Indivisible is the RPG from Lab Zero, the developers of Skullgirls. It’s been chilling out on IndieGoGo for the last month, slowly racking up the one and a half million dollars it was asking for. Honestly, I was fairly sure it was doomed – small studio, niche fanbase, smaller crowdfunding platform and general fatigure all pointed towards a goal that was too high and a slow path to irrelevance. I’m exceedingly happy to be wrong.
Indivisible could end up on our list of the best RPGs, eventually.
They’ve done it and with a few days to spare. It comes down to a clever crowdfunding strategy. Lab Zero put out regular updates informing people about what’s going on with the game, showing off art, videos, tie-ins and everything else that gets people excited. They didn’t spend too much time on stretch goals, there’s a couple up there now but they’ve made it clear that a complete game is what you’re getting for the 1.5 mill, which is important with such a high goal. Not that that’s a lot of money to spend on making a video game, but it is a lot to have as a target goal on crowdfunding.
Most important of all, however, is that they issued a free prototype demo to let fans, press and everyone else see how the game will play. After a trailer and some decent screenshots, it’s the single most important thing for a successful campaign. The direct benefits are obvious for attracting more money, but a demo gives press something meaty to post about, gives YouTubers something to play, gives everyone else something to recommend to their friends – it spreads a lot more effectively than anything else you can do.
Congratulations to them. There’s another few days for you to contribute if you like, with $30 getting you a copy of the game on its predicted release date of January 2018. That seems like a fair date to guess for, as informed as the rest of their decisions during the campaign, but as with every other crowdfunding game ever made it will probably hit a delay. Mid-2018, then, can’t come soon enough for the 25,266 and counting fans.