Concept Sketch for Aegir’s Island from Norse Noir: Loki’s Exile
Hello everyone! I have some exciting news to share today, as KreativeSpill has managed to secure additional funding for Norse Noir: Loki’s Exile! We on the team are thrilled to announce that our title has been the recipient of a new grant from the Norwegian Film Institute which sees our budget for making the first episode of Norse Noir increasing by nearly $60,000 USD! You can see more information at the following links:
http://www.nfi.no/bransje/tildelinger/tilskudd?key=127875 — (English Translation)
http://www.nfi.no/omnfi/presse/pressemeldinger/utviklingstilskudd-til-ni-spill-132970 — (English Translation)
As noted in our Kickstarter budgeting post, Loki’s Exile was the recipient of a partial grant from the NFI earlier in 2014, which allowed us to work on the title up to and through the process of running our Kickstarter. When we started seeking funding on Kickstarter there were really three scenarios we had envisioned:
* Best: Kickstarter succeeds and then some (or other projects at the company bring in larger revenue), giving us the ability to polish up the game and add some bells and whistles (like the epilogue scene and voice acting).
* OK: Kickstarter succeeds at its minimum, with no additional revenue for the company; we’re able to make and release a finished title, maybe a bit of voice acting here and there but otherwise bare bones.
* Worst: Kickstarter fails, no additional revenue comes in for KreativeSpill… we shake hands and pack up, without being able to release the title.
Being sensible businesspeople we were forced to heavily consider the most likely option - That being the worst. While we’re absolutely grateful that we were able to find an audience of people (like you!) that let us run a more-than-successful Kickstarter, we knew going in that we might have a hard row to hoe. Facts are facts: Low funding amounts on Kickstarter often have difficulties reaching their goals, the video game market on KS is slowly but steadily shrinking, an adventure game is a niche title in a genre that’s threatening to become crowded, we had practically no audience prior to launching the Kickstarter, and so on. There were a lot of factors that could have easily lead to the Kickstarter not being successful, and being prepared for the worst case scenario was the smartest thing we could do.
In being prepared for said worst case scenario we knew that the NFI’s next funding round was approaching, and we decided to resubmit Loki’s Exile to the board in hopes of receiving the “other part” of our initial partial grant: If the Kickstarter failed, we would still have another potential avenue for funding work on the game.
Fast forward a few weeks and… well, here we are, in a situation not a lot of businesses are lucky enough to find themselves in - Beating the odds, overcoming the worst case scenario, and even toppling the best case by leaps and bounds. We now have every bit of budget we need to bring the best possible version of Loki’s Exile to you that we possibly can, and we think that’s going to be a very good thing.
We’re still discussing internally exactly what this new pool of resources will allow us to add to the game, and what it’ll mean for us as a team working on the title, but we can at least announce that we will, for certain, be offering a fully voice-acted title (not partial!) on release - Something that’s made all of us very happy indeed.
Once we’ve talked more internally about exactly how we want to best utilize these funds we’ll be back to talk more about what it means for the game, for our fans, and the like. Until then, we want to thank everyone again for all of their help in supporting us, funding us, and spreading the word about Norse Noir - We’ll post more soon!
PS: Yes, that is a new concept up at the top of the page! We’ve shown you the interior of Aegir’s Hall; this is a sneak peek at the exterior.
