This Video Game Project Raised $41K+ on Kickstarter

Matej ‘Retro’ Jan launched a Kickstarter campaign to raise money for a video game, Retronator Pixel Art Academy, on August 5, 2015. In its first day, the campaign quickly reached its modest $1,000 goal.

Less than two weeks later, the Retronator Pixel Art Academy campaign has raised over $41K with more than a week to go.

To learn more about why this project has been so successful, I interviewed the creator himself to see what he had to say about launching a successful Kickstarter project.

1. Can you tell us a little about yourself and your project?

I am a programmer and illustrator, mostly interested in video games. I run Retronator, a blog about pixel art and gaming.

Next year I will be studying for a Master’s degree in Education, where I want to merge learning, drawing and coding into a game called Pixel Art Academy. It will be an adventure game that teaches you art.

2. Why did you choose to use Kickstarter for this project?

I was initially aiming for a Patreon campaign. However, as a European living in the US, on my current visa (visiting researcher in Computer Science) or my future one (student in Education), I cannot earn money off campus.

This doesn’t apply when I’m physically outside the US, so I have this 1.5 month window while I’m visiting my family in Slovenia to do crowdfunding. Perfect for a Kickstarter campaign.

3. You have a very well-designed page. Were there any tools that you found helpful when putting it together?

It’s all done in Gimp and Photoshop. The design came very naturally from the way I create Retronator Magazine, which is a publication on Medium that complements my tumblr blog.

I love big design (fullscreen images, whitespace) and following your personal style instead of the current norm.

4. I see you’ve backed over 49 Kickstarter campaigns. Have you learned anything from backing other creators?

Yes, but only as far as identifying my personal preferences (the way I would want to run a campaign).

• Do not disappear after the campaign completes.
• Do not link to your blog so people need to click through to read an update.
• Be personal. Be funny or inspiring.
• Write out all the rewards in each section so people don’t have to piece it together. Huge charts of perks-vs-tiers feel cold.
• Charge higher instead of lower. People like to immortalize themselves into the product.

5. With over two weeks left to go, how do you plan on maintaining momentum?

1. Reach out to every person I follow (and follows me!), one by one.
2. Post the project to every portfolio site I’ve built my presence on.
3. Continue doing what I’ve been doing (posting features of other pixel artists and games, write a Retronator Magazine article).
4. Create a follow up video to my first pixel art YouTube tutorial.
5. One by one contact every person that thanked me on my first video.
6. Contact every journalist that has previously written about my work. Finish a commission for another successful Kickstarter campaign.

Gary Vaynerchuck has a Skillshare class on social media, so I had most of this already planned in my project there. Now I’m just executing.

6. Is there any other advice you would like to share with others thinking of launching a Kickstarter campaign?

Start working on it 5 years earlier.

Offer the world a service. Do it for a long time. Do what you would do even without the money. Then ask for money. All the books by Gary Vaynerchuk. And The Art of Asking.

Conclusion

There have been thousands of different creators on Kickstarter with different areas of expertise and unique strategies for getting their campaigns out there. Matej ‘Retro’ Jan is very passionate about this project because it involves something that he loves and has been working on for a long time.

This Kickstarter campaign was well planned and designed to catch backers’ interest. Matej made good use of the tools available to him (a few of which he mentioned in this interview), using his artistic talent to design a campaign page that was cohesive and matched his pixel art themed project.

‘Retro’ is taking a very personal approach by reaching out to potential backers one-by-one. Since the goal of this campaign is to help people learn about art, it also a lot of sense that he is reaching out to fans of his YouTube pixel art tutorial.

When preparing to launch your own Kickstarter campaign, remember that its always good to plan ahead and have a strategy going in. Thinking about your strengths and how they can be used to your advantage during your crowdfunding campaign can help save a lot of time and energy.

Feel free to leave any questions for Matej as a comment.