Posted November 17, 2017 by Denki
Doing the Kickstarter campaign has been an education, that’s for sure. We knew it would be, but we didn’t realise just how much we’d learn.
Bottom line: our story wasn’t strong enough and wasn’t shared widely enough.
We want to thank you for backing your belief in Autonauts, but the fact remains we’d probably be better off buying a lottery ticket than relying on hitting our target now.
We said that whatever happens, come 2018 we’d stop working on the existing version of Autonauts, which was true. But, while we aren’t likely to meet our funding goal, we believe in Autonauts and have a short-term compromise, which we hope will meet your approval.
We need to better understand how to improve our chances of getting the ‘right’ people to pay attention to Autonauts and inspire their followers to do the same.
More immediately though, we reckon we need to embiggen our story first. And to do that, we feel we need to make more of the game, to make it more obvious to more people where we’re going with Autonauts. We want to add a more obvious game structure, formal challenges and so on, to help make it clearer WHY you should care about automating the world.
Some of the work we need to do won’t fit neatly into our typical weekly iteration cycle. (We also think we’re probably adding too much too often with our weekly playable updates; it’s a constant barrage of changes, which has all sorts of unintended side effects.)
So, yeah, that means no more new weekly updates to actually play for a while...
We reckon if we go dark (well, darker) for two months we can return in the new year with an Autonauts that’s more likely to surprise and delight: a big, obvious change rather than frequent, smaller evolutions. An Autonauts that more people will be more interested in playing and sharing and investing in.
Seeing as the key reason for automating everything is focused on the folk, we end this week - this run of weekly playable updates - by starting to do more for the folk and their wellbeing. If you find folk lying around in the world and choose to make them yours, you need to care for them and meet their needs. They already want shelter and sustenance, but now that comes with even greater consequences: waste. Your folk now make mess when they eat and that needs attention - and smart automation. Who’d’ve ever thunk that cleaning could be so much fun :)
Yes, it’s not brilliantly balanced (yet) but it’s definitely satisfying even now, so it should give you a feel for where we’re headed. Do let us know how you get on.
See you around!
Autonautily Yours... Always
Gary and Aaron