The Black Tower - Cancelled

Myrthos

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We reported on the Indiegogo campaign for The Black Tower before, but recently we learned that the project is cancelled and won't be coming back.
It is with a lot of sadness that I am here to announce the end of the project The Black Tower. Started by 2 people (graphic designers) in february, and joined by 2 others working half-time (programmer and music composer), TBT was probably too ambitious. I want to make it clear that the project was totally realistic, and we are confident in the fact that we could have made it in its entirety with funds, and I will be the first one to regret that we have to cancel everything. But facts are facts, and we are 99% sure that it is now impossible to realise our dream of reviving these 2.5D J-RPGs that we used to like so much. In 15 days, we haven't reached 1% of our goal, with around 80 contributors for 8k visitors. It is now obvious that, even with the 30 days left, it is impossible to make it.
Five reasons are given on why it failed, one of them being that they could not be on Kickstarter.
As explained through various comments, we didn't choose Indiegogo because we like it more than Kickstarter.

We had to make this difficult choice for 2 main reasons :

- Kickstarter doesn't allow non-US/UK residents to ask for funds, and it becomes very difficult and very long for a foreigner to share their project. I don't say it is impossible, yet it was not compatible with the following point.

- For various reasons linked to some team members, the crowdfunding had to begin in May. From February (beginning of the project) to May, there is not a long period. Understanding how crowdfunding works, finding a good status for us, and starting the procedure to use Kickstarter from France was too slow and we couldn't make it in time.

This is why we chose Indiegogo, and we knew it would become very, very difficult to reach our goal. Because yes, the problem of Indiegogo is that they really not support video games as much as Kickstarter does. Where we reached 1% of our goal on Indiegogo, maybe we could have reached 40% on Kickstarter. We don't know, but it is possible.

Some of you will ask : then why not start a new campaign on Kickstarter as soon as you can ?
Simply because the team will soon be dissolved. Some of us have to find a job to live from, and with the end of TBT, they just can't wait and see what will happen next. As everyone is important in the current team, we can't go further when someone lives.
More information.
 
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It looked promising but sadly most people didn't bother just because it looked like a JRPG. How disappointing.:raincloud:
 
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Kickstarter doesn't allow non-US/UK residents to ask for funds
This is not (completely) true.
 
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It looked promising but sadly most people didn't bother just because it looked like a JRPG. How disappointing.:raincloud:

I don't think it necessary failed because it's jRPG I think big reason is that it's on indiegogo there where people just can't raise as much money.IIRC Malevolence dev said that they tried indiegogo first and raised only around 1k(KS raised 30k).
That said I really don't care about jRPGs and I won't be shedding tear over this one.
 
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This is not (completely) true.
Perhaps not, but you need someone in either the US or UK to start the project for you as these rules explain:

To be eligible to start a Kickstarter project as a US creator, you need to meet the following requirements:
—You are 18 years of age or older.*
—You are a permanent US resident with a Social Security Number (or EIN).
—You have a US address, US bank account, and US state-issued ID (driver’s license).
—You have a major US credit or debit card.


To start a project as a UK creator, you need to meet these requirements:
—You are 18 years of age or older.*
—You are a permanent UK resident either creating a project in your own name or on behalf of a legal entity with a Companies House Number.
—You have a UK address, UK bank account, and government-issued ID (driver’s license or passport).
—You have a major UK credit or debit card.
 
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The project was totally unrealistic from the start (as I have been saying all along…) and they wouldn't have got close to their target of over $400k on Kickstarter either. People aren't *that* stupid :).
 
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They missed the biggest, number 1 reason they failed.
They're an unknown and unproven small group of ppl
asking for a sum only industry vets, with a team and
office in place ask.

These guys must've spent 0 time studying the crowd
funding scene. They seemed to have no idea how any
of it worked. Projects like Xenonauts, Dead State, etc
games with either working alphas or longtime developers
were asking for 100 k or less, at times!

These guys were fools.
 
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Plus their presentation was bland with no illustrations and too much oddly gaping white space. It didn't exactly scream "we've done this before and we know what we're doing".
 
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I'm sorry to hear about this but not entirely surprised :(

The game wasn't a tribute to FFVII, it was practically a fan remake. They should have gone with something completely original - as it was, the game has no real identity of its own.

But here's hoping to success in future projects for the team!
 
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