So that’s two-to-three months of full time work and a lot of late nights that is not being spent on making the actual game, which is not what most devs want to be doing, but it’s necessary if you’re serious about making your campaign a success. I spent about six weeks preparing the Kickstarter prior to launch (and that was probably too few), and then the campaign itself was a full time job. It’s safe to say that without the community’s support, The Eyes of Ara would not be receiving the high review scores that it has been.Īs for challenges, crowdfunding is hard and it takes a lot of time away from the development of the game.
A lot of bugs were found and fixed, and a lot of design changes were made as a result of this feedback.
Furthermore, by including Kickstarter tiers for Alpha and Beta access it allowed me to get lots more people testing early builds and providing feedback. Establishing a core community and building a following on social media was the difference between launching to an excited audience and launching to silence. So sites like Kickstarter are great for small indies such as myself for sourcing alternative means of funding for their ideas.Ĭommunity is equally important. Funding is the obvious one, The Eyes of Ara would not have been completed (at least not to the quality level that I was aiming for) without the funding. There were two primary benefits to crowdsourcing: funding and community. What were some of the benefits and challenges that crowdsourcing brought to your development process? As a result, the Kickstarter campaign was comprised mostly of screenshots and videos from this second chapter. The first and third chapters were in greybox stage (that is, the level was playable but all of the art was comprised of untextured grey boxes, used for blocking out and testing the design), while the second chapter also had a large amount of its art worked on as well.
At this point most of the main gameplay code was written, and all of the main chapters had been designed and work had been done on them to varying degrees. How much of the final product had you put together before the campaign?īen Droste: I began work on The Eyes of Ara back in 2013 after leaving SEGA Studios Australia, so the project was already about two years into development by the time I ran the Kickstarter.
Stephen del Prado: Hi Ben, thanks for talking to us! The Eyes of Ara first came to public attention through a Kickstarter campaign that was successfully funded in June of last year. Player2 caught up with Ben to find out more about the development process of The Eyes of Ara as well as the future of 100 Stones Interactive. Debut title The Eyes of Ara is the result of years of hard work and was fortunate enough to receive a place in the 2016 PAXAUS Indie Showcase.
PAXAUS 2016 Indie Showcase – The Eyes of Ara 100 Stones Interactive PC & MacĪfter a decade working on renowned franchises like Star Wars, Spyro the Dragon and (best of all) Viva Piñata, in 2013 Australian developer Ben Droste struck out on his own to found 100 Stones Interactive, a one-man studio based in Brisbane. caught up with each of the developers awarded a spot in the PAXAUS 2016 Indie Showcase to get a sneak peek at what attendees can look forward to. Independent development in Australia has been going from strength to strength over the past few years and the PAXAUS Indie Showcase serves to highlight some of the fantastic work being put out by local developers.