Last summer saw the introduction the “funpocalypse” with a Japanese-inspired Visual Novel Dungeon-crawling RPG hybrid, Undead Darlings ~no cure for love.~ While the initial reception was positive, Undead Darlings was ultimately unable to meet their funding goals. Fortunately, developer, Mr. Tired Media didn’t plan to give up so easily.
After crunching some numbers the developers determined that the failure of the Kickstarter wasn’t an indication of a failed game concept. In fact, if the speed with which it was Greenlit on Steam (7 days) is anything to go by, people really wanted this game. Armed with this knowledge they became even more determined to see Undead Darlings completed.
Now Undead Darlings ~no cure for love~ is back with a new Kickstarter and a revamped visual style. I reached out to Mr. Tired’s, Nick Doerr, for some insight into the what’s changed since the last campaign.
“What will help us to succeed this time is a more cohesive staff with a united vision. We’re all in this together, and that sense of camaraderie and the shared personal sacrifices made to make it this far is tangible to fans,” Doerr said.
He noted that the response so far has been extremely encouraging.
“While we’re still in the infancy of this second attempt, the responses from both former Kickstarter backers and new fans have been amazing and overwhelmingly positive. I think in just the first half of this first day, we’ve achieved 50% of the total funding from our last attempt’s entire campaign.”
There is still a way to go for Undead Darlings to reach their $45,000 goal, but bringing in almost 10,000 on the campaign’s first day is definitely promising.
Doerr cited a mix of bad timing and lackluster visuals as the issues leading to Undead Darling’s previous failure. The first campaign had encountered a snag almost as soon as it began. It began with the developers on the road for conventions and unable to post updates or communicate with backers in a timely fashion. Doerr assured me that would not be the case this time. He plans to make at least two updates a week, including streams and videos of development.
“I think what we’ve improved on since our last campaign is making sure that what we’re showing better represents our internal vision for the game’s final design,” Doerr explained. “Before, it was mostly talk and general concept images. Now, we have the game running with basic feature implementation that we can take footage and screenshots of.”
While there was marked interest for Undead Darlings it just wasn’t enough at the time to convince people to invest. This time Mr. Tired isn’t taking any chances. Prior the release of the new Kickstarter they set up a Prefundia page detailing everything all the way down to what has got to be one of the most detailed cost breakdown’s I’ve ever seen for a crowdfunding campaign.
So glorious!
“Backers aren’t just putting their money into Undead Darlings. They’re helping Mr. Tired Media to become a legitimate game development studio,” Doerr said. “We have Game Design Documents for a half-dozen titles – we just need this one title to bring in enough support to allow us to continue creating and innovating.”
For more on the unique story and gameplay mechanics of Undead Darlings ~no cure for love~ check out our previous coverage.
Their is no doubt in my mind that what hurt them the last time was the bad timing of their launch, it felt like one day people were commenting on the campaign and the next day everybody had moved on to the next shinny thing. The prefundia ended up being a good idea, it gave them time to organize and present their project properly to people.