Oni Onsen Kickstarter Likely To Fail

Hi Guys,

I just want to give a heads up that the Kickstarter is not doing well and may end up failing. If you a follower who is not a backer, I implore you to back the Kickstarter for what you're able, since we need all the help we can get: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/ypressgames/oni-onsen

I appreciate every backer who has said to me, 'Take my balance and put it towards this.' I just need to clarify, that's not how it works on my end. Your balances are spent when I get them to keep the company afloat.

These are credits that you can cash in, not actual stores of money I can access. The idea is, if we have a successful Kickstarter, I'm able to afford to provide whatever extra rewards I need to for Patreon backers. That's how it's worked so far.

So, unfortunately, what the Kickstarter makes is what the Kickstarter makes. And we get zero of the funding if we don't make the goal.

It's hard to accept that this game might have to be canceled, but that is what I'm looking at right now if we can't get funded.

This campaign started off on the wrong foot from the beginning, with our vendor declining to put up our store page until they received the entire game to review. 

We get hundreds of Wishlists during our campaigns, and this decision caused us to miss out on both that and the added promotion we would have gotten for the Kickstarter by being live on their store. It was a huge set-back.

Before now, I was asking for less than what is needed to make our games. I placed hitting the Kickstarter goal above getting what we actually needed, and I also hoped that we would manage to get enough extra funding beyond the goal.

Unfortunately, we never get enough extra funding beyond the goal to pay for the full development costs. So, for Oni Onsen I took a risk. I asked for what we actually needed.

I asked for we needed to pay the full-time artist a living wage for over a year, what we needed to pay for the programming costs, the backgrounds, the asset costs, the music building sets, and the sounds. 

I don’t include the cost of writing in the budget when I’m writing because I pay myself last. I can take a cut. I would never ask that of my workers.

I thought with 1,000 followers gained prior to launch that we would hit this goal. We’ve also hit a higher goal for a similar game in the past. For Oni Onsen we had an even better offer than that previous game with a harem route added.

Orc Covenant needs around $72,000 (not accounting for Kickstarter/Payment processor fees) to cover the development costs. We have used up that lower amount that was made on that Kickstarter, and I am finishing the development with our operating income. 

I can’t manage to fund two games of this scope at the same time out-of-pocket.

I also learned from our failure with Hardcore Cruising that if a game doesn’t drum up enough support for the Kickstarter to be successful, it’s not going to be successful at all.

I made a promise to myself that I would never again do a second Kickstarter for a game if the first one failed. To me, it’s a strong sign that the game simply does not have enough interest and will not do well.  It's also just kicking the can down the road.  I'd still run into the same financial troubles in the end if we didn't make the full amount we're asking.

No matter what happens, I want to thank my backers.  Thank you for showing up month after month.  Thank you for supporting us when we needed you.  Letting you down is a horrible prospect to me.

There's still a chance things could turn around.  I'm going to run this one to the bitter end, come what may.  And I still hope we can make it somehow.  You can of course help by backing the Kickstarter or spreading the word.  Just retweet this tweet.