PuffPals: Island Skies – The first time I support a Kickstarter Kampagne!
Hey y’all! First of all: I am a bit stupid sometimes xD I actually wrote this post when the Kickstarter Campaign was still going on, in an effort to inform you about it, but maybe also get help on reaching the stretch goals for it! For some reason, I forgot to change the post from private to public and now the campaign is already over… I am still very excited about the whole thing, so I still need to tell you about it, but sadly you will have no chance to join in anymore 🙁 I hope you don’t mind and that you are still interested in hearing about my newest passion 🙂 Let’s start from the beginning!
I am sure most of you have heard about Kickstarter. It’s an American Website, which provides creators with the opportunity of showing their plans for future projects and getting them funded. You can fund anything there in theory from your college degree, over a road trip, a new gadget, a book or even a game, anything is possible. Only the audience gets to decide which projects will actually be fully backed and which won’t. It’s essentially a kind of powerplay, where trust is very important because supporters basically have to fund something which does not exist and if the campaign won’t be successful, it might never exist. That’s something which has always kinda bothered me, I just never had this kind of trust in something, so I never backed a campaign yet. But things changed when I heard about PuffPals: Island Skies!
Island Skies is supposed to be a video game that could be described as a crossover of games like Animal Crossing and Harvest Moon, where you get to simulate a life in a perfect world, individualize your character, decorate your house, make friends and explore the world around you. Actually, I can say that it will be definitely a game in the future because the campaign reached its minimum goal within the first few days of its launch! This means that if anyone would decide to back up the project, they don’t even have to trust in the campaign working out, because it already did 😉 Of course, there is always the part where you have to trust the people keeping their word and actually using the money for a specific purpose, and I feel like I should mention that Kickstarter is not forcing people to actually do that, but with the active community that I have gotten to know through Discord, I don’t feel like this campaign is a scam 😉 This is actually why I decided to support the game and thus my first Kickstarter campaign ever! And all of it is so exciting to me, that I wanted to tell you about the process and what lies ahead in the future of this game.
What you can see here are the so-called stretch goals, which basically show what further features the development team will be trying to implement in the game, depending on how much money they will have at the end of the campaign. On one hand, it’s a way to get people to spend more money, but on the other hand, it’s also a way to make people participate in what should be inside the game. When the campaign started, there were not even any goals after the switch port, because the team behind the game did not even know if they would come that far. So they basically used the input they had from the community to decide what kind of goals they want to try to reach and thus shape the game in the way we as the fans want it. Also, money is an important factor here, since the team itself has to be paid, possible experts in new fields, artists and so on, so they really could not realize any of these goals, if they would not get the money. So it’s less of a way to get the supporters to support them more and more of a way to build up their game more with the help of their fans.
Depending on how much money you spend, you got assigned a certain tier with certain benefits. Some of them are access to behind the scenes when the game is in development, which is something me and my husband are looking forward to the most! Other benefits are in-game exclusives such as special clothing, decorative items or even pets you can own 🙂 But there are also “real” physical items such as very cute plushies, stickers and through the stretch goals, we also have reached the option of getting a hardcover version of the artbook for the game! Almost all of those benefits(minus the artbook!) are Kickstarter exclusive, so since the campaign already ended, sadly you won’t be able to get them anymore :/ But I will keep you updated and show you the ones that I got when they arrive! Actually, the exclusive plushies were part of the reason why I pledged 😛 The game itself looks super interesting too, but I can rarely say no to plushies xD The physical add-ons will ship at the beginning of 2023, so if you are interested in reading about it, save the date 😉
Why I am telling you this, you might ask. Well as I have mentioned in the beginning my idea was to share this campaign with as many people as possible because I think the game has very great potential and being part of its creation, sounds like a great adventure! Sadly now that the campaign is over, aside from following the developer fluffnest on Instagram, you can’t really join the adventure anymore. But as with the physical add-ons, I try to keep you updated at least a bit. Even though I still have to ask how much I am allowed to share. As for now let me tell you what of the parts of the game that have been teased, I am most interested in!
At 800k we unlocked a desert biome which is said to hold some secrets about the lore of the game. In my head, it’s kinda inspired by ancient Egypt even though there was no confirmation on that mental image from the developers so far 😛 Still, I am very grateful to know that the game even has a story, since at least Animals Crossing for me always lacked one. In general, I am happy that together with all the other backers we have collected enough money to unlock all of the possible biomes, making them as big and interesting as possible! So many things that can be explored^^ Multiplayer mode at first did not sound very exciting to me personally, but after the project reached over 2 million dollars and the amusement park biome was unlocked, I am now looking forward to it too 😉 How amazing could it be to meet up with friends in an amusement park to play minigames together and maybe after that explore each other’s islands?
Don’t get me wrong, I am super happy that the game reached so much money, but I am also super bumped that the post did not go online in time 🙁 So I hope you are all okay with me talking about it, even though you never had a chance to participate, at least not the way I planned too. But maybe you have found out about the game yourself, maybe you are a pen pal and we have talked about it in our letters or Instagram informed you about the campaign. Either way I hope you can be as excited as I am and if I am able too, I will make some update posts from time to time to inform you about the process of the development of the game 😉 If you want to further check out the game you can follow this link: *here* 🙂
Greetings and good wishes
The Mad Hattress