❖ Version History ❖

March 28th – April 1st, 2024
Here we are, nearly FOUR YEARS after the fateful phone call that lead us down this crazy path toward publishing Phoenix Farm. It is finally about to be judgement day… the day that we turn on our Kickstarter Campaign (and hope to god that the universe is ready to meet us here!).

There are only a few things left to prepare that we have not yet discussed in our journey, and today we are going to cover those details a bit & talk about the jaw-breaking feeling that is waiting and watching to see what happens once you hit the “launch” button. But before we smack that big red button, let’s cover our last slices of prep-work!

First up, we have the actual campaign launch video. This comes with at least two to three whole days of work that all went down in March of this year. There is of course the scripting of “what will be said”, which looks something like this:

After writing this, there are about 45 minutes of video that need to be shot (because for every minute of ‘mastered & finished’ video there are probably about 5-10 minutes of un-edited content that we need to capture & refine down. And this is not just a video of us speaking, this is a heavily edited video showcasing all of the products, how the game works, and also a sneak peek at what we are considering doing for our potential book publication as well.

After a whole bunch of work on this front, at my house, at bens house, at the library, and in a studio, we finally get the raw content. Then I spend about three days in March doing all of the clipping of the content to make this final masterpiece that will headline our campaign page:

(No matter how hard I try to make it perfect though, of course I watch things like this later and I am just like “uhg. we should be better” hah! ~ That being said though, I am definitely proud of the editing & final result considering the fact that I created almost this entire thing using my dying iPhone at the time!)

Alrighty. Launch Video? Check. What else do we need? Well, of course, we have our incredible reviews that we have been planning for since about January 2024. That investment oh so long ago is finally paying off in spades as the reviewers are all getting back in touch with their amazing results in Photography, Writing, and most importantly, Art.

If you wanted to take a peek at all of the final results from our reviewer series, you can swing by our dedicated page for this here: Phoenix Farm Reviews!

But, for those of you who are here for the read, we will just take a peek at the artistic content that we got back from our reviewers, which is always my absolute favorite part of this whole process. Seeing someone else filter my art & design through their style and feed it back to me is a sensation I will never ever tire of (if you are reading this and want to make us some fan art, please please do, I love it more than anything in the world). Here are the designs that we got back from BoardGameKittens & ShannonDrawsBoardGames (both on Instagram & linked on our reviewer page):

Okay, back to the checklist… Launch Video? Check. Reviewer Content? Check. Last but not least, we have the actual write up or “body” of the Kickstarter. This part is … very much like a massive blog post actually! It comes with many segments that we need to utilize to cover just about every question one of our shoppers may have while checking us out (especially if this is their first time learning about Librarium Games).

Typically, the write up is broken into several chapters, so here is what we were starting with:
•”The Fable of Phoenix Farm”
•”The Journey of Librarium Games”
•”Kickstarter Goals & Strategy”
•”Pledge Reward Visual Menu”
•”Timeline, Shipping, & Fulfillment”
•”Brick & Mortar Offers”
•”Stretch Goals & Pledge Upgrades”
•”Reviewer Content”
•”Environmental Commitments”

I know, it’s a lot. But, this is what makes a good Kickstarter good. You have to cover alllll the details… and not only that, you need to pair them with images and/or videos to show as much as possible, because after all, we are here to try and make a product look as real and complete as possible, even though this product doesn’t technically exist yet. To show a bit behind how this all turned out once it was made, you can literally read our old campaign page here, but here are some screenshots from our campaign page as well:

(Another great thing about reviewers is that they frequently take really nice & artistic pictures of the content that they have been sent, so some of our best reviewer photographs are also highlighted throughout the Kickstarter Page!)

But then of course… comes the existential dread phase of all this. As of right now we have the entire machine ready to be turned on… and there is nothing left to prepare. It is simply time to cross the fingers and hope that it all works. So, on April 1st, 2024, at about 7a.m. I am looking over this whole symphony…. and then I close my eyes and I hit the button……………….

And then of course I start copying and pasting the links everywhere. I tell my friends, I tell my family, and I tell the Instagram, and of course send our Newsletter out, and then I very specifically force myself to go to my day job (I always try to make launch day a day that I am going to work so that I can prevent myself against my own will from looking at my phone for as long as possible). Despite my best efforts though, I inevitably look at my phone about 100,000 times an hour from the moment I hit that start button all the way until it’s over three weeks later.

This is the hardest part of the whole journey. It is… maximum levels of anxiety, imposter syndrome, and all the worst feelings. You will literally always feel like it is all a failure. And sometimes it is a failure! But sometimes things work out okay. The best you can possibly do is your best and live with it, knowing that you tried as hard as you could.

Of course, you as a Kickstarter Creator, you are always hoping for the campaign to hit the funding goals before the end of day one (you know, cuz the algorithm & whatnot), but this is a tough goal to strive for. This time around we were hoping for $5,000 before the end of day #1. Unfortunately we only got about 60% of the way there… and that’s where we will close today’s storytelling… with the dramatic suspense of how will it all turn out in the end!?

Well, to see what happened next, you’ll have to join us for our next chapter of the Librarium Games Design Journal! Hopefully this narrative of Kickstarter Prep has been helpful for you dear reader, and we will be back soon to share the next steps! Thank you as always for reading!