Impact Winter Devs To Reward Backers Despite Kickstarter Failure

You wouldn’t know that survival-adventure RPG Impact Winter was an unsuccessful Kickstarter project. Despite falling short with their crowdfunding effort in late 2014, UK developer Mojo Bones ploughed ahead anyway. Impressively, they’ve now partnered with Bandai Namco Entertainment for a worldwide release. Not only that, the original backers of the Kickstarter campaign are getting rewarded with the soundtrack and mentions in the credits.

Impact Winter is now scheduled for a PC release in April 2017 (console versions are due to follow later in the year). Those who preorder on Steam will also receive a copy of the atmospheric soundtrack by Swedish composer Mitch Murder. However those who backed the Kickstarter will be getting the soundtrack even if they don’t purchase the game. Yes that’s right – despite the pledges never being collected those who showed their support originally will be getting rewards. For free.

Of course, human nature being what it is some backers are complaining that they aren’t getting a free copy of the game itself. Thankfully they are in the minority. A vocal majority of backers are delighted, not just that Impact Winter is getting release, but that these free rewards are being dished out. It’s truly heart-warming to see.

“There are too many negative stories surrounding crowdfunding, and hopefully, Impact Winter serves to show that ‘failure’ isn’t necessarily the end for some ideas.” – Mojo Bones, November 2016 Kickstarter update

Mojo Bones’ success is well-deserved, and they’ve worked hard to keep their backers aware of the progress of Impact Winter. Since the Kickstarter failed they’ve continued to showcase Impact Winter on their own website, Facebook and Twitter. (The game’s protagonist even has his own separate Twitter feed). But crucially they also kept posting updates on Kickstarter itself. In fact they’ve been more active than most successful projects I’ve seen, and the community has responded in kind. Each update has been well received – culminating with the November 2016 update that notched up 74 likes and 226 comments.

That’s a lot of activity considering the Kickstarter only actually accrued around 1,500 backers. It’s far to say Mojo Bones have fostered a lot of goodwill, and many of those backers are likely to purchase Impact Winter when it gets released. We’ll have to wait and see if it fulfills its potential, but the involvement of Bandai Namco certainly bodes well.