U MAD BRO? Shows No Effort on Kickstarter and Pays The Price

As the Kickstarter campaign for U MAD BRO? limps towards the finishing line, the stats don’t make for pleasant reading. $66 pledged. 6 backers. 0 comments. 0 updates. Did this indie platformer deserve better, or is the result fully justified?

Well the first thing to note is the Kickstarter campaign is at the very least competently put together. There’s detail about the game, a pitch video (with an annoyingly catchy tune), gameplay footage and an introduction to the three man development team. This instantly makes it superior to at least 10% of the projects I see. There was also a realistic target of $1,500 and low pledge levels. It’s also already been Greenlit on Steam, which is prominently highlighted. That’s the good news.

The bad news begins with the name, which is frankly garbage. U MAD BRO? does look slightly better than many other indie platformers but there’s still nothing particularly notable about it. There are of course always concerns with first-time developers. And of course the most obvious negative point is the low level of funds raised, accentuated by a short campaign length.

Y U NO SUPPORT GAME?

Then there’s the ugly. The development team have clearly slacked off and made no attempt to support the Kickstarter with zero updates and no promotion of the game. The devs were honest enough to admit that U MAD BRO? started as an experiment but they really have slacked off here.

Most damningly, the Greenlight campaign had a better pitch video and originally a playable demo, which is notably absent from the Kickstarter itself. The lesson here is if creators aren’t interested in their own game then backers won’t be either. Although if you need to be told that in the first place then it’s probably safe to say your Kickstarter is going to have a lot more problems anyway.