Bavarian studio Gentle Troll reaches Kickstarter goal in six hours

With the Kickstarter campaign for "Tavern Talk", Gentle Troll from Würzburg, Bavaria reached their goal in less than six hours. With over 25,000 wishlists, a realistic campaign goal for a Switch port as well as a solid financial foundation consisting of Bavarian and Federal funding and commissioned work, CEO Michel Wacker rightly expected great success.

Update from 18 October 2023:Not even one day after the campaign launch, Gentle Troll reaches almost 27,000 Euro on Kickstarter - breaching the goal of 20,000 Euro. Stretchgoals like a Switch port are therefore quite within reach.

Original from 17 October 2023:

With a Kickstarter campaign, the Würzburg-based German game company Gentle Troll Entertainment wants to raise additional budget for the cosy visual novel "Tavern Talk" from the community starting at 5 p.m. CET today. In the game, players run a tavern in a fantasy world inspired by Dungeons & Dragons, pick up rumours, serve drinks and send the guests on adventures. With the Steam page and the demo available, Gentle Troll has already collected 25,000 wish list entries since the beginning of June 2023 - the indie studio from Bavaria now wants to activate these for the crowdfunding campaign. The great response from fans online and at various indie exhibitions such as GG Bavaria, the local event in Munich, Bavaria, and the Indie Arena Booth on gamescom 2023 has also contributed to this.

Michel Wacker, founder and CEO of Gentle Troll, explains this to GamesMarkt as follows: "We didn't expect this response at all. Since our first public presentation of the game at the GG Bavaria in Munich at the end of February, we have already noticed that we are on to something special. All three game stations, including the Steam Deck, were full for several hours at a time. But things only really took off after we were able to participate in some genre-typical Steam events, such as the Cozy and Family Friendly Fest or the Games from Germany event. Our exhibition at the Games-Bavaria area of the Indie Arena Booth at Gamescom also gave us a sense of how much appeal the topic of D&D coupled with the visual novel format has. People were queuing up to play Tavern Talk. But it also helped that we came up with a little sticker collab with two other cozy games, 'Tiny Bookshop' and 'Grimoire Groves'. For every prototype played, players got a stamp. If you had all three complete, there was a sheet of stickers for all three games. This worked amazingly well. So much love makes us incredibly happy!"

Safety thanks to Public Funding & Serious Games

The campaign is special in that the game has already been funded in its basic form. A prototype grant of 100,000 euros from the Movie and TV Fund Bavaria (FFF Bayern) in December 2022 had provided the impetus, and in April 2023 the studio had also received 131,780 euros from the Federal Ministry of Economics and Climate Protection. Gentle Troll has been able to cover the other development costs through commissioned work in the field of serious games: for example, Gentle Troll has been in charge of the elephant app for WDR's "Sendung mit der Maus" since March and has developed "Klim:S 21" for the Research Group of Earth Observation (rgeo), which was awarded silver in the education category of the 2022 Tommi Children's Awards. The fact that the funding has worked out so far is therefore a stroke of luck from a skilful order situation and funding, which also fitted well in terms of timing, because Wacker had submitted the application for federal funding just in time. "The idea came up during another concept development and was further developed while we were looking for a publisher for a larger project. When that ultimately fell through, we were already knee-deep in prototype development for which we had fortunately submitted an application to the FFF early on. I got the follow-up funding from the BMWK underway when some money was added in last year's budget adjustment session and was able to submit the application on 1 January 2023. We have been able to prove our own contribution ourselves through ongoing contract work in the serious game business."

Focused on Stretchgoals and Ports

But why Kickstarter when the project is already funded through multiple grants and the company's internal serious game business? The clear goal to be achieved with the Kickstarter goal of 20,000 euros is more content, first and foremost an interactive map for better clarity, as well as more polish in the game. Everything beyond that is to flow into Stretch Goals, for which a Switch port is planned at the top alongside additional characters and quests. "The fantastic response has prompted us to expand the game further beyond the funding," Wacker said when asked. "Early on in production, we realised that an interactive map was sorely missed, where players* could track all the events of the game in a manageable way. In addition, the question for a Switch port came from the community on day 1. The Switch is the most popular console in the Cozy Community. It's a great fit for cosy gaming on the couch. We would therefore like to finance the Switch port via a stretch goal in the crowdfunding campaign. In addition, further characters can be unlocked. We also have some Stretch Goals planned that do not directly influence the game development, but take up the lore around the land of Asteria in other media. Examples include a short story in the world of Tavern Talk that can be unlocked via social media stretch goals."

The Goal: Strong Community Building

Another target: The campaign should of course generate attention to support the momentum created by the demo. "Besides the financial aspect, an important aspect of the campaign is of course the expansion of our community. Our Discord is already close to 700 members. We hope to break the 1000 mark in the next few days. We are experiencing game development in a completely different way because we are involving the community in many issues, such as the designs of the magic drinks. We find it very fulfilling to develop something with the community for the community. We hope that playing the public demo will boost the campaign because backers know exactly what they are getting. At the same time, we hope that by playing the demo, backers will also put the game on their Wishlist. That's why we've also put a Wishlist addition in the social media stretch goals. We hope this will give the Steam algorithm a bit of a push. The regular pushes are huge for visibility."

Self-Marketing with External Help

Finally, the game is not to be released under a publisher, but self distributed - with the help of external marketing support from the agency Future Friends and event promotions together with Indie Squire. Actually, however, this was once planned differently, but the publisher offers failed to materialise. Wacker explains: "At the time, I actually did it with the plan to find a publisher afterwards who would take over our own share afterwards. As a newcomer, even with this small format and low budget, we had a hard time finding someone who wanted to finance the development. When the wishlists started to come in through the Steam events, we decided to do it ourselves and access our large network. Now, at the latest, almost 10 years of development work are slowly paying off. We have now found a strong partner for PR and influencer outreach in Future Friends. This has already taken a lot of pressure off us when it comes to Kickstarter planning."