Hello everyone! Well To Do Walrus Games here. I've been hanging around on the forum for some time now and I thought I'd share my project here! For those of you who don't know, I have been designing a board game to launch on Kickstarter for the past year and a half and it at last goes live this Friday at 12:00 EST! If you are at all interested, I would greatly appreciate if you at least followed along in the project's journey, and even if you are not an avid board gamer, if you know anyone who might be, feel free to share it with them! Thanks for your time and I hope you guys have a great day!
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/welltodowalrus/the-shadow-of-the-no...
Comments
The Youtube channel in question...
Also, the Youtube channel that the game was sent to was Tantrum House. Their video will go live at the same time as the kickstarter!
As of 10:15 11th August 2025...
You have 12 Followers... Hopefully you can get MORE people interested. I would recommend Facebook Groups. I am a bit LAZY and have not done this ... For the "Dual Dice" KS which launches in September. But there are plenty of groups to advertise the game for FREE.
In FB/Meta Groups: search for "Board Game crowdfunding".
It will list a TON of matches... It's up to you to see how many of these groups you want to place an ad for the game. It's mostly FREE ... But you can create a paid campaign if you want more support.
I spent $40 USD and got about +15 extra supporters for the KS. Pricey I know. But 20 vs. 45 people is more than DOUBLE my quantity of Backers.
Take a look and see what tickles your fancy!
Cheers.
Kickstarter is Live!
The Kickstarter is live!
Feel free to check out the main page if you are interested!
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/welltodowalrus/the-shadow-of-the-no...
Just as an FYI...
I can tell you that you basically have 3 TRIES to fund a KS. If it doesn't work the first time, figure out what was missing for the second time and hope that you have done your best to "get the word out about the game". And maybe you'll need a third try where you give monetary concessions... Meaning you make very little off the project but it funds.
We did that the first try because I think Mike (RIP) was already aware that from a monetary stand-point-of-view, the goal was to get the game into as many people's hands and then grow with expansions. That was the business model for "TradeWorlds" (TW).
But don't worry, I have seen other KS projects which had ads for three (3) separate campaigns and eventually they figured out what was best and managed to actually fund.
Cheers!
Also ...
I started marketing my KS at the START of June 2025. It's been 3-Months and I've seen only a handful of additional people interested in the product. But I'm not promoting it MORE because I have my OWN "marketing strategy" that I will TRY out and see what happens. I've already send out an email to 800+ Backers from a short-list that I had from the TW KS. The next goal is to mail out an update to 1,000+ Backers given an update from the TW KS.
It will most likely NOT bounce back for most and it's a more reliable sender: KS.
So we shall see how things go forwards, my hope is that I manage to get some people excited about my product and maybe bring it to a successful conclusion. From there I can (much like yourself) weight the pros and cons on WHERE(?) to do business next. I have some other channels that I can explore too... In the USA also.
In any event... Don't be too discouraged. Sometimes it can take 2 or 3 tries once you finally got the Board Game fully ready to be accepted by the board gaming community given that you've managed to spread the word about it digitally and maybe even locally near your home (in some local stores, etc. etc.)
Best.
Oh and BTW don't think it's ONLY a YOU problem...
From 800+ Backers which was a curated list, I removed a bunch of "Jerks" and people unhappy that the production took so long... So generally a list with probably the most LIKELY to support and I probably got like 15 people.
15 over 800 ~= 2%. That's ridiculously LOW.
So don't get discouraged. Do the marketing, get more people interested, get the word out more, make your brand more recognizable, etc. etc.
15 for $40 ~= $2.67. That's pretty freaken expensive and I would not do it some more because it is way TOO costly.
15 for free is organic and that sums up the current amount of supporters that I currently have.
Again... Don't panic. Keep cool and collected and see how the campaign goes and then in the end, you'll have to figure out what to do based on the outcome.
But I want to say... $60,000 USD goal is pretty ambitious. That's just me... But we ended up around $50,000+ USD for the TW KS. I only broke even... So goes to show you ... It's a tough business to be in TBH.
Sincerely.