Like this draft animation of hurling a grenade, we chucked the Backerkit surveys out to you last week on March 13th. Catch! :D
TLDR; this is a survey reminder and we’ve calculated our near-final funding total. Our art, music and animation teams are smashing away at the stretch goals. And thank you.
Surveys!
Since then 76% of our backers have completed their survey, voted in the cybercat poll and selected any campaign add-ons they wanted. We are sending out this one week reminder on Kickstarter to make sure you (1) got a survey email from Backerkit ([email protected] OR [email protected]) and that you (2) complete the survey and pick any final add-ons.
If you have not received a survey or had any issues filling it out, please email me at [email protected] or message me here on Kickstarter. We are here to help.
While we are not closing the backer surveys soon, some of these rewards (like the 3D face modeling) and choices (like the cybercat breed poll) have a limited window. By April 6th, we are planning to close the late pledge store and will be making the final rounds to try to get everyone across the survey finish line. By early April, we want to be full steam ahead on every item.
Final Funding
While there is still some room for final add-ons to increase the total, we have nearly our final funding numbers for the campaign. Together, we raised $226,709 on Kickstarter and $1,355 on PayPal for a campaign total of $228,064. The pledge manager add-ons and late pledge store have now added $9,560 to that total bringing the total Cyber Knights: Flashpoint warchest to $237,624 before chargebacks and fees.
So once again we find ourselves steeped in great gratitude. In the pledge manager, the majority of the additional funds raised is from additional keys of Cyber Knights: Flashpoint to share with a friend and picking up keys of our previous two games, Star Traders: Frontiers and Templar Battleforce. We drew a line in the snow and gifted you the extra cybercat breed stretch goal in thanks for the amazing campaign and month. You met us at that line once again! And so, we want to express our thanks for those players new to the Trese Brothers studio who picked up keys for our previous titles and joined us on Discord to talk strategy, lore and more.
Remember to vote for your favorite cat!
Status
We will include the “Progress Bar” in every single Kickstarter update whether or not something changes. To keep the best track of what is done and in progress, we've added a little blue "in progress" icon next to the items that we are actively working on.
Our latest progress report is that we’ve met with Studio Viking to begin moving forward on the Skyrise and Safehouse soundtrack additions and our art team is working on all of the concepts for the 6 unlocked outfits. We’re wrapping up some of the animations required for the game’s initial scope (such as chucking grenades) and doing detailed storyboards for new animations like hacking, petting the dog and more. Cory and I are working on picking the best looking pictures of King Tut and Rigatoni for their concept art debut. So -- across the board, we’re firing.
Thank you for your support,
Andrew & Cory Trese
Trese Brothers Games
Drafting a Brave Star outfit design
Data / tech lab doors are smaller than industrial doors -- designed for individuals
Looking good and taking names
Surveys Sending!
about 6 years ago
– Sat, Mar 14, 2020 at 03:08:33 AM
Knights!
We have exciting news to share today, the surveys are going out! Backer Surveys have started going out today, Friday, March 13th. For most, they will arrive immediately or over the weekend.
The BackerKit pledge manager will offer you the option to upgrade your pledge, assign extra pledge value you reserved for add-ons or purchase new add-ons. Here are a few examples of how your pledge manager experience might look:
Just survey -- You decide to make no changes to your pledge level and select no add-ons. Simple -- you just complete your survey.
AssignExtra Kickstarter funds -- You pledged an extra $15 to the Kickstarter. In the pledge manager, you decide to make no changes to your pledge level and assign that $15 to an extra Cyber Knights Steam key. Then you complete your survey.
New Add-on -- You decide to make no changes to your pledge but you want add a Star Traders: Frontiers Steam key. You pay an extra $10 in the pledge manager checkout and then complete your survey.
Pledge upgrade -- You decide to upgrade your pledge level and pay the difference in the pledge manager checkout. Then you complete your survey.
Please let us know if you have any questions, we are on deck to help!
Once you fill out your survey, the first wave of rewards will be ready to deliver, as shown in the Progress Bar infographic.
If you enter your Discord username into the survey, you will be able to chat with the MercerBot in our Discord to get your role assigned. Simply type “max!addrole” into any channel and MercerBot will grant your new roles.
The Trese Brothers Forum badges take a little longer to process. We will wait until we have a majority of surveys completed to fulfill these. They are basically used for the Alpha Phase, so these are not that important to get done quickly.
During the survey, you’ll enter the name or attribute you want in the game’s credits. We will load these straight into the game’s database and they will appear in the credit’s screen post haste.
During the survey, you’ll be asked to vote for which cat breed will be selected for Type 2.
If you are getting a Star Traders: Frontiers or Templar Battleforce Steam key as an add-on, you’ll get those keys immediately via Backerkit.
Remember that during the survey process, you will be asked to provide your Discord username and/or a Trese Brothers Forum username. If you are not a member of either of these services and will participate in the alpha test, be sure to sign up so that you can provide all the answers to the survey.
If you have any questions, we are gathering a helpful FAQ for the Cyber Knights: Flashpoint where we will try to keep all the most useful answers. So, reach out to us and we’ll help and evaluate your question for the FAQ.
Late Pledges
If you’re late to the party, you can still pledge through the Late Pledge store.
Failed Payments
If your payment failed on Kickstarter, you will get a survey in 7 days from BackerKit. At that time, you will have the option to complete your payment via the pledge manager checkout. If you do so, you’re redeemed to full backer status, and can complete the normal survey and pledge manager options like picking add-ons.
Thank you for your support!
Andrew & Cory Trese
Late/Declined Pledges + Survey Prep
about 6 years ago
– Thu, Mar 12, 2020 at 12:03:55 AM
Knights,
The deadline for corrected payment problems with pledgesis tomorrow March 12 9PM EST. There are still 68 Knights with errored pledges. Please be sure to confirm your pledge was successfully collected by Kickstarter! You can visit the campaign page and see a “Fix payment error” button if your pledge failed.
For anyone who missed the campaign, we have now opened the late pledge store on BackerKit and will be accepting pledges to the Alpha and Ultra Edition only through April 6th, 2020. If you or any of your friends missed out on the Kickstarter, you can still jump in on the campaign! This is the final opportunity for slacker backers to jump in!
This is the point where a Kickstarter project might start to wander or go silent for a while. You will find no such delays from the Trese Brothers. We intend to set a high standard of execution throughout Kickstarter, from day one to day 1,000. Our organization and planning aim to be as sharp as a Matusumoto nano-edge katana and our communication is as expertly delivered as Crane Tech’s latest datablaze. If you have questions at any time, message us on Kickstarter. If you need to reach one of us directly, you can email Andrew at [email protected] or Cory at [email protected].
In the mean time, check out this draft animation of the cyber pitbull. Does he smell something? Surveys!?
Backer Surveys will start going out on Friday, March 13th. For most, they will arrive Friday or over the weekend. Once you fill out your survey, add-ons that are ready (such as Star Traders: Frontiers Steam keys) will process immediately and you will get your keys. We are using BackerKit as our pledge manager to offer the options to upgrade your pledge, purchase additional add-ons and to get the best survey and digital delivery experience possible for you.
In your survey, you will be asked to provide your Discord username and a Trese Brothers Forum username. If you are not a member of either of these services and will participate in the alpha test, be sure to take a moment to sign up so that you can provide all the answers to the survey.
Detailed Project Tracking
Part of our commitment to you is to share detailed information about the timing, status and ordering of Kickstarter rewards and stretch goals. To that end, we will be using and evolving this “Progress Bar” infographic.
The progress bar graphic contains all of the major release milestones (alpha, Steam Early Access, Steam launch, and the mobile/Switch ports) as well as every stretch goal and reward. The ordering of these items indicates their timing of delivery or completion. For example, you can see that we won’t start working on recruitable characters until after the launch of the alpha, as it is important for everyone to play the game before starting to hammer out these details. Or you can see that we will be working on completing the Skyrise Environment kit during the alpha phase and not before it.
A big campaign has a lot of promises and we hope that this graphic is helpful for you to keep track of where we are in delivering them. As we go, we will be marking items on the list as complete and including this graphic in every single Kickstarter update so that we are all on the same page.
Thank you for your support and this is all until Friday when the surveys go out!
Cory & Andrew Trese
Trese Brothers Games
One. Last. Stretch. Goal.
about 6 years ago
– Sat, Mar 07, 2020 at 11:36:35 PM
Knights,
Thursday night was something truly epic and special. Hundreds of backers tuned in to the live end-of-campaign countdown stream on Twitch. If you didn’t get to see it, the recording is now available.
However, even with such success we cannot help but feel a little lost now that the campaign is over. Refreshing the Kickstarter page every 5 seconds doesn’t have the same feeling it did last week. Some of our Discord crew has expressed the same feeling. The end of the campaign was absolutely amazeballs but it feels like if we’d have just one more day to press F5, we might have hit just ... One. More. Stretch. Goal.
<fade out>
<Two concerned looking Jupiter Corp Security guards patrol in a top-secret biomedical facility>
Guard 1: Should we call in those two wild-eyed scientists who just ran by? They were babbling about “escaped prototype cybercats.”
Guard 2: I’m sure it is nothing. Everyone knows there is only one kind of cybercat. Jupiter Corp would never experiment with such dangerous animals.
Guard 1: Are you an idiot? Our patrol route is labeled “Cybercat R&D Laboratory” on the map!
<Guard 1 suddenly spinsand disappears in a spray of red and gunfire>
Cyber Murdercat “Type 2”: Meow.
<Guard 2 screams and flees, shooting wildly. More screams are heard as the second cybercat breed escape the lab>
<fade out>
Unlocked New Cybercat Breed ($235K)
We mean it when we say Thursday night was epic. Hundreds of new backers flooded into the project and hundreds more upgraded their pledges to help us lunge across the final stretch in those last hours. A big shout out to Cringer for raiding our Twitch stream and starting it off with a bang. We also want to especially thank @1johnrobinson and @SweetPollyPurebred for their “mistake” in thinking the hardcover art book cost $500 and ordering 2 of them in the last minutes. What a legend. What a night!
With $226,709 pledge on Kickstarter and an additional $1,355 raised on PayPal we are still about $7,000 short of the New Cybercat Breed stretch goal. However, we have seen many of our backers buying and sharing Star Traders: Frontiers (Google Play, App Store) and Templar Battleforce (Google Play, App Store) over the last month. Based on our current player counts, it is clear that many new players found us through Cyber Knights: Flashpoint.
Combining the extra game sales with our growing Patreon support and Twitch subscriptions we are really close to affording the new Cat Breed. Therefore, we resolved to do something crazy -- we’re stretching to gift you the New Cybercat Breed with a bow on top. Careful opening it, it might be more than you expected!
So thank you for all your support. You earned this. When backer surveys go out, it will include backer poll to determine the new cybercat breed!
We have made faster than expected progress configuring BackerKit pledge manager for the surveys, add-ons and rewards. We should have no problems sending them on the schedule we outlined in Update #22.
We’ve also completed coding and testing our MercerBot, the Discord agent that will manage your server role and alpha access. This will mean automated and easy role assignment, private channel access and alpha readiness. We have begun moving forward with our partners and collaborators on the stretch goal content for the campaign. We’re starting now to make sure these stretch goals don't slow the project down.
Failed Pledges
Please be sure to check your email to ensure you got an email from Kickstarter stating your pledge ran successfully ("We've collected your pledge for Cyber Knights: a cyberpunk RPG"). We still have 118 pledges (less than 2%!) that were not successfully processed, probably due to incorrect information entered at the credit card stage.
Please be aware that if you are not able to resolve the failed pledge by Thursday March 12th, you will not get any rewards and the window will close to join the project (sorry).
More Thanks
We could not have run this campaign without the guidance, support and assistance from everyone on the Trese Brothers team. As we embark on the next phase of Cyber Knights, build and deliver, we want to be certain to stop and thank some of those who helped us get this far. Roll credits and cue the Soundcloud music, please.
Music & Composition by Studio Viking
Art & Technical Support by N-iX
Video Production by Oswego Creative
PR & Marketing by Novy Unlimited
With great gratitude,
Andrew and Cory Trese
Trese Brothers Games
Thank you Backers, you Funded it!
about 6 years ago
– Fri, Mar 06, 2020 at 07:08:12 PM
Knights,
What an incredible month this turned out to be! It was almost a year ago that we held the first planning session for this campaign and it feels like it was a year ago when we pressed Launch. Yet here we are, 32 short days later, with a 453% funded project with 5,041 backers excited to get started with Cyber Knights.
To each and every backer: we cannot thank you enough for your pledge, comments, support, and ideas over the past month. You have given our dream project life. We’re so fragging excited to make this cyberpunk epic a reality. It’s all thanks to you. You.
What happens next?
The first phase of the mission is complete. We have secured our pre-mission advantages, compiled our stretch goals and built our Alpha Squad. Now we begin the next part of the operation -- build and deliver. We have a busy couple of weeks ahead closing down the Kickstarter and getting the pledge manager ready for all our backers. Every step of the journey is important to get right, so we aren’t going to rush it.
Today
The campaign is closed. Kickstarter has now processed your pledge and your card has been charged according to the pledge amount you selected during the campaign. If something didn’t work with the charge, you will get an email from Kickstarter. Visit the campaign page to make sure your pledge was processed and if something went wrong, you can use the Kickstarter buttons to get it resolved. Remember, if your pledge does not charge and clear successfully, you will get no rewards (sorry).
This morning, we have also started configuring BackerKit pledge manager to do all the required surveys, pledge add-ons and reward tiers. This will take some time to get setup. As we were hyper focused on the campaign up until the last seconds, we didn’t start this in advance.
March 5 to March 12
There is a 7-day window following a Kickstarter’s deadline for collecting and processing pledges. For Cyber Knights: Flashpoint that window ends March 12 9PM EST. If a backer doesn’t resolve their payment issues within seven days, the pledge is dropped. The Kickstarter total will not change, but the pledged funds will not be transferred to Trese Brothers and the user will not be a backer on Kickstarter.
If your pledge encounters problems billing, please contact Kickstarter support. Unfortunately we have no control over payment processing.
March 13
We will send a Kickstarter update on or around March 13 with more details about the Backer Surveys. At this point all pledges on Kickstarter have either successfully charged or canceled, and BackerKit pledge manager will use Kickstarter’s API to import all confirmed and charged pledges. No billing information is transferred to BackerKit.
We will email your Backer Survey from BackerKit. This survey allows you to select your pledge options and choose your add-ons. You can increase your pledge via your BackerKit Survey if you wish to get additional keys and add-ons. This is also how you’ll provide your shipping information if you want a Hardcover Art Book.
March 20
Right around 15 days after the Kickstarter ends, the bank will transfer the campaign’s fund, minus fees, to Trese Brothers. We have already begun working with our partners and collaborators to bulk up our projects with them to include the newly acquired stretch goal content.
April 5
We will send an update on or around April 5 to provide a backer update on progress over the past month and summarize the bookkeeping and reward progress. At this time we will also start to finalize and close down BackerKit’s late-pledge option and disable PayPal. We will complete a final roster of alpha backers, a list of planned creative rewards and any adjustments to the development plan necessary.
How do I keep up with progress?
Our most current status will here on the Kickstarter page. We will be posting updates throughout the development process to keep backers in the loop about how things are progressing. If you have email notifications enabled, you will get each update in your email the moment it's available.
We are committed to providing a steady stream of updates -- at least once a month -- but will provide big updates with more information packed into one instead of multiple shorter updates. However, during this early phase around the pledge manager, we will be sending updates at each of the major milestones outlined above.
