This article was written by Brian Wong. You can find him on twitter here.
Background
Sentris is a puzzle game about making music. Produced by Samantha Kalman, the game uses a circular interface to allow the gamer to solve puzzles while creating music as the same time. To play, the gamer stacks blocks of different colors to beat the level and create a unique song. The game features many different modes, including the main puzzle mode, a freestyle version, and a multiplayer mode that allows players to create songs with their friends.
Sentris: Origins
Throughout her life, Samantha Kalman has always had a fascination with video games. She’s been a gamer from a young age, and at the age of twenty, she started developing her own games.
At first, Kalman says, “I made a handful of really terrible games that never really got any attention or received any traction.” After learning the ropes of game development over the years, she became interested in the concept of crowdfunding. “When I was first learning how to make games I actually thought about [putting up] a website with a PayPal donate button [to fund the game’s development].”
Kalman spent years in the gaming industry, eventually creating SEN (available on Congregate), which would become the precursor to Sentris. For Sentris, Kalman wanted to build some sort of circular game interface, and after playing with a band called “Moskauer Bluthund” (The Bloodhound from Moscow) in Denmark, she decided what this meant.
In April 2013, Kalman went independent to build Sentris and started working a prototype to present to the Kickstarter Community. Kalman says, “Really what gave me confidence that it was ready for Kickstarting was an expo that I attended last August. I took the game to the Seattle Indies Expo and it was well received there enough that made me feel like maybe this is ready to crowdfund.” And so, on October 22, 2013, Kalman launched her first ever Kickstarter Campaign.
Basic Strategy
Before starting the campaign, Kalman set her goal at $50,000. Taking into account all fees, reward fulfillment costs, taxes, and a goal to finish the game by the end of the year, she says “it seemed like the most feasible smallest budget for the game to keep me working on it full time and to bring on some other people.” For the most part, Kalman worked on the project without hiring any other major names to help her out.
Kalman spent a lot of time on her Kickstarter video, making three different videos until she was happy with the voice and the story that the video presented. She had studied video in college, and a few of her close friends provided some feedback, but other than that, the process was very grassroots.
In fact, Kalman says, “The whole Sentris campaign and really everything about it was pretty grassroots. I didn’t bring any marketing machines. I didn’t have an expert helping me out. I had one friend give me some advice from time to time and then [it was] just me writing emails and doing interviews and podcasts and just being very active the whole time.”
A big part of Kalman’s strategy was engaging in crosspromotions, where she built her community and networked heavily with other kickstarter creators. She reached out to people who had campaigns running or had recently finished campaigns and worked with them to raise awareness for each other’s projects. She found that targeting fans of like-minded games was a great way to promote Sentris, and she helped her fellow developers do the same with her audience.
Pretty soon, Kalman had podcasts reaching out to her to speak. She says, “It was kind of amazing when I started the campaign then I suddenly had a lot of people contact me for this or that and podcasting was one of those things.”
And is wasn’t only podcasts, Kalman says, “For this year’s GDC I was asked to participate on the crowdfunding panel. It was specifically about … how to make it as an unknown with crowdfunding … I’m relatively new as an independent creator.”
With all of the exposure she was getting, Kalman just took it one day at a time with her small team of friends, working and researching how to run a marketing campaign. By the end, the hard work and dedication paid off, and it was time to make a game.
What Went Right
As far as what went right, Kalman says, “I think that one of the things that went right was I ended up having a pretty strong network of people – a lot of people that supported the project in the first couple of days and that showed very early on that the project had momentum.” If backers think a project might make its fundraising goal, they are more likely to pledge, so she was fortunate to have the early backing of supporters.
She says, “I think that I made an honest pitch about an experimental kind of game that tries to serve a very specific purpose, and there were people interested in a game like that.”
What Went Wrong
One of the major challenges in being a one-woman show during campaign season was learning and doing everything herself, and much of it for the first time. Kalman had to learn as she went, writing press releases, talking to journalists, producing and sharing content, and much more. Kalman says, “Whatever your strengths are – complement those skills with someone who has the skills that you don’t have.” It’s very hard to be a great designer, promoter, campaign organizer, and developer all at the same time.
Where We Are Now
The Kickstarter Campaign ended on November 21, 2013, raising $56,361, which was enough for Kalman work on the project full time. She used an agile method of developing the game, which helped her periodically gauge the feedback from her audience in order to create the best final product that she can.
Kalman is working on building out content: more instruments, levels, and level creation tools so others who are musically inclined can contribute levels and song structures to the game.
Sentris will launch in Early Access on August 22, 2014, and will be available for purchase on Steam and the Humble Store. The idea here is to put the game and the tools in the hands of the gamers so they can start to build out some content through the level editor, as Kalman has a pretty good idea of what she wants the game to be like. There is also valuable insight in understanding the kind of game her audience wants to play. As the designer and creative lead of the game, she wants to make sure that her particular style and gameplay are not the only ones reflected in her final game.
Sentris Looking Forward
While she doesn’t have a firm date locked in for final release, Kalman is aiming for a Fall launch. Between now and then, the finishing touches have to be implemented, and Kalman says, “Mechanically, it is pretty much there, so it just needs content and polish.”
When asked about advice for other crowdfunding campaigners, Kalman says, “Go for it. There’s no way to know what’s going to work and what’s not until you try it so don’t get stuck in analysis paralysis – just do your very best and jump out there, and if it fails that doesn’t mean it’s the end of the world, it just means that you have a few hundred people that want to help you succeed when you try again.”
Would you like to submit a Kickstarter Post-Mortem? Email us here: sbriggman@crowdcrux.com. Check out more Kickstarter post-mortems here.
About the Author
Brian is a DC-based writer who spends too much time at the office and too little time writing on the side. Despite being warned, he drinks the black office coffee every morning. Brian is interested in covering technology, gaming, food culture, and start-ups You can reach him on twitter or at his email.
