One of the interesting things about publishing a game through Kickstarter is the ability to collect feedback from your customers before the game has been printed, and to change your approach. Recently The King’s Armory took this approach when their first campaign failed to fund, and after a big overhaul and an art-only fundraiser, they are now successfully funded.
David Sirlin decided, midway through his initial campaign for Pandante, to pull the plug and make some changes. The game, a poker-inspired bluffing game, was getting good feedback and probably would have successfully hit its funding goal, but Sirlin felt he could do even better.
Now the game has been rebooted. The game itself is still the same, but the new Kickstarter campaign has a few significant changes. First, he has changed the deluxe version from ceramic poker chips to clay, which reduces the price point for folks who want the full set (from $300 to $100). There’s also an optional travel version at a higher reward level—it uses standard poker-sized cards instead of the oversized Pandante cards, and a couple of cards for each player make up the betting board as well. There are also a few Kickstarter-exclusive cards and some new stretch goals.
In case you missed it the first time around, I do have a review of Pandante that explains how the game works. For more details and to back the project, check out the Kickstarter page.
