Prisonscape - Kickstarter Updates# 3 & 4

Prisonscape has been on kickstarter for a few days now, and funding has slowed down. The game has only managed to get $8,692 of the games $49,500 goal.

The developer Lunar Enigma also released two more updates for the game. The first update is a new video the job system.

Introducing the job (quest) system

We created another video where we introduce the job system and story branching in Prisonscape. Hope you enjoy it!

The Kickstarter has been a bit slow lately, and based on Kicktraq we're not going on our way to getting funded. So please spread the word about the game in any way you can! 

This is also a good moment to thank everyone who believes in this project and who have already pledged. You are the raeson why we are doing this!

The second update the developer talks about funding, and what will happen if the kickstarter fails in the next twenty days.

Talking about the money

A lot of people have asked us about the money and how it will be spent. In this update, I will answer some of the most frequently asked questions about this particular topic.

Q: How will you spend the money if you meet your goal?

A: There is a small chart in the Budget part on our Kickstarter page, but here is some more details about it: First of all, Kickstarter and Amazon Payment take their share which is something between 7% and 10%. Second, the taxation in Finland (where we operate from) is ridiculously high. We pay VAT of 24% for each sold game. So basically a third of the funds is already gone before we even see the money on our bank account. That comes to around 16500 USD, which leaves us with 33000 USD.

There are three people that would be working on the project full-time for a total time period of 5 months (until December of 2014, which is the release goal). The studio rent for this time will come to around 650 USD per month, costing us 3900 USD. After that we have 29100 USD left. Now we can start paying ourselves salaries, which will be around 5800 USD per month including taxes for three people (programmer, designer and graphic designer). After taxes we are left with around 1380 USD per month each to pay the rent and feed ourselves and our families.

Q: What happens to the game if the Kickstarter fails?

A: We will continue developing the game, but the pace will be slower. Me and Tuomas are the only financiers of Prisonscape, and everything has been paid from our own pockets so far. Fortunately we both have full-time jobs to help with this, but unfortunately this takes a lot of time away from the game development.

Q: Why is the goal so high?

A: Game development is not cheap, and if you want to do it full-time you need surprisingly large amounts of money. If we succeed and we'll start game deving full-time, our salaries will still drop drastically and we'll become particularly familiar with eating ramen.