Strafe (with the coolest Kickstarter video I have ever seen)
This is unbelievably cool, in a 90s kind Doom-esque of way.
Contains a lot of gore though. Fair warning.
If you want to back the project you can here: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/strafegame/strafe There's a chance they'll have trouble reaching their goal (despite their brilliant marketing).
This Kickstarter campaign really appeals to me. They've sprinkled their entire page with humour and appeals to my inner 90s child.
Contains a lot of gore though. Fair warning.
If you want to back the project you can here: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/strafegame/strafe There's a chance they'll have trouble reaching their goal (despite their brilliant marketing).
This Kickstarter campaign really appeals to me. They've sprinkled their entire page with humour and appeals to my inner 90s child.
Comments
Strafe seems to have random level generation that you use the gore to navigate around, but the monster design and weapons seem a bit generic. Also the styles seems to mismatch, such as the pixel art gore textures with the quite realistic looking levels.
Based on that, i think the video is cool, people will be sold on the video, but not the actual gameplay footage. Perhaps also they need to show the 2nd stage, the planet scenes?
Not sure if it's just that I'm paying better attention, but it feels like there's a revival of these live action videos for games. Double Fine have done a few:
And then there's this gem:
Feels like I've seen one or two other over the past while. I love the idea - it's a trend I'm hoping to see more of in the future!
It's marketing genius as far as production value is concerned, but it's not selling me on the game, it's selling a cool video at me.
And damn, I get that everything is for funzies, but I'm sure the gore's turned some people off the game. Not me personally, but I"m sure some potential interested parties had skipped out before the video's end.
The question I have here is Does The Video Sell The Game or should The Game Sell The Game?
Also, they only made 33K with THAT trailer, and with Kotaku etc articles, they got a lot of exposure and only made 33K.
They're now up to 46K in 3 days. My intuition tells me they've got to make just over half their money in the first week to reach their final goal. As of now I'd bet against them making it :(
So even though a lot of people now know about the game, their strategy might actually be putting people off from buying it(again, nothing to do with the gore). I think the game might be cool, I think the video was highly entertaining but in the end I think this was a bad kickstarter campaign. (Not that I've run 100's of successful ones, so please take my words with a pinch of salt)
As for their KS meeting their goals, it looks like it's going to be very close, they will need another media boost to make it IMO. I have tracked a few KS campaigns and this one really looks borderline at this moment, maybe even leaning towards failure.
You can get some insight into the funding status on kicktraq.
http://www.kicktraq.com/projects/strafegame/strafe/
So would the way they're selling their selling point appeal to people who'd find appeal in it anyway? (people who love gore) Possibly. So maybe this *is* the way to sell the game. But it's kinda overdoing it for anyone who's not entirely into the gore thing.
I mean I was really kinda intrigued by the little bot thing (in your gif up there), but as it is now I know nothing of it to be excited about it, and the random levels thing too. They're just these words that sound pretty without any substantiation. For me.
Yeah, that's sort of my feeling about the approach they've taken. That they've doubled down on their niche really hard, at the expense of appealing to a broader audience.
I don't think they'd be particularly successful in gaining more backers by explaining their game further, because I don't think that the game they're making has appeal outside of the demographic that would back the game solely based on that trailer (I think, like their trailer, the game is about ridiculous gore and 1996 nostalgia).
I don't think it's a case where the game sells itself. In fact games that I can call to mind that are similar in target market (like https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1125357480/paranautical-activity-old-school-fps-meets-rogueli ) have performed far worse on Kickstarter when they let the game sell the game (rather than rad marketing material selling the game).
Though I do think they could have included a better call to action in the trailer. And a bit more information about the fact that they need help getting funding for this thing.
And I agree that the trailer is a bit infuriating with having such brief and blurry cuts to the game (when as a viewer I'm trying to figure out what the game they're selling is).
Talking about rad 90s live action trailers for video games, this is one of my favourites (and oldie but a goodie):
(Now I kind of want a 90s live action trailer for Broforce launch)
Jazzpunk is such a special game, and Luis Hernandez is a really rad dude (hoping to bump into him again this GDC). He's definitely one of the humans I'd most want to collaborate with.