjmg
Developer Michael Rud Jackobsen posted an update that started off thanking everyone who played the demo on Steam, donated to the campaign or gave it a positive review before going on to explain that as it became obvious that they were going to fall short of their campaign goal by a decent chunk, £30,000 in fact, they decided to regroup. The plan is to step back and reflect on the campaign, why it failed, and what the people who didn’t like it had to say (which is never a bad idea) and investigate ‘different options’ to keep developing the game.
I believe the Kickstarter did quite a few things right from the beginning. It got a community, it got coverage, it had a demo out on Steam and the developers were incredibly involved in marshaling its following. But in my opinion one of the things that contributed to its premature end was the low price point of the game. I would suggest completely getting rid of the one or seven pound options and condense it a little bit to more standard numbers, like intervals of five or ten. It’s obvious to the viewer that the game is a bit higher-end and the game should carry itself as such. However all is not lost. It was hinted that the game might come back some time in the future once the developers have figured out where exactly they went wrong and what the next steps should be.
