What is a Kickstarter?
For those who may be unfamiliar with Kickstarter, it is a platform used to fund creative projects. Every project creator sets their project's funding goal and deadline. If people like the project, they can pledge money to make it happen. If the project succeeds in reaching its funding goal, all backers' credit cards are charged when time expires. Funding on Kickstarter is all-or-nothing. If the project falls short of its funding goal, no one is charged.
However, unlike most traditional Kickstarters, development for Lucid9 would continue even if we fall short of our funding goal, albeit at a much slower rate. Our campaign will mostly be a way for us to formally accept support from our readers in order to increase production values and create a higher quality game.
Why are we now considering a Kickstarter?
Since the creation of the studio in 2014, Lucid9 has been in development for about 7 long years. While we have made notable releases—with Inciting Incident in 2016, the heroine prologues in 2019, and the partial voice acting patch earlier this year—the pace of development has been extremely inconsistent due to the nature of it being a free project. COVID-19 has made this even more apparent, and many of us found ourselves with even less time and resources than usual.
A Kickstarter would allow us to not only complete the game in a more reasonable timeframe, but would open many opportunities to further polish and add additional features to the game depending on how much support we receive.
With an unfunded release, we are fairly limited in the type of content we would be able to create. A fully funded project would not only cover the cost of character sprites, backgrounds, CGs, music, programming, voice acting, and writing, but would include additional art, animated cutscenes, and even an opening theme.
Will the entire game still be free to play?
Yes! It is still our goal to introduce people to the visual novel medium, and we feel the best way to accomplish this is to make Lucid9 accessible to everyone.
Any funding we receive will only come from the Kickstarter campaign. Those who choose to back Lucid9 will not only be assisting us in creation, but will receive exclusive rewards such as signed art prints, a digital artbook, early access to the game, and much more. A full list of rewards will be given once the Kickstarter is live.
When will the Kickstarter campaign go live?
We’re currently aiming for a funding goal that is both practical to achieve and one that fairly compensates everyone for their work. There are still many members that need to be contacted and forms that need to be signed, meaning it will take us some time to sort everything out before officially beginning the campaign. We will keep everyone updated about our progress and make an announcement a few weeks prior to when it is live.
In what ways can I support you?
We’re extremely thankful that everyone who has followed Lucid9 over the years has been so patient and understanding. We hope that you will continue supporting us, either by backing the project on Kickstarter once it’s live or even sharing it with people that you know. Every little bit really does go a long way.
If you have any questions, you can leave a comment under this post, message us directly on Discord, or send us an email via our contact form.
As always, thank you.
~ David Acosta
(Creative Director)