Xenonauts 2 will launch on Kickstarter 20th June.
More information.At long last we've set a firm date for the launch of the Kickstarter for Xenonauts-2 - it will be happening on Wednesday 20th June, at 14:00 GMT / UTC.
We've been working on this Kickstarter for a long time and we hope you'll be willing to support us when we launch, as it really makes a huge difference to a crowdfunding campaign when you have a strong first 24 hours! Our funding target is £50,000 but we're hoping to raise more than that - the more money we have to spend during the last phase of development, the better the game will be!
I should also mention that Kickstarter takes a much smaller cut than the other sites on which we sell, so if you enjoyed Xenonauts and are pretty sure you'll be buying Xenonauts-2 at some point, Kickstarter is definitely a good place to do it - about 20% more of the money ends up in our pockets compared to you buying the game on Steam for the same price. It also makes the project look more interesting and popular, which means we're more likely to get press coverage about the game in the future and the people wavering about whether to support the game on Kickstarter would probably feel more confident in doing so!
We will be sending out a notification to everyone on our mailing list one week before the Kickstarter launches (13th June) and then a reminder on the day of the Kickstarter itself.
Reward Tiers:
These are our plans for the reward tiers, all of which (awkwardly) have to be priced in £ rather than $ because we're based in the UK.
We're expecting the beta testing period to be about three months long, and it should start 1-3 months after the end of the Kickstarter. You will have access to this if you back at the £25 tier or above. Once this beta test is complete the game will launch into Early Access and everyone who backed at the £18 tier will then get access to the game.
- £1 - show your support, and get our project updates and notifications
- £18 - get a copy of Xenonauts-2 on Steam / GOG when it launches onto Early Access (the game will launch at $30 when finished).
- £25 - as above, but with a digital copy of the soundtrack and additional access to the three-month beta we will run on Steam / GOG prior to the Early Access launch (this tier is limited to 2000 backers)
- £35 Option 1 - as £25, plus your name in the credits, and you can put a soldier in the random soldier pool with a name, nationality and gender chosen by you
- £35 Option 2 - as £25, plus your name in the credits, and you get a second Early Access copy of Xenonauts-2 to give to a friend
- £50 - all of the above, including both £35 rewards
- £75 - all of the above, plus you can create your own unique face for the custom soldier using our portrait generator
- £100 - ?????
- £200 - all of the above, plus our portrait artist will paint you from an image you send him (tier is limited to 20 backers)
- £500 - all of the above, plus you'll get to work with us to create a random event that can hit the player - possibly incorporating yourself (tier is limited to 5 backers)
You'll notice we've gone in very heavily on the digital rewards. The physical rewards we did for the original Kickstarter were a massive pain to organise, particularly with regards to the shipping ... and I worked out afterwards that we actually lost money on them. Things are easier these days because specialised fulfillment companies exist but unfortunately I still don't think we'd be making much money from physical rewards.
The downside is that we're left a bit short on reward tiers. I honestly can't think of anything to put in at the £100 tier, and I'm open to suggestions - if we can't think of anything good then we'll just take that one out, but it's a nice round number and I'd rather include a tier at that level if I can.
If you want to see how the custom portraits look, here's the Beloved Leader himself drawn from a still from the Kickstarter video. Pretty good work, no? There's a total of 25 portraits available (5 of which are at the £500 tier) so if you're interested in getting some custom art done, you might want to grab the £200 tier early
As I mentioned before, we'll be starting our PR push one week before the Kickstarter on Wednesday 13 June, so we've got a bit of time to tweak the reward tiers etc before that happens. If you've got any thoughts on the rewards tiers or how well the custom portrait editor program works, please let us know!
It would also be super-useful if you could spread the word about this to anyone that might be interested. Several hundred thousand people have played Xenonauts over the years but unfortunately we don't have contact details for most of them ... so we're reliant on our mailing list (and hopefully the gaming press) to reach them. Word of mouth can be a very powerful thing!
