My failed Kickstarter campaign and how I am bouncing back

In April 2024 I ran a Kickstarter for Crown Code Chronicles, the Unity JRPG-style game I’ve been building for about five years now. Saying it did not go well would be an understatement. The thing is, I know exactly why it didn’t work, and I figured it out almost right away. I’m hoping some other indie dev out there, sitting on a campaign they’re about to launch, finds this and skips the mistakes I made.

I’m putting everything I have into turning things around right now, so part of writing this is putting the chapter behind me and getting on with the better version.

Fair warning, this isn’t a “here’s how to run a perfect campaign” post, because I didn’t run one. This is what a failed campaign looks like from the inside, and what I’ve changed since.

One thing worth saying up front, since not everyone knows how Kickstarter works: it’s all or nothing. The campaign didn’t hit its goal, so no backer was ever charged a cent, and nobody is waiting on a reward from me. What I lost was time, money spent on the campaign itself, and a fair bit of pride.

The goal was too high, and I knew it while I was setting it

I worked out what I actually needed: enough to work on the game and support my family for a number of months, plus art, music and marketing. Then I set the goal to that number. What I never did was ask what a solo dev with no track record could realistically expect strangers to pledge.

Those are two completely different questions, and I answered the wrong one. Looking back, I think of it this way now: backers aren’t covering your costs, they’re placing a bet on you, and the size of the bet has to match how much proof you’ve given them that it’s a safe one. I hadn’t given them much at all.

I had no proof the game was actually fun

This is the one that still stings, because I knew it going in and ran the campaign anyway, partly because money was tight at the time and I was hoping it would work out. Back then Crown Code Chronicles had no playable build I could put in front of anyone. What I had was concept art, a pitch, some story beats, and a trailer I’d stitched together badly. I was asking people to fund a vision instead of backing a game, and I told myself that was okay because the vision was strong.

It wasn’t okay, because a trailer can sell you on tone and art direction but it can’t prove the combat is fun, that the pacing works, or that the thing is a real game rather than a mood board with menus. Backers who have been burned by unfinished Kickstarter games before, and there are a lot of them, are looking for evidence you can finish something, not evidence you can imagine it. I didn’t have any of that to show them. If I did this again today, the demo would come first and the campaign second. A lot of that thinking went into the turn-based combat devlog, since making the loop actually feel good is the part I skipped straight past the first time.

The concept art didn’t match the game

I hired a concept artist who was a very good and talented artist, but who had a very specific style that didn’t mesh well with the aesthetic I was looking for. I told myself it didn’t matter because professional concept art is way better than whatever I had.

For backers, though, the concept art is the product they’re looking at. If it doesn’t look like the finished game, you’re either setting up expectations you can’t meet or showing off work that has nothing to do with what they’re funding. I still like that art on its own terms, it just wasn’t the art of my game, and everyone who clicked through was judging a pixel-art JRPG based on paintings that weren’t it.

The trailer looked like exactly what it was

I edited the trailer myself, with footage I captured myself, using tools I was still learning, and it showed. The cuts were rough, the pacing dragged in spots, and to top it all off, most of the art was placeholder art, and I completely failed to mention that ANYWHERE! There’s nothing shameful about that, since everyone’s first trailer is rough, but a Kickstarter trailer has one job, which is convincing a stranger in about ninety seconds that you know what you’re doing. Mine told them I was still figuring it out, which was true, and is not what a funding pitch should be saying.

I’ve spent real time on capture and editing since then so the next one doesn’t go the same way. If you’re in the same boat, my rundown of capture tools covers the free options that get you most of the way to something that doesn’t look homemade.

Most of the money came from friends and family

Looking back at the backer list, most of the pledges came from people who know me personally. I’m grateful for every one of them, and it also told me something I didn’t want to hear at the time, which is that the campaign never really reached strangers, and the strangers it did reach mostly didn’t pledge.

A campaign carried by your own circle isn’t proof that there’s a market, it’s proof that the people who already like you still like you. That’s a lovely thing, but it isn’t the same signal, and I’d been treating it like it was.

The comment that actually hurt

My dad passed away suddenly. Before that he’d worked on the game with me for a while, on the opening theme and on some of the story and characters. He’s a big part of why this game exists in the shape it does. During the campaign I mentioned him and what he’d contributed, because it was true and it mattered to me.

Someone commented that it felt like I was using his death for pity, to get people to back the project. That landed harder than the funding number ever did. My first reaction was that it was unfair and cruel, and in the way it was said, it was.

I’ve also had to sit with the part of it that wasn’t wrong. I wasn’t trying to make money out of grief, but I was hoping people would look at what my dad and I made together and trust that I’d finish the game properly because it meant more to me than a normal project would. I was leaning on how much it meant instead of the proof I didn’t have: the playable demo, the good trailer, the track record.

I don’t think there’s a tidy lesson in that beyond this. Don’t let the thing that matters most to you personally stand in for evidence a stranger can actually see. The meaning is real, it just isn’t proof that you can execute, and nobody outside your life can tell the difference unless you show them.

What bouncing back actually looks like

I didn’t relaunch the campaign, and I’m not planning a straight redo, if I go back at all. Here’s what’s changed in how I’m approaching the rest of this project:

• The Steam page comes before any crowdfunding page. Crown Code Chronicles has a Coming Soon store page now. It still needs work, since the tags aren’t dialed in and some assets are out of date, but a wishlist count is a far more honest read on interest than a comment section full of people I already know. If your own tags need sorting, my guide to picking the right 20 Steam tags is worth doing before anything else on the page.
• A playable build before I ask anyone for money. No more asking people to fund a vision. If I ever crowdfund again, it’ll be with a demo that people who don’t know me can sit down and play, and with real feedback already collected through a proper playtesting setup rather than friends telling me it was fun.
• A press kit that exists before I need it. I put one together properly using the approach in my press kit guide, instead of scrambling assets together the week of a launch.
• A funding number sized to trust, not to cost. If I go back to crowdfunding, the target will match what a small and mostly unproven studio can actually expect, not what the project needs on paper.

I’m not claiming any of this guarantees a better campaign next time, because I don’t know that. What I do know is that the first one failed for reasons I can point at, not for something vague like the market not being ready or indie games being hard right now. It failed because I skipped the proof and asked for trust instead, and trust from strangers has to be earned with something they can see, not something I felt.

If you’re sitting on a campaign idea right now, the honest question to ask is this: if a stranger who has never heard of you looked at what you have today, would they believe you can finish it? If the answer is no, that’s the real work to do before you write a single reward tier.