Visual Novel Tips and Tricks with Gabmag #5

This is a pretty big question, so I’ll try to answer it in parts. This is all just based on my experience, and I’m sure you’ll find other people who do things in different ways, and there’s nothing wrong with that either!

Rewards

There’s a lot of different rewards you can offer for your Kickstarter, but one of the first things you should think about is… do you want to do physical rewards? They’re popular, but you will need to deal with manufacturers, samples, and a lot of shipping and packing. Will you limit your physical tiers to domestic only, or are you happy to do international shipping? You’ll need to weigh everything and be certain of the postage costs, lest you end up out of pocket when the fees are double what you expected!

For digital rewards, I like to offer: backers name in the credits, digital copies of the game, the soundtrack, the artbook (although keep in mine this is another thing you will have to create!) and pc/phone backgrounds, access to early builds of the game, NPC design, and lead director credit. There’s a lot out there you can offer where you don’t need to deal with shipping, so I think these are what you should plan for first.

For physical rewards, there are SO many things you could go with! Take a look through this website and you might get some ideas.

Here’s some of the things I like to offer: Prints (A4 or postcard size), dakimakura or small pillowcases, keychains, physical artbooks (although mind how heavy these can be), stickers, standees and washi tape. This barely scratches the surface of physical items you could offer.

How to Promote your Kickstarter

The most important thing here is to know the audience you’re trying to attract, and to make them aware of your Kickstarter. Easier said than done sometimes, especially if you’re new to the scene and still building up a following. There’s a few things I think you should definitely do, though:

• Have social media accounts long before you run your Kickstarter.
•  Start posting about your game regularly and early on. This can be previews, backgrounds, CGs, script… anything that you can think of.
• Consider hiring some external artists to create promotional illustrations and have them post a link to your Kickstarter alongside it. As long as you talk to the artists beforehand about what it will be used for, of course!
• Make use of hashtags (#vndev, #vnlink, #gamedev, investigate!)
• Create a demo and try to get it on both Steam and Itch.io at least.
• Consider making a website, since it will make you look more professional.
• Make a Discord, if you think you’re able to keep up with it. It’s a great place to connect with your fans and create a personal connection with them.
• Make a press kit and do some research into streamers and youtubers who play games similar to yours. Email them a week or so before your Kickstarter launches and you should have some traffic from there.
• Find websites and forums you can post a link to your Kickstarter to.
• Make a mailing list for your big fans to join.

How Long Should It Be and Best Time to Launch a Campaign

There’s been a lot of talk around the best amount of time to run a campaign. The standard tends to be 30 days, which is probably your best bet.

For The Divine Speaker, we went for 45 days, and this is probably what we’ll continue with as we’ve had success with it before. 

As for the best time, you want to avoid the lead up to Christmas as players won’t have as much spare income, and they’ll be looking for products that will be *out* by Christmas. I’d also avoid January. From March is usually pretty good. 

As for day of the week, a lot of people say a Tuesday is best, but honestly there are a lot more important factors that go into your launch being successful than the day of the week. The reason Tuesday is so popular is because big companies usually launch then – once you account for that, the lead disappears.

I’d just avoid weekends and try to start it during the week at a time that accommodates as many timezones as possible.

Hopefully that helps! Try to get a decent following before you launch your campaign, be reasonable with your goal (especially if it’s your first project, as the trust isn’t there yet), and you should do just fine.