Reign: Kickstarter Preview Take Two

Box art image looks wonderful. Tag line is great, although I'd rewrite it as a complete sentence and include age range as you do later, "and domination for 3-7 . . ."

Headers are a huge improvement and very female audience friendly.

Nice job clearly presenting details at the start of your "About."

"Then, using their cunning and beguile," latter should be guile. Beguile is what I do to the audience on karaoke night.

"Gain 9 legitimacy [points] . . ." indicate that this is now a game term. Italics or quotation would also work.

Contents presentation is immaculate.

"What Makes . . ." instead of "Why Is Reign Unique?"

"players [must] constantly [renegotiate shifting alliances,]"

"Reign really captures the feel and tension of [a] nobles fighting over a kingdom." delete "a"

". . . you will find yourself on the edge of your seat." Awkward sentence, but maybe find a better way of phrasing it. After all, it's at monster truck rallies where you only use the edge of your seat even though you paid for the whole thing.

"We are very happy with how it turned out, the style and the quality add to the experience immensely." Should be two sentences.

Very good job of making the game sound intriguing. Sounds like a card game version of Diplomacy. I'd try this.

Shipping: "Getting Reign to you as cheep as possible is our top priority." Cute as this sounds, the misspelling only works if you include a picture of a little chick. You want the game to be "affordable," not cheap, as the latter indicates a willingness to skimp on production quality. You "bear" the brunt of the cost.

23 projects backed, so put a check mark on community involvement, but missing photos and single sentence bios of the production team.

Still wouldn't hurt to update your website to reflect the aesthetic improvements made on the KS. Keep it simple. It's fine for your company site not to be much more than a blog if you haven't released this, your first game, yet. Change the color scheme. Red headers on slate gray is fine if you are selling used copies of Gears of War or hosting a forum for biker gangs. White background, plenty of artwork, and translate all of your KS content onto the site.

Lastly, if you can at all make it fit your budget, hire a professional proofreader to go over your rulebook before you ship to backers. You can find a decent editor for as cheap as 1 cent per word. Lack of editing is the number one complaint that I hear from friends who have backed multiple KS projects.

I can't remember everything about your previous KS page, but I can say that this one looks very viable and has a lot of potential. Best of luck, and I wish you well!

(Thank you, by the way, for your interest in my input.)

The funding goal of 15K does not match the stretch goals graphic of 10K; do all of the stretch goal amounts need to be reviewed?

Given the stretch goal at 40K, would it make sense to switch the reward for unlocking 60K and 80K; in short, 40 and 60 unlock event cards and 80 unlocks the expansion?

I don't think I would say "We painstakingly made sure that the quality of art in Reign was to the best standards that we could afford."; rather than refer to the cost of producing the artwork, maybe call attention to the way in which the art captures the feel of the game. For example "We worked closely with Starcat Games to ensure the artwork in Reign supports the intense and immersive experience of the game"

I'll try to look again when I have more time...

Good luck with your campaign!

Good point about price! I didn't blink an eye at $30, since I figured the shtick was full retail but free shipping. Also, because I play a lot of pricey FFG's games -- but I am also consistently impressed with the quality of their components and presentation. Outside of the stretch goal promising to increase the card weight, there is no mention of what exactly the default components are like. It would be nice to see it laid out that these are 275 gsm (100 lb) card stock, what dimensions, glossy or linen finish, what core, # cards, etc. Even better would be to revise that stretch goal from improving the flimsy 275 gsm cards into an upgrade from 300 glossy to 310 linen.

The MSRP of $39 is quite excessive, as this puts you into the realm of boxed games with over 200 cards, cardboard chits, and so forth. $25 is closer to the going rate for this kind of game with equivalent (usually more) contents.

Additional errors seem to be creeping in, like the gameplay video mentioning "extra legitmacy point . . ." I'm still scared that your final product is going to be full of errors.

Are you sure you want to offer a one month guarantee based solely on like? Let's say you get 500 backers and fund. Can you afford to have 100 of those customers send back used merchandise? You may be confident in your game, but I have friends who'd be thrilled to get their money back on 75% of their KS purchases. Buyer remorse is pretty high these days. My experience has been that people are total bastards when it comes to product returns. When my wife and I sold dog collars, we had people return as "new and unused" soiled collars that were heavily used and covered in dog hair. You see it a lot in retail, people buying clothing for an event, only to return it afterwards, etc. I wouldn't be surprised to see people sending back their game because they lost cards, spilled drinks on them, etc. -- but it's not the damage that changed their mind about the game, it's because they suddenly and mysteriously stopped liking the art.